Angry Devs Vow To Flee GitHub Copilot As Metered Billing Takes Hold
Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:
Developers seem to hate Microsoft's new usage-based billing policy for GitHub Copilot as they report burning through a month's worth of credits in hours.
"This is a staggering shift from a 'predictable subscription' to a 'stressful meter-based' service that hinders my productivity rather than helping it," wrote one developer on GitHub's user forum who said they were paying for Microsoft's $39-per-month Copilot Pro+ plan but burned through about 8 percent of their monthly AI Credits allocation in two hours under the new billing system. "At this rate, my 7,000-unit quota will be depleted in less than two days."
Their outrage is a consistent and growing theme among the business users of AI who suddenly see eye-popping bills after years of experimenting with a nearly free service. One GitHub Copilot developer requested a single change to their project and burned more than $6, they wrote.
"Not after a day of usage. Not after dozens of prompts. After ONE request," the developer stated on GitHub's user forum. "I understand that large projects require context, but this level of consumption feels completely unreasonable and impossible to predict. How are individual developers supposed to budget for this when a single feature request can consume such a large portion of the monthly allowance?"
The changes went into effect across the site on Monday. In GitHub's April post announcing the new billing scheme, Microsoft said the change was made from monthly billing to usage-based because GitHub Copilot is "not the same product it was a year ago."
"It now powers far more complex, agentic workflows that consume far more compute. This change is designed to deliver a more sustainable and reliable product experience by aligning pricing to actual usage and costs," the post to its user community reads. "We believe GitHub Copilot remains the best value and experience for agentic coding. Usage-based billing aligns cost more closely to actual usage and value, while continuing to offer developers the freedom to choose the models and agents that work best for them."
GitHub Copilot lets developers access a range of AI models from within their development tools. That had allowed some users to make large numbers of requests across multiple models while paying as little as $10 per month for Copilot Pro, or $39 per month for Copilot Pro+.
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