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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-12T11:59:37+00:00

How can I query git to find out which branches contain a given commit?

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How can I query git to find out which branches contain a given commit? gitk will usually list the branches, unless there are too many, in which case it just says “many (38)” or something like that. I need to know the full list, or at least whether certain branches contain the commit.

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  1. Editorial Team

    From the git-branch manual page:

     git branch --contains <commit>

    Only list branches which contain the specified commit (HEAD if not specified). Implies --list.

     git branch -r --contains <commit>

    Lists remote tracking branches as well (as mentioned in user3941992‘s answer below) that is "local branches that have a direct relationship to a remote branch".

    As noted by Carl Walsh, this applies only to the default refspec

    fetch = +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*

    If you need to include other ref namespace (pull request, Gerrit, …), you need to add that new refspec, and fetch again:

    git config --add remote.origin.fetch "+refs/pull/*/head:refs/remotes/origin/pr/*"
git fetch
git branch -r --contains <commit>

    See also this git ready article.

    The --contains tag will figure out if a certain commit has been brought in yet into your branch. Perhaps you’ve got a commit SHA from a patch you thought you had applied, or you just want to check if commit for your favorite open source project that reduces memory usage by 75% is in yet.

    $ git log -1 tests
commit d590f2ac0635ec0053c4a7377bd929943d475297
Author: Nick Quaranto <nick@quaran.to>
Date:   Wed Apr 1 20:38:59 2009 -0400

    Green all around, finally.

$ git branch --contains d590f2
  tests
* master

    Note: if the commit is on a remote tracking branch, add the -a option.
    (as MichielB comments below)

    git branch -a --contains <commit>

    MatrixFrog comments that it only shows which branches contain that exact commit.
    If you want to know which branches contain an "equivalent" commit (i.e. which branches have cherry-picked that commit) that’s git cherry:

    Because git cherry compares the changeset rather than the commit id (sha1), you can use git cherry to find out if a commit you made locally has been applied <upstream> under a different commit id.
    For example, this will happen if you’re feeding patches <upstream> via email rather than pushing or pulling commits directly.

               __*__*__*__*__> <upstream>
          /
fork-point
          \__+__+__-__+__+__-__+__> <head>

    (Here, the commits marked ‘-‘ wouldn’t show up with git cherry, meaning they are already present in <upstream>.)

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