What is the difference between Git and GitHub?

Git is the version control tool that runs on your machine. GitHub is a cloud service for hosting Git repositories and collaborating (pull requests, issues, code review). You can use Git without GitHub, but not GitHub without Git.

It's a very common mistake to mix them up because they are almost always used together.

• Git: the program you install and use in the terminal. It handles commits, branches, merges. All version control happens here, locally.
• GitHub: a web platform (owned by a company, Microsoft) where you upload your Git repositories to store them in the cloud, share them, and collaborate. Alternatives: GitLab, Bitbucket.

Analogy: Git is like the ability to write; GitHub is like Google Docs, a place in the cloud where you store and share what you wrote. GitHub adds things that Git doesn't have on its own: pull requests, issues, team permissions, CI/CD, etc.

# Git (local): create a repo and make a commit, without internet
git init
git add .
git commit -m "Primer commit"

# GitHub (remote): connect your local repo to one on GitHub and push it
git remote add origin https://github.com/usuario/mi-repo.git
git push -u origin main
# push sends your local commits to the remote server (GitHub)

Saying "I uploaded my code to Git" when it was actually uploaded to GitHub. Git is not a place you "upload" things to; it's the tool. It's also a mistake to think you need a GitHub account to use Git: you can version projects entirely locally without any account.

"Git is the version control tool that runs on my machine; that's where I make commits, branches, and merges. GitHub is a cloud service for hosting Git repositories and collaborating, with things like pull requests, issues, and code review. I can use Git perfectly fine without GitHub, but GitHub without Git makes no sense. Alternatives to GitHub would be GitLab or Bitbucket."