Did GitHub remove the stargazers page, and can you still see who starred a repo in 2026?

On June 30, 2026 GitHub restricted who can see the list of accounts that starred a repository. Two surfaces changed at once: the REST List stargazers endpoint (GET /repos/{owner}/{repo}/stargazers) and the /stargazers web page. Both are now limited to a repository’s admins and collaborators.

Before the change, anyone could read that list. A logged-out visitor could open github.com/acme/rocketdb/stargazers or call the REST endpoint and get every username back. After the change, a visitor who is not an admin or collaborator on that repo gets a 403 or 404 on both the page and the REST call.

The key distinction: GitHub restricted the list of who starred, not the star count. The number next to the Star button is still public for everyone. What is gated is the roster of individual accounts behind that number.

Yes. Owners did not lose access to their own stars, and this is the part most of the panic gets wrong. When you are signed in as the owner of acme/rocketdb, you are an admin on it, so the /stargazers page still loads and shows the full list exactly as before. Your own token against the REST API still returns a normal 200 with the data.

Collaborators on a repo see the list too, on the same page and through the same API. So if you maintain a project, nothing about seeing your project’s stargazers changed for you.

What changed is narrower than the headlines suggest: your ability to browse other people’s repos’ stargazers went away unless you are an admin or collaborator there. Your own repo is still fully visible to you.

Still works. Your own repo’s stargazer list, on the /stargazers page and through the REST API, whenever you are an admin or collaborator. And the public star count, still visible to everyone on every repo. If you own or help maintain a project, the change is effectively invisible to you: your stargazers are still yours to see, exactly as before.

Broke or degraded. Seeing another person’s stargazers when you are not an admin or collaborator now returns 403 or 404. The REST List stargazers endpoint for third-party repos no longer works for outside callers. And tools built on the old assumptions, the ones that scraped the /stargazers page or called the REST endpoint against repos they did not own, broke or degraded right after the change. Some public star-history style utilities reported problems after the change.

GitHub’s stated reason was that stargazer data was being misused to collect user data for spam. A public list of every account that starred a popular repo is a convenient target for bulk harvesting and unsolicited outreach to people who never opted in.

Limiting the list to admins and collaborators keeps the signal useful to the people who actually own a project while cutting off bulk harvesting of strangers’ accounts. In practice it draws a line: understanding who engages with your project stays open to you, and mining everyone else’s audiences from the outside gets shut down.

That framing matters for anyone building outreach on top of GitHub. The behavior GitHub moved to stop was scanning other people’s repos to cold-message their stargazers. The behavior it left fully intact was a maintainer looking at their own community.

No. A GitHub App installation token does not restore access to the stargazer list. In testing, even on a repository where the app was installed, the installation token still got a 403 on the stargazers endpoint. Only a genuine human admin or owner token works.

So any tool that pitches “install our app and see any repo’s stargazers” is misrepresenting how the restriction works. There is no app-based backdoor to another maintainer’s stargazer roster. Access follows the human: you see the lists for repos where you are an admin or collaborator, and nothing more.

If you maintain a repo, or you are a founder whose project is picking up stars, this change does not block you. You can still see your own repo’s stargazers, and that list is the audience that matters: the developers actively engaging with what you built.

This is where WarmStars fits, owner-first. One scan turns that stargazer list into named people: name, company, role, location, social links, and a public email where one exists. Every email carries a confidence tier (verified, high, medium, or likely) so you know how much to trust each row before you use it. You can filter by company or role, sort by who starred most recently, and export to CSV.

It is built to stay on the right side of the line GitHub just drew: public data only, a do-not-contact list honored on every scan and every export, and no sending. WarmStars hands you the list, and the outreach stays in your own tools, under your own name. The goal is to understand and reach the developers engaging with your project, not to mine strangers’ repos to cold-email people, which is exactly the behavior this restriction exists to stop. The guide on seeing who starred your repo walks through the routes that still work.