What's the difference between adding a user to a team vs. granting them access to repos?

[Barrett Heyneman]

We have a Bitbucket team for all our company's repos. We occasionally have contractors that need to work on one or more repos.

So far I have added those contractors' accounts to our team without automatic access to any repos, then granted them access to the specific repos they need to use. However, there doesn't seem to be any restriction with granting repo access to non-teammember accounts.

Is there any functional difference between the two approaches?

It looks like by adding and increasing the number of team members there could be a billing implication, but by simply granting access there won't be. Is that correct?

[Eric Henry · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately this has been a confusing topic in Bitbucket cloud for quite some time.

You have the ability to grant access to a repository to anyone with a Bitbucket account. When you do this, it does impact billing. Anyone with repository access is counted towards the number of users you are billed for. You can see the users that you are being billed for by going to Settings, choosing your team from the dropdown at the top of the page, and then choosing PLANS & BILLING > Plan details

Adding users to your team (and groups) just gives you an easier way to manage permissions, otherwise it is "equivalent" to giving manual access to a repository.

[Barrett Heyneman]

Thank you Eric, that clarifies things.