GitHub Copilot has seven plans as of October 2026: Copilot Free and Copilot Student at no cost, Copilot Pro at $10 USD per month, Pro+ at $39, Max at $100, and, for organizations, Business at $19 and Enterprise at $39 per granted seat per month. Every plan includes a monthly allowance of GitHub AI Credits, the unit Copilot usage is billed in, and paid plans can buy more when it runs out.
All prices below are from GitHub's plans for GitHub Copilot page and Copilot plans page, read on 24 October 2026. GitHub changes plans often, so check those pages before you buy.
How much does each GitHub Copilot plan cost?
| Plan | Price (as of October 2026) | AI credits per month | Models |
|---|---|---|---|
| Copilot Free | Free | An allowance (amount not stated) | Auto model selection only |
| Copilot Student | Free, for verified students | An allowance (amount not stated) | Auto model selection only |
| Copilot Pro | $10 USD per month | 1,500 (1,000 base + 500 flex) | A selection of models |
| Copilot Pro+ | $39 USD per month | 7,000 (3,900 base + 3,100 flex) | Premium models |
| Copilot Max | $100 USD per month | 20,000 (10,000 base + 10,000 flex) | Priority access to premium models |
| Copilot Business | $19 USD per granted seat per month | 1,900 per user, pooled | Premium models |
| Copilot Enterprise | $39 USD per granted seat per month | 3,900 per user, pooled | Priority access to premium models |
GitHub notes that all plans include Copilot CLI and the Copilot app, and that Copilot is not currently available for GitHub Enterprise Server. Copilot Enterprise requires GitHub Enterprise Cloud.
Some people get Pro for free: GitHub says "verified teachers, and maintainers of popular open source projects may be eligible for free access to Copilot Pro."
How do GitHub AI Credits work?
Since 1 June 2026, GitHub's changelog says all Copilot plans bill on AI credits consumed. GitHub's individual billing docs explain the math:
- Every interaction uses tokens: input, output and cached.
- Each token is priced by the model you use.
- The total is converted to AI credits, where 1 AI credit = $0.01 USD.
So the cost of a request depends on the model and how many tokens it uses. GitHub's example: a quick chat question with a lightweight model "might cost a fraction of an AI credit," while a long cloud agent session with a frontier model across many files costs more.
Paid individual plans split the allowance into two parts:
- Base credits match your subscription price and "never change." Pro's $10 gives 1,000 base credits.
- Flex allotment is extra monthly usage on top, which GitHub calls "a variable part of your included usage" designed to adapt as model prices change.
Base credits are used first, then flex, at the same rates across your IDE, GitHub.com and Copilot CLI. Included credits don't roll over: the allowance resets at 00:00:00 UTC on the first day of each calendar month.
GitHub publishes per-model token prices on its models and pricing page. Paid plans also get a 10% discount on model costs when you use auto model selection in Copilot Chat, Copilot CLI, the Copilot app or Copilot cloud agent.
One exception: GitHub says Copilot Pro and Pro+ subscribers on existing annual plans that still use the older request-based billing model have different model multipliers, documented separately as a legacy page.
What is billed in AI credits, and what isn't?
Features that call AI models use credits, including:
- Copilot Chat
- Copilot CLI
- Copilot cloud agent
- Copilot Spaces
- Spark
- Third-party coding agents
Agent mode and code review use credits too. GitHub warns that agentic features "can involve multiple model calls within a single task," so they use far more than a single chat question.
What's not billed in credits: code completions and next edit suggestions, which "remain unlimited for all paid plans." Copilot Free is limited to 2,000 completions per month, and Copilot Student includes unlimited completions.
Copilot code review has a second cost. Since 1 June 2026 it also consumes GitHub Actions minutes in private repositories, on top of AI credits. See the Copilot code review guide.
Which features does each individual plan include?
From GitHub's plan comparison tables:
| Feature | Free | Student | Pro | Pro+ | Max |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agent mode | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Copilot cloud agent | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Copilot code review | Only "Review selection" in VS Code | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Third-party agents (public preview) | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| MCP | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Pull request summaries | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Audit logs | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| GitHub Spark (public preview) | No | No | No | Yes | No |
The model lists differ too. Pro, Pro+ and Max share a long list of models, and some of the most capable ones, such as Claude Opus 5.5 and GPT-6 Sol, are listed only for Pro+ and Max. The plans page has the full, current list.
How do Copilot Business and Enterprise billing work?
Business and Enterprise are per-seat plans with a shared pool. GitHub's organization billing docs explain that each user's credits are pooled at the billing entity level: "an enterprise with 100 Copilot Business users gets a shared pool of 190,000 AI credits rather than 100 individual buckets." Power users can draw more while lighter users offset them.
Key rules:
- Adding licenses mid-cycle grows the pool immediately. Removing licenses only shrinks it at the next cycle.
- Usage beyond the pool is charged at $0.01 USD per AI credit.
- Additional usage is enabled by default. To block spending beyond the included credits, an administrator must turn off the AI credits paid usage policy.
- Admins can set user-level budgets, cost-center budgets, organization budgets and enterprise spending limits. GitHub says there is "no automatic fallback to lower-cost models when a budget is exhausted."
Business and Enterprise add features individual plans lack, including organization custom instructions, content exclusion, file exclusion and organization-wide policy management. GitHub Spark is listed for Enterprise only. For customers paying by credit card or PayPal, GitHub's changelog says new seat assignments must be paid for before users get access, and assigned seats incur an upfront charge at the start of the next billing cycle. For existing customers, this took effect on 1 October 2026.
What happens when you run out of credits?
On an individual plan, GitHub gives three options:
- Upgrade. You pay only the price difference between plans, and the bigger allowance is available immediately.
- Pay for additional usage. Set a budget in US dollars. A $10 budget covers 1,000 AI credits. GitHub notes additional usage "may be capped."
- Wait for the monthly reset.
If you get Copilot through Business or Enterprise and run out, GitHub shows a banner offering to request more budget from your administrator. One more note: GitHub says buying additional AI credits is not available if you subscribe, or have subscribed, through GitHub Mobile on iOS or Android.
Which Copilot plan should you choose?
- Copilot Free to try completions, chat and agent mode with auto model selection.
- Copilot Pro if you code daily and want model choice, cloud agent and full code review at the lowest paid price.
- Copilot Pro+ if you want the most capable models and run agent sessions often.
- Copilot Max for sustained, high-volume agent use; GitHub calls it the plan with "our highest individual monthly allowance of AI credits."
- Business or Enterprise when you need central billing, pooled credits and policy controls for a team.
To compare Copilot with other tools on cost, see Claude Code pricing and Cursor pricing.
Make each credit count
Since every agent run costs credits, reusing prompts that already work is cheaper than rewriting them. Kipt keeps your prompts and Agent Skills as Markdown in a private GitHub repo you own, searchable with Cmd+K.