GitHub Copilot: New Billing Model Disrupts Developers

GitHub Copilot Adopts Usage-Based Billing

As of June 1, 2026, GitHub has introduced a consumption-based billing model for all its Copilot plans. Single premium requests (PRU) have been replaced by GitHub AI Credits, an internal currency measured in tokens. These tokens include input, output, and cached tokens, and are calculated according to the published API rates for each model. This change could lead to increased costs for developers.

GitHub explained that this transition is due to the evolving usage of Copilot. Initially, Copilot was a simple code editor assistant, but it has become a platform capable of executing long, multi-step coding sessions across an entire repository. Today, a simple question asked via chat and an autonomous coding session lasting several hours can cost the user the same amount. GitHub has absorbed much of the increased inference costs associated with this usage, but the current premium request model is no longer viable. Usage-based billing addresses this issue by better aligning prices with actual usage, which helps maintain the reliability of the service in the long term and reduces the need to limit access for heavy users.

Code completions and Next Edit suggestions remain included without consuming credits, regardless of the plan. The transition also ends the fallback mechanism: until now, a user who exhausted their premium requests would automatically switch to a less expensive model.

New Plans and AI Credits

Each Copilot plan now includes a monthly quota of AI credits, aligned with the subscription price. Subscription rates remain unchanged, but once the credit quota is exhausted, users can purchase additional credits, billed at the end of the month.

The rates for the different plans are as follows:

• Copilot Pro: $10/month, including $10 of monthly AI credits
• Copilot Pro+: $39/month, including $39 of monthly AI credits
• Copilot Business: $19/user/month, including $19 of monthly AI credits
• Copilot Enterprise: $39/user/month, including $39 of monthly AI credits

For the months of June, July, and August, Business customers receive a promotional credit of $30 per month, while Enterprise customers receive $70 per month.

Monthly Pro and Pro+ subscribers automatically transition to the new system. Annual subscribers retain their plan until expiration, with an increase in pricing multipliers per model starting June 1. Upon expiration, they switch to Copilot Free with the option to subscribe to a monthly plan, with a prorated refund for early conversion.

Launch of Copilot Max and Budget Management Tools

GitHub is also introducing Copilot Max, a new plan for heavy users, offering higher credit quotas and spending caps. This plan is available today as an upgrade for Student, Pro, and Pro+ subscribers.

For organizations, user budgets are now available, allowing administrators to set universal or group-specific spending limits, with email notifications as thresholds approach.

GitHub also offers credit pooling at the organizational level, allowing unused credits from one user to be redistributed. Finally, the Copilot code review feature now uses GitHub Actions minutes in addition to AI credits, with the option for administrators to configure a default runner for all repositories.