Pricing

GitHub Copilot moved to usage-based billing on 1 June

Base prices did not move, but the meter did. The promotional credits that cushioned existing Business and Enterprise customers ran out at the end of August.

What happened: 1 June 2026 · Written: 31 August 2026
Announced 27 April 2026, effective 1 June.

What changed on 1 June

GitHub announced on 27 April 2026 that all Copilot plans would move to usage-based billing on 1 June 2026, retiring premium request units in favour of GitHub AI Credits. GitHub’s own documentation confirms the switch landed on the announced date rather than slipping, which is worth noting because billing migrations of this size often do. The mechanism is straightforward: credits are consumed by token usage, including input, output and cached tokens, at the published API rates for each model.

Base plan pricing did not move. Copilot Pro remains $10 a month, Pro+ $39, Business $19 per user and Enterprise $39 per user, all figures published by GitHub. Each plan includes monthly AI Credits equal to its own price: $10 on Pro, $39 on Pro+, $19 per seat on Business, $39 per seat on Enterprise. So the sticker price is unchanged, but what that sticker buys is now metered rather than counted in requests.

One thing did not become metered. Code completions and Next Edit suggestions remain included in every plan and do not consume AI Credits, according to GitHub. For a developer whose Copilot use is mostly inline autocomplete, the practical bill may not change at all. For teams leaning on agents, chat and larger models, the variable is no longer how many requests you sent but how many tokens those requests moved.

Who was moved, and who was not

The migration was not universal, and the distinction matters if you are budgeting. Only monthly subscriptions were switched automatically. Users on annual Pro or Pro+ plans stayed on premium request pricing until their plan expired. They were not spared entirely: GitHub said model multipliers would increase on 1 June for annual subscribers only. Annual buyers therefore got a different change rather than no change, and their real transition arrives on their own renewal date.

Existing Business and Enterprise customers received promotional included usage on top of the credits their seats already carry: $30 in monthly AI Credits for Business and $70 for Enterprise. GitHub limited that promotion to June, July and August 2026, and to customers who were already on the books rather than anyone signing up afterwards. Read plainly, it was a three-month cushion designed to absorb the shock of the new model, and it has now lapsed.

The consequence is an invoice that looks materially different from the June one for those teams, with no change in behaviour required to produce it. A Business seat that consumed $28 of credits comfortably through the summer now sits $9 above its $19 included allowance. September is the first unsubsidised month of usage-based billing for many organisations, and the first month in which the numbers describe actual consumption.

Two costs that sit outside the headline

Two details in the announcement drew less attention than the pricing table, and both affect what you actually pay. The first is the removal of fallback. Previously, exhausting your allowance dropped you to a cheaper model; GitHub confirmed that fallback experiences would no longer be available. Running out of credits now stops the work rather than quietly degrading it. That is better for cost control and worse for anyone mid-task without budget headroom.

The second is that Copilot code review consumes GitHub Actions minutes in addition to AI Credits. That is a second meter, on a separate budget, arriving on a separate line. Teams that run Copilot review on every pull request should model both. It is the kind of detail that never appears in a plan comparison table but reliably appears on an invoice, and it scales with pull request volume rather than with seat count.

Neither point is hidden; both are in the original announcement. But they change the shape of the risk. Under the old model, the worst case was degraded output. Under the new one, the worst case is a stoppage plus a second bill you were not watching. That is a reasonable trade if you have set spending controls deliberately, and an unpleasant surprise if you assumed the plan price was the ceiling.

What to do before the next invoice

Start by working out which bucket you are in. Monthly Pro, Pro+, Business and Enterprise subscribers are already metered. Annual Pro and Pro+ subscribers are not yet, and should mark their renewal date as the day their pricing model changes. Existing Business and Enterprise customers should compare a summer month against the credits their seats genuinely include, because the promotional $30 and $70 top-ups covered June, July and August only.

Then separate autocomplete from everything else. If your developers mainly use completions and Next Edit suggestions, exposure is small, because those do not draw on credits. If they lean on agent workflows and larger models, token volume is now the cost driver, and model choice becomes a budgeting decision rather than a matter of preference. Add Actions minutes into the same model if Copilot code review runs across your repositories.

Finally, decide what should happen when a developer runs out of credits. With fallback removed there is no soft landing, so work stops until more budget is allocated. That is a policy question rather than a technical one: who approves top-ups, how quickly, and which teams take priority. It is far better answered in a quiet week than during a release, when the answer defaults to whoever shouts loudest.

Questions readers ask

Where every figure came from

Each claim above was checked against a primary source, then checked again by a second reader who had not seen the first check. Open any of them and verify us.

1. GitHub announced on 27 April 2026 that all Copilot plans would move to usage-based billing on 1 June 2026, replacing premium request units (PRUs) with GitHub AI Credits. github.blog 2026-04-27
2. Credits are consumed by token usage (input, output and cached tokens) at the published API rates for each model. github.blog 2026-04-27
3. Base plan pricing was not changed by the transition. github.blog 2026-04-27
4. Copilot Pro and Pro+ include monthly AI Credits equal to their subscription price ($10 and $39 respectively). github.blog 2026-04-27
5. Copilot Business and Enterprise include monthly AI Credits equal to their per-seat price ($19 and $39 respectively). github.blog 2026-04-27
6. Code completions and Next Edit suggestions remain included in all plans and do not burn AI Credits. github.blog 2026-04-27
7. Existing Business and Enterprise customers received promotional included usage of $30 and $70 in monthly AI Credits, limited to June, July and August 2026. github.blog 2026-04-27
8. GitHub Docs confirms the change actually took effect on the announced date, rather than slipping. docs.github.com 2026-06-01
9. Annual Pro and Pro+ subscribers were NOT migrated on 1 June 2026; they stayed on premium-request pricing until their plan expired, with model multipliers increasing for them instead. github.blog 2026-04-27
10. Fallback to cheaper models on exhaustion was removed, and Copilot code review additionally consumes GitHub Actions minutes. github.blog 2026-04-27

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