GitHub Copilot AI Credits Are Unfair, Expensive, and Killing Real Development Workflows

[KarimWajihKMW]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Product Feedback

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Copilot in GitHub

Body

I am very disappointed with the new GitHub Copilot AI Credits pricing model.

Since the June 1 update, Copilot has become unpredictable and much more expensive. Credits are consumed too quickly, especially when using agent mode, code review, debugging, or repository-related tasks.

The biggest problem is that users cannot clearly know how much a task will cost before running it. One task can burn a large amount of credits without enough warning or transparency.

This is unfair for developers, freelancers, and small businesses who trusted Copilot as an affordable coding assistant.
I used 100% of copilot pro+ in just 2 days of normal work which I used to do months and years ago.

GitHub should seriously reconsider this pricing model, increase the included credits, add clear cost warnings before each task, and give users better control over credit spending.

The current system makes Copilot feel risky to use instead of helpful.

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[daniellau001-arch]

Yep. Restricting more again.

[robynoh]

What? i just subscribed yesterday and today my credit is finished! So why did i now subscribe. This is crazy.

[RyanBayne]

This is an interesting conversation. So far the common expectation is that a subscription covers a certain time period because the payment happens on a monthly basis.

In a way it's like saying if I rent an EV for the day it should be charged all day long - no it won't be.

As someone who has been using agents on three screens at the same time I've always known there has to be a limit and all this thread identifies is that a subscription model creates the wrong perspective. The solution I predict for all services will be the budget limit approach - because we all use AI differently and the false impression of securing this power for a month is the real issue.

I'm expecting professional development with agentic AI involved for a full work shift to cost around $50 - depending on the model being used. That is what will separate the professional from the hobbyist who may be letting their imagination and ideas run wild.

I would pay $100 for a days constant use of AI because I'd setup the tools to do 2-3 weeks worth of work in that day. That cost will be covered by clients who pay for two things. Faster deliver and my ability to steer agents so that the quality is outstanding.

[denikatsman]

Let the dude above me pay $100 a day but let us pay $39 per month please

[sainathislavath]

I'm having a pro subscription and it got exhausted in a single day. Later I've purchased the extra credits worth 10 dollars and it also got exhausted same day. I feel not to use GitHub copilot instead I can go with claude

[cjl032224]

We no longer are able to choose a free agent after using our credits. It used to select one automatically if you chose.

This has gotten to be outrageous

[nuttyproducer]

They will never see me again until they change their plans again

[DucGiang-dev]

I completely agree with this and really hope GitHub listens to the feedback from the community.

[aiis2]

Sigh, you're all wrong. This is a business decision. Just look at the community feedback to see that—there won't be any more subsidies, and they won't come back.

[HeadNods]

Well then their users will not come back either.
I went from easily fitting my work within the monthly budget,
To using 51% in 3 days of barely using GithubCopilot.

That is like what? A more than 500% increase in "usage" cost!
In other words, from 1 day to the next their price just went up x5

If that isn't a bug, it is completely insane!

[aiis2]

Previously, every time you used it, they were losing money. My personal guess is that their business decision was to cut losses and make a profit, which would inevitably require them to be more expensive than the original computing power providers to be profitable. Next, based on feedback, they'll decide whether to continue subsidies or maintain the current system.

Unlike Codex, they won't reset the quota. Just look at those webinars; they spend almost a month discussing them. This traditional research model is really terrible. Switch to other providers and models as soon as possible.

Don't let this delay your work plans. If all else fails, go back to traditional programming methods.

[Perez4all]

If the purpose of GH is Cut losses and make a profit the formula proposed for end users unmanteinable. I've been working with different providers (including as dev, so I'm aware about costs) and they make profit but on a fair price. Everyone wons. Lets wait if GH could do something and avoids loosing clients (including me).

[keserwan]

I completely agree with @KarimWajihKMW.
This new pricing model is expensive.

I find myself constantly checking my billing settings page https://github.com/settings/billing/ai_usage just to monitor usage and figure out how the system calculates it.

Hopefully, GitHub improves this very soon.

We have provided more details and a FAQ about usage-based billing in this discussion, which may be updated if new information becomes available.

To keep conversations all in one place and to ensure you receive timely updates, we’ll be closing this post and recommend you comment on or subscribe to the discussion linked above.

[yusufmsalh]

sams for. me , some how 52% of my monthly tokens are used justed in one day (2 of july 2026) ,while it used to fit for the whole month, i am very disappointed and actively searching for alternatives.

