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GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

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311–320 of 583 posts

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#311
post #25

I was curious why a company would still use the VS Code + Copilot sidebar method for coding, rather than something like Claude Code. Turns out there’s a GitHub Copilot CLI! I thought I was pretty familiar with available options, but no one in my circles ever mentions this product. It doesn’t seem to have much mindshare. Has anyone used it? What’s your experience? https://github.com/features/copilot/cli

it's my favourite harness so far

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#312
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…

Did anyone really expect AI to be cheap? If/when it gets to the point where it can replace a skilled worker, the service can be sold for close to the same price as that skilled labour. But the AI can run 24/7, reliably, and scale up/down at a moments notice. There's not going to be much competition to drive prices down, the barriers to entry are already huge. There'll likely to be one clear winner, becoming a near-mo…

> Did anyone really expect AI to be cheap?

Yes, a lot of people (not me). Why? Well because that was the whole value proposition of these companies, relentlessly pushed by their PR and most of the media- rememmber it was something something Pocket PhDs, massive unemployment etc?

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#313
post #305
post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That story is data governance. Corporate already have a data-agreement with MS, storing all their data there. Github copilot is covered by that, while a individual agreement with e.g. anthropic needs lawers involved.

Can confirm, this is the situation.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#314
post #305
post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That story is data governance. Corporate already have a data-agreement with MS, storing all their data there. Github copilot is covered by that, while a individual agreement with e.g. anthropic needs lawers involved.

It’s precisely this, and, to be fair, it’s a rational approach given a Data Security Exhibit starts at 6 weeks and can hit 6 months to complete. That being said, I work with regulated data, so YMMV.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#315

I wonder if GitHub (Microsoft) is implicitly betting that enterprise demand is sticky enough to absorb these rates, especially given that Opus 4.6 “fast” was being listed at a 27x multiplier. Maybe they saw enough usage at that price point to conclude the demand is real. Or maybe the strategy is to keep the enterprise customers who can justify it while shedding heavier individual and power-user usage. The interesting…

I also suspect that there are many "slow-moving", Microsoft heavy enterprises but with in-house devs that can't get anything but Copilot approved, and Microsoft trusts this will remain so.

It's not turning consumption based because there are a ton of these licenses just sitting idle.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Streaming, caching, and tool calling can get pretty expensive with scale, even when you don't touch inference. Maybe they're doing something clever and are quite profitable.. or maybe they've already taken $40mm from VCs and are currently trying to raise $120mm at a 1.3B evaluation. They also show headline prices for the cheapest provider of whatever model, but then need to hit different backends some of which may be…

> They also show headline prices for the cheapest provider of whatever model, but then need to hit different backends some of which may be more expensive. For now they absorb those costs, [..] They do?? I was under the impression I was just playing the price for whatever provider they deemed 'best' for each completion.

That is what I had heard.

Checking now: The way they describe it in their FAQ is that if the price changes, then they will bill you the new price. But I read that as regarding if the primary model provider changes their headline token cost; not in the case of pricing differences for models that have many different backends that host them.

Regardless, I would be more concerned about the streaming costs if the service continues to blow up and they scale aggressively through VC investments. If their 5.5% skim accounted for what they needed, you'd think they could effectively grow organically..

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#317
post #25

I was curious why a company would still use the VS Code + Copilot sidebar method for coding, rather than something like Claude Code. Turns out there’s a GitHub Copilot CLI! I thought I was pretty familiar with available options, but no one in my circles ever mentions this product. It doesn’t seem to have much mindshare. Has anyone used it? What’s your experience? https://github.com/features/copilot/cli

It's in their ToS to allow using Copilot subscription with OpenCode - https://github.blog/changelog/2026-01-16-github-copilot-now-...

Absolutely the cheapest way to get a lot of tokens through a solid harness for $10/month. Until now

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#320

I wonder if GitHub (Microsoft) is implicitly betting that enterprise demand is sticky enough to absorb these rates, especially given that Opus 4.6 “fast” was being listed at a 27x multiplier. Maybe they saw enough usage at that price point to conclude the demand is real. Or maybe the strategy is to keep the enterprise customers who can justify it while shedding heavier individual and power-user usage. The interesting…

I also suspect that there are many "slow-moving", Microsoft heavy enterprises but with in-house devs that can't get anything but Copilot approved, and Microsoft trusts this will remain so. It's not turning consumption based because there are a ton of these licenses just sitting idle.

As a single data point, this is absolutely true. At my current "Big Corp", Copilot was immediately approved while Claude is entering month 2 or 3 of trying to get approval.

Additionally, we got copilot for every user, including those that never write code or use AI tools.

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