FUNDING.yml

FUNDING.yml is a small YAML configuration file placed at .github/FUNDING.yml in a GitHub repository that declares where a project accepts financial support. When present, GitHub renders a Sponsor button at the top of the repository and lists the configured platforms — GitHub Sponsors, Open Collective, Patreon, Ko-fi, custom URLs, and more. It is the smallest possible standard for making an open-source project’s funding path discoverable.

• Fixed location - Lives at .github/FUNDING.yml so GitHub and tooling can find it without guessing.
• Platform keys - Simple key/value pairs (github, open_collective, patreon, ko_fi, custom, and others) map to funding destinations.
• Rendered as a Sponsor button - Presence of the file turns on GitHub’s native funding UI for the repo.
• Machine-readable - Being plain YAML, it can be crawled to assess how a project or its dependencies are funded.

In API operations FUNDING.yml matters most as a supply-chain and sustainability signal. A published funding file is a cheap, honest indicator that a maintainer has thought about the long-term viability of the SDK, spec, or tool your platform depends on — and its absence is part of why so much critical open-source infrastructure runs on unpaid goodwill. Alongside files like SECURITY.txt, it belongs to the family of well-known metadata files that make the health of a repository legible to humans, crawlers, and increasingly to agents mapping a dependency graph.