[akki-akshat]

Same, even I have dropped the individual plan and even at my office i have told that we need to move, this is killing productivity, even $70 is worse than claude code $20 plan, and claude code was in it self less.

This is really frustrating as a user, subpar vibe coding experinace (when compared to codex or claude or even open code) and credits vanish like anything.

[bizzaretrading]

I moved to codex, cool pilot is useless with this pricing

[masslayer66-cloud]

I recently changed to codex and I was sceptical, but codex is awesome! Plus plan for me is lasting forever.. By the time my weekly quota gets to 30% its reset time.. I'm using mini model mostly but nonstop...

[LucienMP]

The primary issue for me using this via vscode is that its not even using (on auto mode) the better AI and even if it was im paying for its mistakes. At this price and pace i am burning through my tokens too fast to be of value or use. Mostly spinning fixing its mistakes. This is not a useful product, I am switching to other vendors.

1/1000th of my tokens for running a script
1/100th of my tokens for obtaining a 1-200 line script
1/10th of my tokens for fixing a single bug in a small set of C files

One day resulted in 30% token use, it results in anxiety in using AI. As others said, before i ask to perform a task i have no idea what the cost will be or if i can complete a task in budget.

Given the AI generates quite unreadable code in many cases, or code that needs AI to fix due to its sloppy design or volumous generation - its no longer valuable to me at these prices.

[rajasekhard2015]

Very worst pricing plans

[jitendrapalQA]

I think the community needs two things very clearly from GitHub Copilot's new AI Credits model:

1. Credit Preview Before Execution

Before any prompt is executed, users should be able to see an estimated credit/token cost. Similar to how cloud providers show estimated costs before running resources, Copilot should display a credit preview so developers can make informed decisions before consuming credits.

2. Fair Credit Refunds for Unsuccessful Agentic Tasks

If an agentic task does not achieve the requested outcome and the user ultimately reverts or discards all generated changes, there should be a mechanism to refund credits or provide credit compensation. Users should not be charged the full cost when the generated result is unusable and requires complete rollback.

The current model lacks transparency and puts too much risk on the user. Better cost visibility and a fair refund policy would significantly improve trust in Copilot and encourage adoption of advanced features.

Jitendra Pal | Principal QA

[sunitg]

Congratulations on launching one of the WORST plans ever. Thanks for helping us to make a decision on which platform we have to switch. 👎👎👎👎👎

[rajasekhard2015]

Very worst experience with these plans Get Outlook for Android<https://aka.ms/AAb9ysg>

…

________________________________ From: Vaibhav Nagariya ***@***.***> Sent: Saturday, 06 June 2026 10:59:15 To: community/community ***@***.***> Cc: Rajasekhar ***@***.***>; Comment ***@***.***> Subject: Re: [community/community] GitHub Copilot AI Credits Are Unfair, Expensive, and Killing Real Development Workflows (Discussion #198015) I had a similar experience. I don't use copilot for heavy coding task on large repo. I use it for normal edits in bulk, scripting, automation etc. With just 10$ flat fee I never had to pay more earlier. This month I consumed all my credits within few hours that too for a very light weight task. I had to cancel my subscription and move to another solution. Very disappointed by this change. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub<#198015?email_source=notifications&email_token=AE3PRFFELOY3X2XGNIFLL2D46OT2VA5CNFSNUABIM5UWIORPF5TWS5BNNB2WEL2ENFZWG5LTONUW63SDN5WW2ZLOOQXTCNZSGAYDANJXUZZGKYLTN5XKOY3PNVWWK3TUUVSXMZLOOSWGM33PORSXEX3DNRUWG2Y#discussioncomment-17200057>, or unsubscribe<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AE3PRFBENEYSFWTB32A3PMT46OT2VAVCNFSM6AAAAACZ2M72V2VHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTOMRQGAYDKNY>. You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[thern743]

I was skeptical of the all the nay slayers. I even upgraded to the MAX plan because I assumed having the 20k credits would be plenty. WOW was I wrong. I burned through it in a matter of HOURS. Yes, I use Opus 4.8 in XHigh and I can switch to lower models. But it seems like we're stuck choosing to spend more time on getting worse results vs getting better results quicker. I'll play around with other models and reasoning effort but so far...yikes.

[ambarakat]

I will cancel my subscription; it's not fair to lose my monthly quota in a few days

[ambarakat]

I will cancel my subscription; it's not fair to lose my monthly quota in a few days

[valueforvalue]

This is not sustainable. All the chatter about the price isn't going up was rubbish. You can keep the plan at $39 if you want. But claiming that nothing has actually went up is ridiculous. This is classic inflation, the value of the credits has went down significantly in actual work able to be performed. So effectively the price has went WAY up. As everyone is figuring out.

