Update to GitHub Copilot Consumptive Billing Experience

[Akash1134]

Hello Copilot Community,

We’re excited to announce an update to your GitHub Copilot experience: monthly premium request allowances are now in effect for all paid Copilot plans! This change is designed to give you more transparency and control over your premium Copilot usage.

What’s changed?

The monthly allowance of premium requests per user is now enforced for Copilot Pro, Pro+, Business, and Enterprise plans. Premium requests unlock a selection of advanced AI models and features—usage varies by model.

What’s unchanged?

All paid plans still include unlimited use of GPT-4.1 and GPT-4o for agent mode and chat interactions, plus unlimited code completions! Please note that rate limits may still apply across all models.

Managing Your Premium Requests

• Monthly Allowances: These reset on the 1st of each month. For this first billing cycle, your premium request counters have all started fresh at zero.
• Pay-Per-Request Option: Need more premium requests? You can set a spending limit in your billing settings (default limit is $0).
• Usage & Billing Controls: Monitor your real-time premium request usage via the Copilot status icon in your IDE, or download detailed usage reports in your billing settings. If you have licenses from multiple organizations, you can select which entity to bill.

For all the details, check out our documentation.

We Want Your Feedback!

Have questions, comments, or suggestions? Your input helps shape the future of Copilot, please comment below.

Thank you for being a part of our community and helping us make Copilot even better!

[iwangbowen]

300 premium requests are not enough for pro plan

[wrek]

May we suggest the pro+ plan?
And coming soon the premium pro+ plan... Then I'm sure we'll see the enhanced premium pro Plus plan...

[gadfly3173]

• Usage & Billing Controls: Monitor your real-time premium request usage via the Copilot status icon in your IDE, or download detailed usage reports in your billing settings. If you have licenses from multiple organizations, you can select which entity to bill.

The real-time premium request usage mentioned in the announcement is clearly still not available to all users. Why has this feature been delayed for so long?

[Akash1134]

Hi @gadfly3173 This could be a feature deployment delay, IDE restart might fix this.

[hayoshii]

It feels like instead of making Pro+ a better plan, you’ve simply made the Pro plan worse.
This change doesn’t enhance the value of higher tiers—it just limits existing functionality for paying users who expected more consistency in what they’re paying for.

[hayoshii]

This is my third year using Copilot, but to be honest, while more unnecessary services and features have been introduced, placing a 300-request cap feels quite unfair.

Since it doesn’t seem like this change will be rolled back, I’m considering switching to Cursor once my current annual Copilot subscription ends.
If you have any other recommendations, I’d be happy to hear them.

[raky291]

@hayoshii An alternative for me would be to use local models with Ollama + VSCode or Cursor.

[hayoshii]

@raky291 Thanks for your input!
Of course, I’ve been experimenting with local LLMs as well.
At first, I only intended to use them as a supplement to GitHub Copilot… but here we are.

[nijaru]

For API usage, I'd recommend the anthropic API directly for claude, otherwise openrouter is great for switching between whichever model you want to use.

If you want purely subscription based, not API billing, then claude code with a claude pro or higher sub, or else go local with something like ollama.

[hayoshii]

@nijaru Thanks! Claude Pro is definitely on my list of options, but OpenRouter sounds especially interesting.

[returnvoid]

Nothing exciting about this change. Pro plan looks pretty useless from now. I can see the real-time Premium requests and it's not cheap.
I'm not sure how competitve these prices are in comparison with similar services. I guess I need to figure that out on the go.

[BigBenJr]

I have the feeling that someone just cut my wings !

[yomajo]

What model should I set, to never worry about this limit ever (until similar announcement) again?

[JeetMajumdar2003]

GPT-4.1 and GPT-4o offer unlimited usage for the Pro Plan, while other models such as OAI, Claude, and Gemini have specific weights for premium request usage. For, using Claude-sonnet-4 (1x) allows 300 uses, while o4-mini/o3-mini (0.33x) permits 900 uses under the Plan, which includes 300 premium requests.
The Pro+, on the other hand, provides 1500 premium requests.

[knofte]

I think there's a misunderstanding somewhere. Gpt4.1 is not unlimited when it comes to premium requests, only chat.

On pro/pro+, you are still limited to 1500 premium requests even with gpt4.1.

[lucvutuan]

im using a paid account (100$/year) and when I downloaded the usage report and I saw Unlimited in Total Monthly Quota, does this mean that this feature does not apply to my account so I do not have to worry about running out of requests?

[Akash1134]

Hi @lucvutuan Could you please restart your IDE and check again? The Total Monthly Quota should now be updated with the monthly premium request allowances in effect. Thanks!

[iamcjwilliams]

Hello @lucvutuan Can you also provide a screenshot with the timestamp ?

[poebrand]

The allowances for premium requests are way too low. If a developer is using the tool to its proper potential... they can consume their entire month's allotment in days.

Github needs to quickly change course or Copilot will switch from a community favorite to a relic collecting dust. Allowances should be tripled or quadrupled at least.

[DeepDigits]

The pro plan seems to be useless now .. 300 premium requests are not at all enough . Its surely going to be exhausted within a few days/ hours
.Please do add more requests

[wrek]

We’re excited to announce [That makes ONE OF US] an update to your GitHub Copilot experience: monthly premium request allowances are now in effect for all paid Copilot plans! This change is designed to increase profits significantly while pissing off our users.
-- Evil Corporate Empire

A request is any interaction where you ask Copilot to do something for you—whether it’s generating code, answering a question, or helping you through an extension. Each time you send a prompt in a chat window or trigger a response from Copilot, you’re making a request.

ALL OF THESE REDUCE YOUR REQUEST CREDITS ACCORDING TO THE MULTIPLIER (up to 50 requests each time):

• Ask it a question
• Click CONTINUE
• AI does one file and stops to make sure it's doing good? Request to complete them all.
• AI need you to press CONTINUE so it can run a command? Pretty sure that's gonna be a request.
• Answer a question IT stops and asks
• Clicking CONTINUE every time it decides to pause even if "it's been working on this problem for awhile now" after 10 seconds
• Clicking RETRY when it fails it's task with a 500 or other error
• You have to git recover the big screwup it just applied to 15 files and then ask it to try again more carefully
• Any other error or mishap that causes you to press SEND

and you get 300 PER MONTH. not per day. PER MONTH. So you can effectively do one or two days worth of work each month unless you UPGRADE from the piddly PRO subscription to PRO+. Then you can work for 4 days for triple the subscription.

Wasn't this a Blackmirror episode? I'd really like to be able to leave my house but I guess I have to upgrade to Pro+ first.

It hasn't been 48 hours and ..

You have exceeded your premium request allowance. 
We have automatically switched you to GPT-4.1 which is included with your plan. [Enable additional paid premium requests](vscode-file://vscode-app/c:/Program%20Files/Microsoft%20VS%20Code/resources/app/out/vs/code/electron-sandbox/workbench/workbench.html) to continue using premium models.

I guess I'm off to find another solution because GPT 4.1 is crap for my specific needs and refuses to answer half the time. I know, I'll watch the door and my ass on the way out.

I'm done. That's my beef.

[wrek]

I have to be so careful with which model I'm talking to now that I might as well go back to FREE since I probably don't NEED to talk to the premium models all the time. I like banging my head against GPT 4.1 It's fine.

[knofte]

"You have exceeded your premium request allowance.
We have automatically switched you to GPT-4.1 which is included with your plan."

That's interesting. I'm on pro+, and I'm just getting message "out of premium requests", no options to even by more, or not.

It feels like there are some serious bugs in this agent/copilot setup in regards to billing, as I can not even use ones in free model :)

[knofte]

According to - https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/managing-copilot/understanding-and-managing-copilot-usage/understanding-and-managing-requests-in-copilot

"Using GPT-4.1 on a paid plan: No premium requests are consumed."

So.. how am I running out then? :)
Maybe the copilot when assigned to tasks, is not actually the same as premium requests?

[knofte]

"Purchase additional premium requests at $0.04/request", which should be available on pro+, yet:

Makes no sense.. Especially since I'm using GPT.4.1

[wrek]

yeah, I also tried increasing my budget from $0 and that didn't do anything... wonderful system we have. I just installed Cursor.

[Yukon]

The billing rule for agent usage is not accurate based on my testing.

Agent mode uses one premium request per user prompt, multiplied by the model's rate. ↩

Using https://github.com/zed-industries/zed which seemingly has official support for Copilot does not bill per user prompt. Every tool interaction counts as a premium request resulting in one user request easily burning through over 40 premium requests. Just from testing today alone I’ve already used over 20% of my quota on a business license.

It seems only the Visual Studio Code client follows this billing model. Which is not my preferred workflow.

