What it does

Sets out the Copilot tiers, what each includes and how usage is metered. Since June 2026 all plans run on usage-based billing with a monthly allowance of GitHub AI Credits, replacing the old premium-request counters.

Key facts

• Individual tiers (as of mid-2026): Free (no charge), Student (free, verified), Pro $10/month, Pro+ $39/month, Max $100/month.
• Organisation tiers: Business $19 per granted seat/month, Enterprise $39 per granted seat/month. Enterprise needs GitHub Enterprise Cloud.
• Free is deliberately capped: 2000 completions/month, limited chat, and models via auto-selection only — no free model picking.
• Every paid plan bundles a monthly pool of GitHub AI Credits; higher tiers get larger allowances and priority access to newer models. Business includes roughly 1,900 credits/user, Enterprise roughly 3,900.
• Billing moved to usage-based on 1 June 2026. Spend beyond the included credit pool is metered at $0.01 per AI credit; premium requests remain only as a legacy reference.
• On Business and Enterprise the credits are pooled across the enterprise — each licence contributes its allowance to one shared pot rather than a per-user ration. One heavy agent user draws from everyone's.
• Code completions and next edit suggestions aren't billed in credits at all and stay unlimited on every paid plan. Credit burn comes from chat, agents and the coding agent.
• Pro is free for verified teachers and maintainers of popular open-source projects.
• Business and Enterprise add centralised policy control, seat management and the contractual data terms (no training on your data, IP indemnity with duplication detection on).
• Max is the individual heavy-use tier — Pro+ features plus the largest personal credit allowance and priority model access.

When to use / skip

For a solo developer, Pro at $10 is the obvious entry point; only step up to Pro+ or Max if they are running sustained agent workloads and burning through credits. For any team of more than a handful, go straight to Business — the admin plane and data terms are the reason, not the per-seat price. Enterprise is worth it when you need the github.com chat over your own repos, enterprise policy inheritance and priority model access; otherwise Business covers most needs.

Configuration decisions

• Business vs Enterprise: decide whether you need enterprise-wide policy inheritance and Copilot on github.com, or whether org-level Business is enough.
• Set an AI credit / spending limit so agent-heavy users don't run up unexpected metered charges.
• Decide who gets seats and how — direct assignment, teams, or automatic for all members.
• Choose whether to allow overage beyond the included credit pool, or hard-cap it.

Gotchas

• The June 2026 shift to AI Credits changed how cost is reasoned about. Old guidance framed in "premium requests" is out of date — think in credits and metered overage now.
• Pro+ is $39/month, the same headline number as Enterprise per seat, which trips people up. They are different products (individual vs org-managed).
• Enterprise requires GitHub Enterprise Cloud. If the client is on Enterprise Server or plain Team, Enterprise Copilot isn't available.
• Free's caps make it a trial, not a rollout. Don't scope a team pilot on Free and expect representative behaviour.

Consultant notes

• For business cases, model cost as seats plus expected credit overage from agent use, not just the sticker per-seat price. Agent and coding-agent runs consume credits faster than completions.
• The pooled credit model is the bit clients don't expect. Budget is set per seat, consumption isn't, so a small group running the coding agent hard can empty the pool for a department that only ever uses completions — and completions are free, so those users never show up in the usage conversation. Agree a monitoring cadence and a spending cap in the same meeting you agree the seat count.
• The data and IP terms — not features — are usually the reason to insist on Business/Enterprise over individual plans in a corporate setting.
• Verify current pricing on the day. GitHub has re-cut the plan line-up more than once (Max and the credits model are recent); anything hard-coded here can drift.

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Confirm the live per-seat and credit numbers on the GitHub plans page before quoting a client — these get re-priced.