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GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

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341–350 of 583 posts

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#341

I started to use github copilot with vscode, but have never been too happy about the system. Over the months I gravitated to much more agentic workstyle, hardly ever editing much code by hand. The vscode IDE was getting more in the way. I had already started to look at OpenCode, and when I found it has a web interface, I was happy to switch over. I use a simple editor (KDE's Kate), or just less to skim through the co…

Check out Zed sometime, its pretty decent too.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#342

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 have to wonder if it's because of how many Enterprise customers they have who have standardized on Github Copilot and gotten it through the gauntlet of legal approvals etc.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#344

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 really hope that they think so and that they're wrong and they get burned hard. Them and all the AI labs that lied, stole, inflated, hoarded and tried to justify all this as an existential moment where AGI would radically change society. I hope their calculus to reel in paying users is all wrong and now they all crash and burn instead of recouping VC money.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#345
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

Yeah, I've been using it heavily at work since the beginning of January (and have a personal Anthropic sub to compare to). Copilot CLI is pretty good, honestly. Most new features in Claude Code get cloned by Copilot CLI within a couple weeks. Claude models seem mildly more clumsy in that harness than the one they're trained on - subjective guess around 20% more turns for an equivalent task - but it's not a noticeable difference in the final output.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#346

I really don't understand why OpenAI, Anthropic and Microsoft are in competition to see which one of the three will elevate deepseek the most.

DeepSeek will do the same thing. Z/Mimo already raised their prices multiple times since the promotional prices at the start of the year.

DeepSeek (and other open weight models) can be served by anyone with the means to do it. All of the big open weight models are available on OpenRouter via commodity providers.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They now also own xAI

Which in turn owns Twitter. SpaceX is now a social media company in addition to a rocket company. One theory I think Matt Levine posited, is that SpaceX will go public with dual-class stock that gives Elon control even with a minority ownership stake, and will subsequently buy Tesla, which doesn't have dual class stock, making SpaceX the singular "Elon Musk company", with him having operational control despite being…

That theory aligns with Elon's long-held dream of X as the "Everything Company".

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not quite 60, but it's always interesting to me that I feel quite the opposite of this. When I was 16, I didn't have a computer, didn't have a phone, had never used the Internet, but when I think of how life has changed, it's frankly not much. I woke up this morning, scooped my cats' litter boxes, took out some trash, made myself breakfast, ate that, read some news while eating, then lifted weights in my garage,…

If your parents are closing in on 70, I would have expected you to be closer to not quite 50 than not quite 60.

I am just over 50 myself and I agree with your points. Technology has changed but life is largely very similar to wear it was in the 90s. At least day to day. Attitudes are way worse now.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#349

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.

I'm not usually a Conspiracy Guy, and the answer is probably `incompetence * tech_debt`. But I think that having sufficient layers of abstraction to any billing model is a useful way to hide the real cost of things. It's why it's done everywhere .

In business, if a strategy is making more money, the most direct and usually correct answer is malice, not incompetence.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#350
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.

We can't even get slop delivery worked out. So use SlopAggregator instead.
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