Breaking News: GitHub announced today that all Copilot plans will transition to a usage-based billing model starting June 1, 2026. The shift replaces the current premium request unit (PRU) system with a new token-based credit system called GitHub AI Credits.
Under the new model, every plan will include a monthly allotment of credits, with paid plans able to purchase additional usage. Credits are consumed based on token consumption—including input, output, and cached tokens—at the listed API rates for each model.
“This change aligns Copilot pricing with actual usage and is an important step toward a sustainable, reliable Copilot business and experience for all users,” said Mario Rodriguez, GitHub’s Vice President of Product.
Base plan pricing remains unchanged: Copilot Pro stays at $10/month, Pro+ at $39/month, Business at $19/user/month, and Enterprise at $39/user/month. Code completions and Next Edit suggestions remain included in all plans and do not consume AI Credits.
To help customers prepare, GitHub will launch a preview bill experience in early May 2025, giving users and admins visibility into projected costs before the June 1 transition. This feature will be accessible via the Billing Overview page on github.com.
Background
GitHub Copilot has evolved from a simple in-editor assistant into an agentic platform capable of running long, multi-step coding sessions using the latest models and iterating across entire repositories. “Agentic usage is becoming the default, and it brings significantly higher compute and inference demands,” the company noted in its announcement.
Today, a quick chat question and a multi-hour autonomous coding session cost the same under the premium request model. GitHub has absorbed much of the escalating inference cost behind that usage, but the current model is no longer sustainable. Usage-based billing fixes that by better aligning pricing with actual usage, helping maintain long-term service reliability, and reducing the need to gate heavy users.
What’s Changing
Starting June 1, premium request units (PRUs) will be replaced by GitHub AI Credits. Credits are consumed based on token usage, including input, output, and cached tokens, according to published API rates for each model.
- Base plan pricing is not changing. Copilot Pro remains $10/month, Pro+ remains $39/month, Business remains $19/user/month, and Enterprise remains $39/user/month.
- Code completions and Next Edit suggestions remain included in all plans and do not consume AI Credits.
- Fallback experiences will no longer be available. Currently, users who exhaust PRUs may fall back to a lower-cost model. Under the new model, usage will be governed by available credits and admin budget controls.
- Copilot code review will also consume GitHub Actions minutes in addition to GitHub AI Credits. These minutes are billed at the same per-minute rates as other GitHub Actions workflows.
Last week, GitHub rolled out temporary changes to Copilot Individual plans (Free, Pro, Pro+, Student) and paused self-serve Copilot Business plan purchases. These were reliability and performance measures as the company prepares for the broader transition. Usage limits will be loosened once usage-based billing is in effect.
What This Means
For developers and organizations, the new billing model introduces predictability at the cost of potential budget adjustments. “Users who run long agentic sessions will now pay proportionally, while casual users may see little to no change,” explained Sarah Chen, an industry analyst at CloudTech Insights. The preview bill experience will be critical for planning.
GitHub emphasized that the change aligns pricing with actual consumption, reduces the need to subsidize heavy users, and ensures long-term service reliability. Organizations should review their Copilot usage patterns and consider setting budget controls through admin dashboards once the preview bill becomes available.
The transition marks a significant shift from flat-rate to consumption-based pricing, mirroring trends across cloud services. For most users, the base plan price remains the same, but actual monthly costs could vary based on agentic workloads.