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GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

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Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#441

Post by still_grokking »

vanviegen wrote: post #299
flir wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do. "Commoditize your complement". Want to sell lots of silicon? Give away good local models to run on that silicon. Even if SOTA models in the cloud are a few percentage points better, most work can be routed to local models most of the time. That leaves the cloud providers fighting over the most computationally intensive tasks. In the long term, I think models are going to be local-first. (Unless providers can fi…

> In the long term, I think models are going to be local-first. Why? There's an inherent efficiency advantage to scale, while the only real advantage for local models (privacy/secrecy) hasn't proven convincing for broader IT either.

> the only real advantage for local models (privacy/secrecy) hasn't proven convincing for broader IT either

Because of nonexistent regulation. Just wait for it…

The legal situation in for example the EU is crystal clear, only that it will take some time to go though all court instances.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#443

Post by nqzero »

0xffff2 wrote: post #327
sz4kerto wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need sandboxing for any agent, so we run it within Docker - so we use CLI.

I use vscode with containers extensively. Not sure why containers imply CLI.

do you run vscode in the container ? if so, can you share your config ?

i've been trying to do this with systemd-nspawn

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#444

Post by deaux »

kanemcgrath wrote: post #269
deaux wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried the latest Gemma? You might prefer it to Qwen, depending on what you're doing.

I did, but in almost everything I tried even qwen3.5 was better, and 3.6 was a huge step up.

Good to know, did you also try non-coding or is that what you use it for? For tasks unrelated to coding we've generally preferred Gemma.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#445

Post by on_the_train »

mdesq wrote: post #342
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 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.

Bingo. Ghcp is the only allowed llm solution at our big well known semiconductor corp. It'll take years to get approval for anything else. We're stuck with it and will pay whatever price we have to.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#446

Post by bubbab »

johndough wrote: post #364
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…

That was not my experience. When I tried to use Opus for longer tasks with Copilot, it would fill up the context completely and then crash without any output, while still consuming premium requests. (At least from September 2025 to January this year. Haven't tried after that.)

Copilot has improved immensely in 2026. I'd say to give it a try again if you're up for it. It works about as well as Claude Code these days in my experience.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#448

Post by itemize123 »

minimaxir wrote: post #9
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.

What's annoying is that it's obvious . In the case of GPT 5.5, if Copilot is going to charge 7.5x what GPT 5.4 costs while OpenAI themselves via the API/Codex only charges 2x of what GPT 5.4 costs, that will immediately raise an eyebrow.

unless the 5.4 price is a huge loss leader for them

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#449

Post by p1necone »

minimaxir wrote: post #34
thinkingtoilet wrote: post #23

People need to wake up and stop being surprised by these billing increases. I see it on every update of every model. This was all subsidized by VC and company money. Now they need a return and the prices will keep going up. Be glad that you took advantage of that up until now, but can we stop the pearl clutching when we all know the amount of money being dumped into AI and the lackluster returns?

It's less surprise, but more confusing given the game theory as their competitors are not doing the same thing and the multiplier changes alone will likely churn current users.

Their competitors aren't doing the same thing because none of their competitors had the same broken 'pay per request' pricing model.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#450

Post by 2001zhaozhao »

throwaway85825 wrote: post #432

This marks the beginning of the end of the AI free money era. Next they will dramatically raise prices when they have to be profitable on tokens.

I am seriously considering binge buying local AI inference hardware. The way this is going, there will be another big GPU crunch soon because everyone will need local models and/or open model inference capacity to do their programming tasks when the subsidized subscriptions are no longer flowing.
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