Alright AI has been subsidized heavily for years. I only started using it for coding a month or two ago, I'm always late to the party. Always seems it's time to pay the piper when I arrive. The way this is billed is way too unpredictable for this to be a viable solution. There is no way for someone even an individual to determine, this is the work I want to do, and this is what it will cost in credits to do it. And then after that what it will cost in actual dollars. No way, no reliable way. That usage checker thing was a total piece of crap.

I'm just a casual hobbyist dev so I am not really your target audience but there are more of us than pro developers. So like any other industry, the amateurs and their money help to fuel the market. But on a very limited budget I can't safely say what it will cost to accomplish a certain amount of work. So how can I decide if its worth it or not? Eventually it just won't be worth the risk. No way in H*** am I enabling overages on my account. Not while I'm watching my credits drain faster than the water from a colander.

Edit**
After using "$40" worth of my "credits" on one session that really didn't accomplish much in actual work. Then comparing token usage to what they say the api rates are on a dollar basis. It doesn't add up, there is a huge multiplier being applied here. What costs $40 on Copilot can be done on Deepseek for $2.50 and that's just mainly savings on cached input tokens.

Canceled my subscription. When they actually make this cost effective maybe I'll return. I do think the Copilot CLI is top of the line right now.

Also for anyone still using this be sure to set your /models to 5.4 mini or auto so you save some credits.

[heyAfsar]

It was a horror, copilot consumed 71% pf my monthly quota in just 3-4 prompts in a medium sized mono repo

[heyAfsar]

I am seriously considering canceling my subscription

[suryawomshi]

I cancelled my subscription and went back to Claude Pro subscription, at least there is predictability and more usage than Copilot subscription

[yanxel18]

Everyone should boycott this copilot subscription. Its the worst of all among coding assistant tool ever made.

[tnagdev]

I am on pro plan and it used to last about 20 days for extra usage I had a budget set for remaining days. This month it has burned out all quota + budget on 5th of the month. Initially I thought it was the weekly limit which they introduced last month. But when I checked, it was my whole monthly limit and I need to wait till next month. That was it for me. This has to be the last month I am using this.

[delvisyadav-source]

github copilot is a bait and fuck mode

[Koishiiko]

I barely use Agent Mode and mostly use the Inline suggestions, but I still ran out of my credits very fast compare to last month.

When the billing changes were announced in April, I was already thinking about canceling the subscription, but I decide to keep using Copilot because the Inline suggestions were honestly the main reason I was paying for it.

Now, though, it feels like I may have to start looking elsewhere. Any alternatives you'd recommend? Most of the tools I've checked out seem to focus on agents, and I haven't found many that offer Inline suggestions like Copilot.

[PhatPingu]

I have teh Copilot Pro+ plan and I am canceling it.
I ahve barely used it this month and I quickly almost ran out of credits.
Switching to Cursor.

This is ridiculos. Obscene. Theft.

[julianogcaraujo]

Contratei copilot de 100 dólares que me custou 185 dólares e durou 2 dias apenas isso pq nem usei muito ficou um abuso de valores

[RyanBayne]

Right now it's the best solution in terms of quality!

I don't want to run out of credits 7 days into the month and already be another $20 in by the 8th but I have no idea of the true cost of these services. We may be misled by not-for-profit prices aimed at creating reliance and all services will increase their fees by next year.

GitHub also uses AI to administrate our repositories and might be covering costs within these subscriptions. I wonder if they don't do that, will some of the AI features become premium?

We need some transparency I reckon.

[sam2332]

I find it's impossible to take GitHub or Microsoft seriously after this move token base usage is the worst thing that happened to the industry

[ruptz]

Before, I could run pretty heavy plan/agent sessions on a big codebase and it would be manageable across the month. Now, doing the same kind of work eats through 60–70% of my usage in just a few hours.

Nothing about the workflow has really changed on my end, same kind of prompts, same scale of refactors but the consumption is massively higher now, to the point where using copilot for larger codebases is not practical at all anymore.

I get that token accounting is more “accurate,” but the end result feels like large context work is heavily penalized compared to before.

Right now it makes Copilot much harder to rely on for the kind of larger refactoring work it used to handle well.

For context, this is using Anthropic models. Yes I know they are more token heavy, The current increase in usage compared to prior behavior is pretty huge probably x5 than before?

[OudomMunint]

It gets stuck for hours on end, and still uses credits. You'd have to cancel it and re-run which then uses more credits...