Merge Protections

Go beyond GitHub's native branch protections and craft custom, advanced rules using Mergify.

Mergify Merge Protections extend GitHub’s native Branch Protections & Rulesets with fine‑grained, dynamic rules.

Merge Protections let you:

  • Enforce advanced success criteria on pull requests (title patterns, labels, CI signals, file changes, authorship, etc.)

  • Express dependencies between pull requests (block merge until others are merged)

  • Schedule when merges may occur (or enforce freezes)

  • Provide consistent, explainable feedback via a single required check

Merge Protections comment

Why Use Merge Protections Instead of Only GitHub Rulesets?

Section titled Why Use Merge Protections Instead of Only GitHub Rulesets?
CapabilityGitHub NativeMergify Merge Protections
Conditional logic (complex AND/OR on PR metadata)NoExtensive
Depends‑On relationships❌✅
Time / schedule based merge windows❌✅
Repository freeze (manual or scheduled)❌✅
Single composite check gatePartial✅

How They Work

Section titled How They Work
  1. You enable Merge Protections in the dashboard.
  2. A single check Mergify Merge Protections appears on every PR.
  3. Your protection rules determine whether that check passes.
  4. You mark the check as Required in GitHub Branch Protection / Rulesets.
  5. PRs cannot merge unless all active protection rules succeed.

Next Steps

Section titled Next Steps

The feature is composed of several building blocks documented in dedicated pages: