GitHub Copilot: what it is, plans and prices

A GitHub Copilot license comes from one of two places. Either you subscribe yourself, on a personal plan tied to your own GitHub account, or an organization assigns you a seat on Copilot Business or Copilot Enterprise and pays for it. GitHub treats each seat as one user's license. The choice turns on who pays, not on the editor you use: every plan, Free included, works in the editors and IDEs Copilot supports.

	Personal plan	Organization seat
Plans	Free, Pro, Pro+ and Max, plus Copilot Student	Copilot Business and Copilot Enterprise
Who pays	You, on your own GitHub account	The organization or enterprise that assigns the seat
Price	$0, $10, $39 or $100 a month	$19 or $39 per assigned seat a month
Seats	One account, with no way to add seats	One seat per user, billed at the end of each monthly cycle for the seats assigned
AI credits a month	Your own allowance: 1,500 on Pro, 7,000 on Pro+, 20,000 on Max	A shared pool: 1,900 per user on Business, 3,900 per user on Enterprise
Usage beyond the allowance	$0.01 per credit once you set a budget; not available on Free	$0.01 per credit beyond the pool
Conditions	Free only if no organization already gives you Copilot	Enterprise needs GitHub Enterprise Cloud

Free licenses. Copilot can cost nothing in three ways. Verified students get the Copilot Student plan, with unlimited completions and an allowance of AI credits. Verified teachers and maintainers of popular open source projects may qualify for Copilot Pro at no cost. Anyone else can use Copilot Free, capped at 2,000 completions a month, as long as no organization already provides Copilot to them.

Moving from a personal plan to a company seat. If you pay for Copilot Pro or Pro+ and an organization then assigns you a Copilot Business or Copilot Enterprise seat, GitHub cancels your personal plan automatically and gives you a prorated refund for the rest of its current billing cycle.

Business, Enterprise or a mix. Copilot Enterprise includes everything in Copilot Business, plus a larger credit pool (3,900 credits per user a month instead of 1,900) and priority access to premium models. An enterprise on GitHub Enterprise Cloud can run Business in some of its organizations and Enterprise in others, so the $39 seats can go only to the teams that need them.

Monthly or yearly billing. Since 1 June 2026, every Copilot plan comes with a monthly allowance of GitHub AI Credits, where each model interaction used to cost a premium request, weighted by the model. Annual Pro and Pro+ subscribers from before the change could keep the old billing until their plan ended. GitHub's license documentation still describes a yearly cycle for personal plans ($100 a year for Pro, $390 for Pro+), but the plans page showed no yearly price for new subscribers when we checked it on 16 October 2026, so look at the checkout before you count on one.

Which license fits.

• Coding on your own: start on Free, and move to Pro at $10 a month when 2,000 completions run out or you want the cloud agent and code review.
• Heavy agent use: Pro+ at $39 (7,000 credits a month, premium models, third-party coding agents) or Max at $100 (20,000 credits), or keep Pro and set a budget for extra credits at $0.01 each.
• A team: Copilot Business at $19 a seat, with policy and budget controls. Five seats cost $95 a month.
• A company on GitHub Enterprise Cloud: Copilot Enterprise at $39 a seat where the bigger pool and premium models are worth the difference.
• Students, teachers and open source maintainers: check whether you qualify for free access before you subscribe.

If you are choosing between Copilot and an AI code editor, our Cursor vs GitHub Copilot comparison sets Cursor's Pro plan, at $20 a month, against Copilot's plans.