GitHub Copilot to Switch to Pay-As-You-Go Billing from June 1

According to monitoring by Dongcha Beating, GitHub has announced that all Copilot plans will transition to a pay-as-you-go billing model starting June 1. The previous ‘premium request’ billing method will be replaced by GitHub AI Credits, with usage calculated based on actual token consumption (including input, output, and cached tokens), and the rates will align with the publicly available API prices for each model. This marks the culmination of GitHub’s tightening measures over the past ten days. On April 20, GitHub suspended new registrations for the personal Pro, Pro+, and Student plans, tightened usage limits, and removed Claude Opus from the Pro plan; on April 22, it also suspended self-registration for Copilot Business for Free and Team organizations. Product Vice President Joe Binder explained that the agentic workflow allows models to automatically initiate sub-agents and run long tasks in parallel, leading to a single session’s computational costs exceeding the package design, with the cost of several requests often surpassing the entire package pricing. In this announcement, GitHub clarified that once the pay-as-you-go billing takes effect, previous usage limits will be relaxed. Subscription monthly fees will remain unchanged: Pro at $10/month, Pro+ at $39/month, Business at $19/user/month, and Enterprise at $39/user/month. The monthly fee corresponds to the AI Credits included each month, with additional purchases available at public rates for any excess. Code completion and Next Edit Suggestions will not consume credits, remaining unchanged. The fallback mechanism that automatically switched to a lower-cost model after premium requests were exhausted will be eliminated, replaced by controls based on credits balance and administrator budgets. Enterprise customers will have a three-month grace period: from June to August, Business users will receive $30 in credits per month (compared to the official rate of $19), and Enterprise users will receive $70 in credits per month (compared to the official rate of $39). Additionally, pooled usage at the organizational level will be introduced, allowing unused credits to be shared within the organization, with administrators able to set budget limits at the enterprise, cost center, and user levels. A projected billing feature was launched in early May to help users understand expected expenses before the official switch. Annual subscription users will maintain the original billing method until their plan expires, after which they will switch to Copilot Free, but they can also opt for monthly payments in advance and receive credits equivalent to the remaining annual fee.