GitHub removes free models from Copilot plans

Starting June 1, 2026, GitHub is switching the billing model for its AI assistant Copilot to usage-based: The monthly costs for the existing plans will remain the same, but GitHub will charge AI Credits for the use of tokens. One credit corresponds to $0.01, and costs vary depending on the model. More powerful models require more credits per token.

Costs include: input, output, and cache tokens, as they appear in the respective model's API billing. One million output tokens will cost between $1.25 for GPT-5.4 nano and $30 for GPT-5.5. Claude Opus 4.7 costs $25, Gemini 3.1 Pro costs $12.

A fallback to a free, simple model as before (GPT-5 mini, GPT-4.1, and GPT-4o) will no longer be available. Users who have used up their budget will have to purchase an upgrade. For reviews, the usual per-minute rates for Actions will apply.

Free tier remains

However, code suggestions will remain free, and GitHub intends to keep the free tier, although the conditions are not yet clear. Currently, it includes 50 premium requests and 2000 code suggestions.

The provider expects that users of token-intensive agentic coding in the Pro plans will face higher costs. This is how GitHub justifies the change: “Agentic usage is becoming the default, and it brings significantly higher compute and inference demands.” The previous pricing model charged premium requests to expensive models regardless of the request's scope. However, the complexity of requests and context increases significantly with the use of agents.

Automatic conversion from June

GitHub will automatically convert customers of the current monthly plans. The company will not extend annual contracts and will charge customers a multiplier for more expensive models for the remaining term. Starting in May, GitHub will provide an overview on the billing page in customer accounts showing what the current usage would cost after the conversion.

As a bonus, Business and Enterprise customers will receive an add-on for the first three months: credits worth $30 for Business and $70 for Enterprise contracts (“promotional included usage”).

According to GitHub, the block introduced a week ago for individual new customers will be lifted with the new plans. Currently, all model providers are trying to optimize costs. Anthropic recently experimented with excluding Claude Code from individual user plans.

In the discussion on the FAQ page, users criticize in particular the discontinuation of free models when the budget is exceeded. Many see this as the main advantage of the previous Copilot pricing compared to the competition.

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