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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

#561

Post by MattDaEskimo »

Epa095 wrote: post #305
rurp wrote: 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.

Exactly this. I can't count the number of enterprises with their whole stack inside of Microsoft's ecosystem.

Many of these enterprises are grid-locked with the IT department and AI usage.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#562

Post by Dylan16807 »

LtWorf wrote: post #458
Dylan16807 wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a silly reason. For non-agent use cases what kind of utilization are you going to average on your own GPU, 5-10%? And that's without batching. Even with overhead and scaling for peak use and a large profit margin, any company with an ounce of competition will be vastly cheaper than self-hosting. And for models you can run yourself, there will be plenty of competition.

I think you are calculating with current prices. Try to extrapolate the price in one year, seeing the current trends instead.

The models I could reasonably run at home aren't experiencing big price hikes, as far as I'm aware.

Price is a reason to escape many proprietary models, but not so much a reason to self host. Buying an expensive GPU mostly for AI purposes is not likely to save money unless you load it all day long.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#563

Post by 4gotunameagain »

self_awareness wrote: post #548
4gotunameagain wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we are not animals. But life has become so increasingly complex that is infeasible for the average person to be that invested in everything in order to have an educated opinion. I do NOT want to have to research the business model of companies before I buy their products or services. I would like to outsource that to the government, and spend my time actually enjoying life. Am I supposed to be invested in every c…

If you think you should not do these things, then you're a part of the problem. If a company will advertise that they can take your oil and "dispose it legally", and then on their website they will openly write that they've found a loophole allowing them to store oil on the bottom of the ocean, then you say it's morally OK to use their services because it's legal ? If todays legislations are cargo and are being bough…

> then you're a part of the problem.

Sure, enshitification is my fault because I do not read the fine print, or research business models before I buy stuff.

I am not saying that the consumer has no ethical responsibilities, I am saying that is infeasible for the average consumer to do so.

> If you're a baker then you need to figure out how LLMs work

I completely disagree. I should not have to research about which types of grain are destructive to the farming industry before buying bread.

> If you want to have a brain, but decide not to use it, then I think you're just being lazy and entitled.

I have the right to choose where I spend my brain power on, and there are much, much more interesting and gratifying things to me than trying to analyse the behaviours of megacorps in order to have a fully educated decision in everything, in the this hyper complex and hyperconnected world we live in.

We disagree completely, no reason to keep repeating the same arguments. Have a nice day and enjoy reading the fine print in everything you buy, if it makes you feel better.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#564

Post by self_awareness »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #563
self_awareness wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think you should not do these things, then you're a part of the problem. If a company will advertise that they can take your oil and "dispose it legally", and then on their website they will openly write that they've found a loophole allowing them to store oil on the bottom of the ocean, then you say it's morally OK to use their services because it's legal ? If todays legislations are cargo and are being bough…

> then you're a part of the problem. Sure, enshitification is my fault because I do not read the fine print, or research business models before I buy stuff. I am not saying that the consumer has no ethical responsibilities, I am saying that is infeasible for the average consumer to do so. > If you're a baker then you need to figure out how LLMs work I completely disagree. I should not have to research about which typ…

> Sure, enshitification is my fault because I do not read the fine print, or research business models before I buy stuff.

Kind of yes. You use it, you buy it. You create demand. And if there's demand, there's supply, economics 1-2-3. You vote "YES" with your wallet.

I read the fine print, and this allows me to NOT use Opus x30 only because it's available. I choose to not use AirBnb. I send a signal that this supply is not in demand.

And I guess because people like me read fine prints, you can feel better as well, because if something big will come up, you will hear internet rants about it, because we analyze and resist.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#565

Post by sailfast »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #414
sailfast wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And handling API tokens, and billing, and reliability, and middleware. I am not affiliated with them but it’s not “just” routing. Apple still charges 30%. 5.5 seems pretty reasonable. /shrug I dunno.

> handling API tokens Don't you still need to handle tokens with them? Also that's trivial. > billing Yes but you'd be paying for billing anyway. > reliability They increase reliability? > middleware Which you wouldn't need if you paid directly. I'm not saying they shouldn't get 5.5%, but that list is mostly non-convincing. > Apple still charges 30%. 3 of the 30 is for billing, with the rest mostly being gatekeeping…

My point was that it centralizes this to one place instead of 10 for engineers, not that you wouldn’t have to deal with these things at all.

A single point of access with a single key for all of these things is a worthwhile convenience.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#566

Post by dirtikiti »

sefrost wrote: 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

The sidebar method is better than agents for many reasons.

The main one is I'd rather review the limited changes of a one shot prompt than ton of changes made by an agent.

Another being the massive use of tokens agents force you into. As the context window fills up, the quality goes down, and the token usage spikes as the model traps itself into low confidence reasoning loops.

Agents ain't it.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#567

Post by darqis »

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.

IT'S NOT SUBSIDIZED

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#568

Post by darqis »

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.

Anthropic has done no such thing. WTF is wrong with you people? HN used to be made up of industry people, but random uninformed comments

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#569

Post by port11 »

johndough wrote: post #375
vanviegen wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On GitHub copilot you pay per prompt. More powerful models can do a lot more work (consuming a lot more tokens) per prompt. Also, they tend to use more thinking tokens.

> More powerful models can do a lot more work (consuming a lot more tokens) per prompt. That is not my experience. Each model since at least GPT-4 can fill up an entire context window. In fact, more powerful models can solve tasks faster, so their ratio of multiplier to API price should decrease, not increase. For example, Claude Sonnet 4.6 has a multiplier of 9 and an API price of $15, which is 0.6 multiplier per do…

> Is there any data on this somewhere?

Anecdata: for me, this is exactly the case with Opus. It _really_ thinks, looks into more sources, more of the codebase, etc. Sonnet is 80% thorough, but Opus can go the extra mile and burns a ton of tokens doing so.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#570

Post by port11 »

mullingitover wrote: post #404
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.

The point of this loss leading is to properly hoover up the money in the pockets of enterprise customers, get them locked into the idea that they need the latest and greatest cloud-based model, while simultaneously starving everyone of the memory they'd need in order to run competent models locally. In not-too-distant future we're going to be running better models on our phones than we can buy access to today in the…

I think your first paragraph is spot on, while the second is fairly incorrect. Hardware isn’t getting cheaper at a reasonable pace, and datacenters will keep depleting the market. State-of-the-art models are very, very far from being run on your own hardware.
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