Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

github.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 583 posts

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#281

Post by bryanhogan »

hakunin wrote: post #267
fomoz wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bingo. I created a few autonomous skills that did exactly that for plan review, implementation, and branch review, review autonomously until green. I was using 100M+ tokens per day, $250 per day or so and only paying $160 per month to GitHub. I cancelled my GHCP sub and switched to Codex last week, so far so good but I miss Gemini 3.1 Pro for UI work.

Yeah it was crazy. Nowadays I use pi with OpenAI GPT 5.4/5.5, which to me seems both better and more generous than Claude. I supplement it with OpenCode Zen to get access to a bunch of models at token cost, and OpenCode Go ($10/mo) to get subscription-style access to Kimi, GLM and friends.

What is pi?

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#282

Post by 0xffff2 »

DominikPeters wrote: post #87
semiquaver wrote: post #42

Whose idea was this “premium request” model anyway? If you’re going to invent a new metric used to bill, why not align it with what, even at the time, was a clear underlying cost structure that GitHub actively chose to ignore for a more confusing system.

This approach started with the “Ask a question about your code” feature, which is more comparable to single chat message with relatively predictable token usage. Now it’s an agent who might work for 30 minutes, read the whole codebase, and write 1000 lines

30 minutes lol. I've gotten Opus to work for a full 8 hour day on one prompt.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#283

Post by q3k »

victorbjorklund wrote: post #196
grey-area wrote: post #37

How is this legal when people paid for a yearly plan in advance?

100% it says in their terms that they can change the service during the agreement.

That kind of clause would be void in many places around the world.

For example, the German Civil Code states:

    Section 308 - Prohibited clauses with the possibility of valuation
    In standard business terms, the following in particular are ineffective:
    [...]
    4.  (Reservation of the right to modify) the agreement of a right of the user [TL note: this means beneficiary of the terms, eg. party or other subject of the contract] to modify the performance promised or deviate from it, unless the agreement of the modification or deviation reasonably can be expected of the other party to the contract when the interests of the user are taken into account;

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#284

Post by hununu »

theanonymousone wrote: post #211
everfrustrated wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm thinking the same. Downgrade to Pro and use OpenRouter (same price) for overage. Seems a massive loss for Microsoft. Presumably there's a further rugpull to come.

I'm already on Pro. Why should I keep it?

private repos

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#285

Post by matheusmoreira »

drumttocs8 wrote: post #105
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.

It's amazing how much I was able to build for $40/mo- something that would have taken a team of 100 twice the time just a few years ago. Will always be grateful for the greed of trillion dollar corporations that subsidized me.

I made so much progress on my personal projects, I actually regret not subscribing sooner. I've been coding alone for over a decade. It's been great having a coding buddy for a change. I'm actually going to miss it.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#286

Post by c-hendricks »

satvikpendem wrote: post #278
c-hendricks wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm starting to see comments like this in a new light after using some primarily AI-coded apps the past few weeks. They are a lot like apps that were built by hundreds of developers/product people over years and years, in the worst ways. Inconsistent design patterns from page to page, half baked features, inconsistent documentation (but BOY is there ever a lot of it!), NIH ui component libraries that don't act like y…

True but they wouldn't have existed otherwise. If they're end user apps, users generally don't care about the code because they never see it.

Right, but the woes I mentioned don't actually mention code, it mentions the parts end users do interact with.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#287

Post by pythonaut_16 »

cedws wrote: post #91
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.

Seems like a strong signal the money burning party is coming to a close. Nearly all AI companies have tightened their belts in the past month. Anthropic removed Claude Code from the Pro plan, Z.AI increased their prices, GitHub removed some Claude models from Copilot, now this. Also, Opus 4.7 seems like a model more intended to save Anthropic money than push the bar.

> Seems like a strong signal the money burning party is coming to a close.

One provider who was undercutting the market with non-standard billing model moving to a more standard billing and prices doesn't seem like that strong of a signal, other than that Copilot was underpriced.

I don't disagree with your other points though.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#288

Post by bryanhogan »

veb wrote: post #265
0xffff2 wrote: post #248

So given that I primarily interact with LLM's through VSCode, and I prefer the Copilot interface to the Claude Code plugin, does anyone have any suggestions on other plugins I should try? In my experience, Copilot is much more "plugged in" than any of the other plugins, in the sense that it can see things like linter outputs in VSCode. Basically, copilot "sees what I see" in a way that no other plugin or command line…

Try Cline, a vscode plugin that's been around since the start and has really active development. You can also use most providers as well.

Saw this new Cline fork mentioned in another post: https://github.com/dirac-run/dirac

Also heard of more and more people moving to Kilo Code or OpenChamber instead.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#289

Post by madamelic »

cubefox wrote: post #268
ctoth wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yups... Mythos is the smallest possible leap. Not a standard model generation advance, not even a version point advance. Just the smallest possible quanta of a change. We are absolutely hitting a plateau any day now. Any day. Any time. Any second now. Yup. Right now! Surely!

Yeah. AI progress is insanely fast if you compare it to anything else. Where else is a one year old technology already hopelessly outdated? 10 years ago is basically stone age.

I am continually tripped out by the fact when I was 16, I didn't have a 'smartphone' beyond a Windows Mobile 6 phone that had no internet on it.

Now, I have this high-resolution shiny object that can near instantaneously get any information I want along with _streaming HD video to it_ *anywhere*.

15 years even feels like a stone age. I can't fathom what it has to feel like people in their 60s and 70s.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#290

Post by rurp »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #210
everfrustrated wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm thinking the same. Downgrade to Pro and use OpenRouter (same price) for overage. Seems a massive loss for Microsoft. Presumably there's a further rugpull to come.

> Presumably there's a further rugpull to come. How would that be? They are already charging as much as the underlying providers. They can hardly expect to have any customers if they are charging more.

Enterprise sales will be the answer. Microsoft will have some story that convinces an exec eight levels up the org chart from the normal users that this is an essential product they need to overpay for. Given their existing relationshipsand immense sales team they'll probably have success.
Post reply on HN