GitHub to AWS S3 Backup (n8n) with Email Reports

Nightly GitHub backups to AWS S3—with an automatic email report

This n8n workflow automatically backs up your `GitHub` repositories every night by downloading each repo as a tarball and uploading it to Amazon S3. It also deletes expired backups based on your retention window and sends a SMTP email run report with successes, failures, and deletions.

What this workflow does

• Runs nightly at 02:00 on a schedule.
• Validates required settings before starting work (S3 bucket, S3 prefix, retention days, and report email).
• Uses the GitHub API to determine the authenticated account (or a specified owner) and lists repositories with pagination.
• Downloads each repository as a GitHub tarball (with retrying on failures) and uploads it to S3 using a timestamped filename under your configured prefix.
• Applies retention policy by listing objects in the S3 prefix, selecting backups older than the retention window, and deleting expired archives.
• Builds a detailed summary (successes, skipped empty repositories, failures, and deletions) and emails the report via SMTP (with configurable recipient and optional sender).

Use cases

• SaaS operators who need reliable repository backup outside GitHub.
• Automation engineers setting up scheduled GitHub to S3 backups with retention-based cleanup.
• Teams backing up private repositories using GitHub API credentials with appropriate scopes.

Technical details

• Integrations / nodes: GitHub API, AWS S3, Email (SMTP) send, and workflow control nodes like if, set, and code (plus a sticky note).
• Core behavior: nightly tarball download, S3 upload to a configured prefix, retention-based S3 deletion, and SMTP email reporting.

Built for n8n users who want a practical, automated GitHub to AWS S3 backup workflow with visibility via email.