Code hosting platform GitHub recently issued an announcement and notified all subscribers via email that starting from June 1, 2026, GitHub Copilot will transition to pay-by-volume billing. Each subsequent subscription package will receive credits equal to the subscription fee. Developers can also purchase additional credits to obtain higher usage and be billed according to different model rates.

To help developers prepare, GitHub will launch a billing preview feature in early May so that developers and IT administrators can understand the expected costs before the new billing system is officially launched on June 1. This way developers can plan usage and decide whether to open which subscription plan and whether to purchase additional credits.

The fundamental reason is that GitHub cannot afford the soaring costs:

In the official blog, GitHub stated that now Copilot has developed into an agent platform that can run long-term multi-step coding tasks, use the latest models, and traverse the entire code base. The use of agents has gradually become the default mode, which also brings higher computing and reasoning requirements.

Users may spend the same amount on quick chat questions and hours of self-programming. GitHub has already shouldered most of the rising inference costs, but the current paid request model is unsustainable. Billing based on usage can solve this problem. The new model can better link prices to actual usage, helping GitHub maintain long-term service reliability.

The pay-as-you-go billing and credit model is as follows:

Each subscription package will receive the same AI credits as the subscription fee. The actual usage will be calculated based on the consumption of tokens, including input, output, and cached tokens. These requests will be combined into consuming part of the AI ​​credits, and the credits consumed by different models are also different.

This means that developers who use advanced models and perform long-term continuous programming tasks will consume more tokens, which means they will eventually consume more credit points. If the credit points are insufficient, they will not be able to continue to use it and can only continue to use it by recharging to purchase more credits.

Model magnification, etc. have been announced in the GitHub support documentation. For example, the current magnification of Claude Opus 4.7 is 7.5x. These magnifications will be adjusted according to the API price, so GitHub will also adjust the magnification regularly.

Credits for different subscriptions are as follows:

  • Personal Copilot Pro: $10 per month, includes $10 per month of AI credits

  • Personal Copilot Pro+: $39 per month, includes $10 per month $39 in AI credits

  • Enterprise Copilot Business: $19 per user per month, includes $19 per month in AI credits, quotas can be shared within the organization

  • Enterprise Copilot Enterprise: $70 per user per month, includes $70 in AI per month Credits and quotas can be shared within the organization

About quota sharing: Only for enterprise subscriber users, user quotas will be placed in a large pool, and the remaining credits of each user's unused package can be shared within the entire enterprise to reduce restrictions and waste.

via GitHub

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