GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing • Hacker News Board

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#161

Post by dang » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 5:58 PM UTC

999900000999 wrote: post #17

Well. Just got an email from GitHub saying they'll be raising prices for Co Pilot. "To keep up with the way you use Copilot, we're transitioning to usage-based billing, and we want to give you enough time to prepare." Man, it was fun. Having my tokens subsidized by Microsoft. If the prices go up to much I guess I'll try Deepseek again.

(This was originally posted to Microsoft and OpenAI end their exclusive and revenue-sharing deal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47921248, but in a perhaps-futile effort to keep the discussions partitioned, Maxwell's demon will move it to the Copilot pricing thread.)

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#162

Post by theanonymousone » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 5:59 PM UTC

Something is hilariously off here: Why should I pay $10 and be forced to use it by the end of the month, while I can pay $10 and have it last as long as I want?

Their "API pricing" is exactly the same as that of providers: https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/reference/copilot-billing...

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#163

Post by AntiUSAbah » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 5:59 PM UTC

cedws wrote: post #101

specproc wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, totally. The recent pricing changes have just made my Copilot subscription go from great deal to awful value over night. I've been wanting to get off MS more generally and this is good motivation. Will be playing round with OR this week.

Just be aware OpenRouter charges a 5.5% fee, I didn’t know until recently. I like the product, and I think the fee is fair, but if you want the absolute best pricing then go direct.

Wow thats a lot for routing traffic.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#164

Post by fsniper » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 5:59 PM UTC

skeeter2020 wrote: post #106

my002 wrote: post #4

The era of subsidised inference is truly ending. The new model multipliers ( https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/reference/copilot-billing... ) seem like a huge leap, though. From 1x to 6x for new-ish GPT and Sonnet models. 27x for Opus... Seems like folks would be better off with OpenRouter instead.

"This change aligns Copilot pricing with actual usage and is an important step toward a sustainable, reliable Copilot business and experience for all users." I see statements like this as strong indicators that the sales people are wrapping up their work and the accountants are taking over. The land rush is switching to an operational efficiency play.

And enshitification starts.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#165

Post by AntiUSAbah » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 6:03 PM UTC

rvnx wrote: post #60

my002 wrote: post #4

The era of subsidised inference is truly ending. The new model multipliers ( https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/reference/copilot-billing... ) seem like a huge leap, though. From 1x to 6x for new-ish GPT and Sonnet models. 27x for Opus... Seems like folks would be better off with OpenRouter instead.

One theory of the play of SpaceX might do if everyone migrates to query-based billing: Provide cheap and unlimited access to Grok for programmers (hence the Cursor partnership/purchase for distribution). -> This would drag massive revenue right before the IPO announcement, like if the company is super growing -> At a loss, but don't worry, we need these funds to build the biggest datacenter of the universe. This anno…

They probably want the training data. Otherwise these 60B don't make sense at all.

But they can't buy curser before their IPO so thats that?

Perhaps they have to much compute because Musk overpromised and Twittergroq doesn't need that much compute after he nerved the porn stuff?

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#166

Post by geodel » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 6:04 PM UTC

dualvariable wrote: post #118

giwook wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of us have noticed that usage limits for Claude have been nerfed in recent weeks/months. If anything, these new multipliers are more transparent than anything OpenAI or Anthropic have communicated regarding actual costs and give us a more realistic understanding of what it's costing these providers. The fact that we were able to get such a substantial amount of usage for $20/$100/$200 a month was never meant to…

However, inference costs for entirely good enough models are likely to keep declining in the future. We're probably hitting diminishing returns on model size and training. The new generations aren't quantum leaps anymore, and newer generations of open source models like DeepSeek are likely to start getting good enough. There's going to be a limit to how much they can raise prices, because someone can always build out…

> because someone can always build out a datacenter and fill it up with open source DeepSeek inference and undercut your prices by 10x while still making a very good ROI-

Not sure how it all works out. Currently trillion dollar companies can't make a native app for platforms. Everything is just JS/Electron because economics does not work for them.

And here companies can make GW data center running very expensive GPUs for 1/10th of current prices. Sound little fanciful to me.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#167

Post by midtake » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 6:04 PM UTC

Soon it will be cheaper to just do it yourself

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#168

Post by Squarex » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 6:05 PM UTC

hakunin wrote: post #157

Everybody who says it's a 5-9-27x seems to not be aware of the obvious loophole. More like 50x increase. You were able to use over $500 worth of Opus on a $10/mo Github plan easily, no hacks. You could just prompt "plan this out for me, don't stop until fully planned, don't ask any questions", and you would get ~$5 worth of planning in one 3x request. At 100 requests/mo, each easily reaching $5, that's easy $500 wort…

Even more so, questions and user answers from agents were not charged as separate requests.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#169

Post by 0xffff2 » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 6:05 PM UTC

malfist wrote: post #146

0xffff2 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Link to the announcement for anyone else like me who hasn't gotten the email yet: https://github.blog/news-insights/company-news/github-copilo... Not really sure why I would stick with Copilot after this, and increasing Sonnet from 1x to 9x for annual subscribers is highway fucking robbery. Very glad I didn't commit myself to an annual plan.

What does that mean? That copilot users can use 1/9th of their prior usage of Sonnet?

Contrary to the other reply, I'm going to say yes, that's exactly what it means. For Github Copilot users with annual plans that are grandfathered in to per-prompt rather than per-token pricing, Github is increasing the cost of Sonnet from 1 "premium request" per Sonnet prompt to 9, thus meaning that those users will be able to submit 1/9th the number of prompts per month before incurring additional usage charges. For all practical purposes, this is a straightforward 9x increase in price.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#170

Post by gpm » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 6:05 PM UTC

theanonymousone wrote: post #162

Something is hilariously off here: Why should I pay $10 and be forced to use it by the end of the month, while I can pay $10 and have it last as long as I want? Their "API pricing" is exactly the same as that of providers: https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/reference/copilot-billing...

I'm wondering if they're basically saying they're going to give $10/month free API credits to students and open source maintainers and so on... while otherwise getting out of the consumer portion of this space.