[wrek]

I knew one of us nerds would bring the receipts.
GitHub needs to immediately reverse this change and allow us back into our models that we can continue working while they work out their issues with billing and accounting for usage and requests when half of their responses are unusable wrong or it simply refuses to answer...

[b0nefish]

always believed that proper way of showing your agreement or disagreement with something is through actions, not words. therefore:
"You've cancelled your subscription to GitHub Copilot Pro. This plan change will take effect on Jul 15, 2025."

[wrek]

Same. I'll go use the alternatives

[TeddyHuang-00]

Oh, what perfect timing! Just when I needed to renew my education verification—a truly delightfully streamlined process featuring their brilliantly designed auto-rejection model that clearly has my best interests at heart. So here I am, 3 days later, still waiting for this mythical "developer pack" (complete with the oh-so-generous Copilot Pro), while my "free" premium quota evaporated after a whopping 5 or 6 requests. Truly spectacular work there.

Despite being a loyal beta user since day one—because apparently that counts for absolutely nothing—I'm graciously taking my business to Cursor. But hey, I'm sure everyone will be thrilled with those incredibly generous 300 requests per month. What a bargain!

[MalleusOne34]

300 messages is a joke. I really hope it will be reverted, otherwise they will lose another sub

[Megheg694]

300 a month is just too low I am likely switching to cursor

[lucvutuan]

What plan is good for cursor? Im planning on switching to an alternative but i thought that it does not depend on the IDE but the models. So still confused.

[scottlothbrok]

The problem is, half the time the code doesn't even work and you have to correct it again. Actions that advances the code base forward, you could go through many iterations. Just to get the result you want.

This is the same with every interaction with llms like through the subscriptions of chatGpt or Claude or Gemini.
Sometimes you have to ask the models repeatedly just to do a basic task and then it will go and randomly reformat everything.

So when it comes to code and you're constantly having random stuff put in, like Claude 3.7 would randomly change button colours and layout for no reason. Fixing the errors that the models are creating, in the past you would just re prompt it to fix the error and continue, now at that rate limit. It's basically useless.

Even at 1500 requests at the Pro+ is still basically useless because you're paying for the llm to make mistakes

[Angel-William]

Documentation:

Provide examples of typical monthly usage patterns by developer type
Create a calculator to help estimate needed premium requests

[MrKnights1]

Maybe add slow premium requests after fast premium requests are depleted? 🙄

[wrek]

I would love slow premium requests as long as they're premium requests I will wait but I can't wait an entire month for my 300 to reset

[DeepDigits]

Alteast add claude 3.5 in the included models.The pro plan is useless now

[Rhystic1]

Done, like I said I would. Vote with your wallets, people. It's the only language they understand.

[smaffei]

Well…here is your feedback! Please take it seriously.

I have been using copilot with sonnet and it was really a dream. Not perfect by any means, but it was a really helpful tool. Since the change has been rolled out I have apparent run out of premium requests (I seriously doubt it, unless it was counted retroactively, in which case shame on you, but I am going on holiday now and will simply wait for the month to finish at this point).

I then gave it a go at the unlimited alternatives and I suppose I have adjust my expectations and accept an AI that consistently allucinates about the code I am working on (tells me to include files that don’t exists, explains the code making reference to functions that don’t exist, etc).

I join the chorus here: want to cap the usage? Then every request needs to give a perfect answer. Obviously that s not possible so:

• increase the limit, or adjust what counts towards the limit. Maybe if I ask to work on a single file shouldn’t count, but if the request is a complex one, with a big code as context, then ok (I don’t know, something like that)
• Please improve the gpt integration if that is your to-go AI. I am pretty sure that gpt 4 is capable of so much better than telling me “there should be a function called TheFeature() in your code that does this” when a simple search reveals no such function anywhere in the code.
• if I pass the limit I would accept a slower answer. I mean…not so long ago I didn’t even have this tool, so I don’t mind it being slower
• please include one of the claude AIs in the unlimited plan.

[jamesbalcombe83]

What a surprise the second the premium / rated mode is introduced the free models become absolutely terrible. Previously I would move between models if one didn't generate something reasonable, and GPT4.1 would be reasonable most of the time. Now its actively destructive. It ignores existing patterns in the codebase, it just dumps code into the chat, despite using agent mode, it makes nonsense mistakes repeatedly and leaves linting errors all over the place. It did not do this one week ago.