Code hosting platform GitHub recently announced the launch of a free version of GitHub Copilot, which is aimed at users and developers who occasionally use this feature, and GitHub Copilot will now be available with the Microsoft Visual Studio Code code editor. Previously, if users wanted to use GitHubCopilot, they needed to subscribe. The monthly subscription fee started at $10, and verified students, teachers, and open source project maintainers could apply for free use.
The newly launched free version supports the OpenAIGPT-4o model and the AnthropicClaude3.5Sonnet model, but after all, this is a free version only for users who occasionally use this feature, so it can be used up to 2000 times per month, and each Copilot code suggestion will be counted in the number of uses.
However, developers can still use GitHub Copilot extensions and other skills. The number of chat messages in CopilotChat is limited to 50. If developers feel that it is not enough, they need to consider opening a paid version.
After activating the paid version, developers can choose more models, such as the GoogleGemini1.5Pro model and OpenAIGPT-o1-preview and OpenAIGPT-o1-mini versions. The capabilities of these models are more outstanding.
GitHub CEO Matthias Balk said:
Our mission is to enable one billion users around the world to call themselves developers, and obviously when you look around the world, whether it's Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, India or Indonesia, $10 is a lot higher relative to their average income. Therefore we hope to make more people who are interested in becoming developers or using Copilot more efficient and happier developers in these countries.
With the new free version, we return to the freemium model and lay the foundation for something greater: artificial intelligence is our best way to reach 1 billion developers, and there should be no limit to the threshold for experiencing the joy of software development.