Microsoft Brings Token-Based Billing to GitHub Copilot (Updated)

UPDATE: Microsoft has announced the changes noted below. –Paul

Internal documents viewed by Big Tech foe Ed Zitron reveal that Microsoft intends to update GitHub Copilot to support token-based billing, a dramatic shift from the current requests-based billing system it currently uses.

“Although token-based billing has been a top priority for Microsoft, it became more urgent in recent months, with the week-over-week cost of running GitHub Copilot nearly doubling since January,” Zitron writes. “The move to token-based billing will see GitHub users charged based on their usage of the platform, and how many tokens their prompts consume — and thus, how much compute they use.”

To be clear, this will raise the price of GitHub Copilot—which currently comes in free, Pro ($10 per month), and Pro+ ($39 per month) tiers—for most individuals. As Zitron explains, GitHub Copilot Pro currently provides 300 requests per month with an option to buy more on the fly, but each of these requests can consume 7 or more tokens, depending on the AI model used and the request. And unlike with requests, tokens are consumed in both directions, meaning both input and output.

To date, Microsoft has been subsidizing the cost of the compute required by GitHub Copilot and its other cloud-based AI offerings. But it looks like that era is coming to a close soon. In addition to the change noted above, Microsoft will also remove the Anthropic Opus family of AI models from GitHub Copilot Pro and reserve that for the more expensive GitHub Copilot Pro+. And it plans to tighten rate limits on some Copilot Business and Enterprise plans and will suspend trials of paid individual plans as it attempts to “fight abuse.”

Zitron says the formal announcement should come sometime this week.