GitHub Copilot
GitHub's coding assistant and agents, now billed in AI Credits
Overview
GitHub Copilot is GitHub's AI coding assistant: inline completions, chat, agent mode, a cloud agent that opens pull requests, code review and Copilot CLI, with models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and others. Since 1 June 2026 chat, agents and reviews draw on monthly GitHub AI Credits; completions stay unlimited on paid plans.
Pricing
Pricing shown for reference only. These figures reflect RECATOOLS research as of 14 Oct 2026 and may be out of date or incomplete. This is not financial or purchasing advice — always confirm the current price on the provider’s official website before making any decision.
- 2,000 inline suggestions a month
- Limited chat and agent usage
- Copilot CLI and agent mode in the IDE
- Unlimited inline suggestions and next-edit suggestions
- Cloud agent and code review
- Additional credits purchasable
- Everything in Pro
- Premium models, including Opus
- Delegate tasks to third-party agents such as Claude and Codex (preview)
- Everything in Pro+
- Priority access to new models and features
- Built for sustained agent workflows
- Access, budget and policy controls
- IP indemnity and data privacy
- Cloud agent, code review and third-party agents
- Everything in Business
- Indexes the organisation's codebase for tailored answers
- Copilot integrated into github.com
API pricing (pay as you go)
| Model | Input | Cached input | Output |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-5 mini | $0.25 | $0.025 | $2 |
| GPT-5.4 ≤272K input tokens; long-context tier is $5 / $0.50 / $22.50. | $2.50 | $0.25 | $15 |
| GPT-5.5 ≤272K input tokens. | $5 | $0.50 | $30 |
| GPT-5.6 Sol ≤272K input tokens; cache write $5.00. | $4 | $0.40 | $20 |
| GPT-5.6 Luna ≤200K input tokens; cache write $0.25. | $0.20 | $0.02 | $1.20 |
| Claude Haiku 4.5 Cache write $1.25. | $1 | $0.10 | $5 |
| Claude Sonnet 4.6 Cache write $3.75. | $3 | $0.30 | $15 |
| Claude Opus 5 Cache write $6.25. | $5 | $0.50 | $25 |
| Gemini 3.8 Flash Promotional price through 31 Dec 2026. | $0.75 | $0.075 | $3.75 |
| Grok 4.6 ≤200K input tokens. | $2 | $0.50 | $6 |
| MAI-Code-1.1-Flash | $0.20 | $0.02 | $1.20 |
Use cases
What you can produce with GitHub Copilot
- Inline code completions and next-edit suggestions in VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains, Xcode, Eclipse, Neovim and Zed
- Multi-file changes made by agent mode in the editor
- Pull requests opened by the Copilot cloud agent from an assigned issue
- AI reviews of pull requests on github.com and of file diffs in the editor
- Terminal tasks, local commits and scripted runs through Copilot CLI
- Work delegated to third-party agents such as Claude and Codex (Pro+ and Max, preview)
- Organisation-wide credit pools, budgets and policies on Business and Enterprise
For teams already on GitHub, Copilot is still the lowest-friction way to add AI to the whole workflow: completions in almost every major editor, agents that work from issues and open pull requests, reviews on github.com, a terminal client and a very wide choice of models. GitHub calls it the world's most widely adopted AI developer tool, and Microsoft reported 50 million users in July 2026.
The catch is cost predictability. Since June 2026 everything except completions is metered in AI Credits, with no free fallback model, so heavy agent use can outrun a $10 or $19 seat. Set budgets, start on Pro or Business, and check the opt-out for model training on individual plans.
What we found
GitHub Copilot is GitHub's AI coding assistant, and in 2026 it is as much a set of agents as an autocomplete. It began as a technical preview on 29 June 2021, built with OpenAI's Codex model. Today it runs in VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, Xcode, Eclipse, Neovim and Zed, in the terminal as Copilot CLI, on github.com, and in a desktop app for steering agents from issue to merge. Its cloud agent takes an assigned issue and opens a pull request, and paid plans can hand work to third-party agents such as Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's Codex.
The biggest change this year was billing. On 1 June 2026 GitHub replaced premium requests with GitHub AI Credits, worth one cent each and charged on the tokens a model actually uses. Plan prices did not move: Pro is $10 a month and carries 1,500 credits, Pro+ $39 with 7,000, a new Max plan $100 with 20,000, and Business and Enterprise $19 and $39 per seat. Inline completions and next-edit suggestions stay unlimited on paid plans, but chat, agents, Copilot CLI and code review all draw on the allowance, and code review on private repositories also uses Actions minutes. The old fallback to a cheaper model is gone, so teams running long agent sessions on frontier models should budget on measured use, not the seat price.
The model picker is unusually broad, spanning Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, xAI, Kimi and Microsoft's own MAI-Code. Microsoft told investors in July 2026 that Copilot had 50 million users, free accounts included.
Two cautions. In March 2026 Copilot inserted product tips, one promoting Raycast, into about 11,000 pull requests it had edited; GitHub said there was no advertising deal and switched the tips off. And since 24 April, interactions on Free, Pro and Pro+ may be used to train GitHub's models unless the user opts out; Business and Enterprise data is excluded.
Compiled by RECATOOLS from public sources: vendor documentation and pricing, code repositories and published reporting.
Notable facts
- GitHub Copilot was trained on billions of lines of public code from GitHub repositories, making it one of the largest code-trained models ever deployed.
- In a controlled study, developers using Copilot completed coding tasks 55% faster than those without it.
- GitHub Copilot was the first mainstream AI pair programmer — it launched 18 months before ChatGPT made the category famous.
Frequently asked questions
About this listing
This entry was compiled from publicly available data including GitHub Copilot's official website, press releases, documentation, and reputable third-party publications. RECATOOLS is not affiliated with GitHub Copilot unless explicitly stated.
Third-party AI tools update their pricing, features, availability, and policies frequently. Information here may be outdated by the time you read this — we make reasonable efforts to keep listings current, but cannot guarantee absolute accuracy.
For the latest details, please refer to GitHub Copilot directly →
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