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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

#81

Post by CraigJPerry »

The cheapest copilot plan felt totally unsustainable to me. For around £8 month i was getting 100 opus 4.6 prompts (albeit with a reduced context window size around 128k iirc vs 200k to 1m for first party hosted opus). Gpt5.4 was hosted with 400k context iirc.

On top of that, you’ve got 2000minutes of container runtime, so running cloud agents was included. As was anthropic agent sdk mode via copilot which is very comparable with claude code - not identical, the anthropic “modular prompt” is much leaner in the sdk version.

I cant say im mad, i got above what i paid in value. That said, going forward ill probably go back to openrouter payg rather than a subscription.

I got a free 3months of the gemini £19 plan and ive been playing quite a bit, 3.1 pro is a good model, i just find it slow. Flash i think i under appreciated until now.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#82

Post by dist-epoch »

bachmeier wrote: post #48

I'm happy I invested in local solutions and cutting context to the bone for API providers. Claims about AI being able to fully replace programmers never took into account the long-run equilibrium price of inference.

Already there are companies paying more for coding tokens than for programmer salaries.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#83

Post by KronisLV »

netule wrote: post #21

I pay for Copilot annually, and mostly for its code auto completion features. I use CC if I want to do anything agentic. Not sure if I want to pay more for occasionally-good-intellisense at this point.

Same! I wonder what other alternatives there might be for autocomplete.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#84

Post by gpm »

dude250711 wrote: post #46

Which one is it: 1. Current models in fact do not solve coding. 2. You can simply wait for a ~year for open-source to catch up and run it locally.

Re 1: Current models don't solve coding. They are useful tool for it though.

Re 2: Open weight models seem to be less than a year behind proprietary ones, so sure, if you're willing to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on a super computer that you probably don't fully utilize instead of renting time on someone else's super computer for a lot less.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#85

Post by jauntywundrkind »

rvnx wrote: post #33
thrdbndndn wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep seeing people mention OpenRouter. Does it effectively bypass regional restrictions for you, so you can use something like the Claude API from unsupported regions such as Hong Kong, or does it still enforce the official providers' geo-restrictions?

OpenRouter is great for budget control, but as they are indirect APIs, your experience with cached tokens may vary, eventually costing much more than in direct depending on the providers. You can pay with crypto though, which seems to be convenient for people under sanctions or with limited access, or if you are in low-tax jurisdiction (e.g. HK)

Caching is advertised per model+provider.

That said I think few people using openrouter are actually being selective about providers.

It took half a day to get my opencode setup, was not friendly. A lot of manually cross referencing model and providers. I was actually mainly optimizing for relatively fast providers. It all is super fragile and I'm sure half out of date; I have no idea if these picks are still fast, no promises they are still the same price (pretty terrifying honestly).

I'm mostly on coding plans so it doesn't super affect me. But man is it a bother to maintain.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#86

Post by Incipient »

simonw wrote: post #40

Windsurf made a similar change in March: https://docs.windsurf.com/windsurf/accounts/quota > In March 2026, Windsurf replaced the credit-based system with a quota-based usage system. Instead of buying and spending credits, your plan now includes a daily and weekly usage allowance that refreshes automatically. With hindsight, per-request pricing makes no sense at all if an agent can burn a widely varying amount of tok…

I wouldn't call it hindsight - I don't think anyone, at any stage, thought running a 10 minute+ sonnet session for 1 premium credit was ever profitable. We all knew it was a loss leader to get people using it.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#87

Post by DominikPeters »

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

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#88

Post by to11mtm »

deweller wrote: post #75

Has anyone found the answer to this yet? > What is the benefit of using the Copilot Pro+ at 39$/month instead of using the Copilot Pro at 10$/month and paying for extra usage?

If I had to guess...

On my personal account, Copilot Pro+ still only gave me back Opus 4.7, whereas my work's Pro account still lets me use Opus 4.6.

So, my gut says, it's entirely possible that Pro+ will continue to have more segregation on model availability...

FTA

> Last week, we also rolled out temporary changes to Copilot Individual plans, including Free, Pro, Pro+, and Student, and paused self-serve Copilot Business plan purchases. These were reliability and performance measures as we prepare for the broader transition to usage-based billing. We will loosen usage limits once usage-based billing is in effect.

There's enough weasel wording here that I would expect only certain models get re-enabled on Pro.

e.x. lots of people seem to get good enough results from Opus 4.6, personally I prefer it over 4.7 in GH Copilot... locking that down to Pro+ would be, given this salvo of enshittification, a 'logical' move on their part.

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#89

Post by Incipient »

_pdp_ wrote: post #3

There is noticeable trend across all agentic coding platforms that this situation is no longer sustainable. With this kind of pricing (sonnet 4.6 has 9x multiplier, previously 1x) it begs the question why use Copilot to begin with. You could easily just buy the tokens directly and have a lot more choice as well.

The problem is I can't afford the tokens! Even on my $10/mo plan, running either 100 opus, or 300 sonnet agent runs would cost hundreds of dollars - well above my budget!

Re: GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

#90

Post by Someone1234 »

to11mtm wrote: post #77
Someone1234 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Or if you're a business with multiple seats, these plans may be more inefficient than raw API usage billing. Since if anyone at your organization fails to utilize their full $19/39 allotment each month, that's wasting money, whereas with API credits it is 100% utilized. I don't think they've thought through the implications of this. Everyone should cancel and go usage-based billing with caps.

They do address this in the doc, Orgs can now (although it was vague as to whether it was an option or just the new standard, probably option due to business contracts) 'pool' the Usage billing across all users. I'm guessing they did that (and the 'temporary bonus credits') to make the pill easier to swallow for that side of customers.

You're right, I missed that.

It still does make one wonder, why have seats at all though? If everyone is just in one big API credit pool - what do the seats/users accomplish?

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