Those who pay for GitHub Copilot Pro, Pro+, Business, or Enterprise now have access to Google\u2019s Gemini 2.5 Pro model. The question is whether users will be enthusiastic about it. The reason: users can already access Gemini freely and in a larger variety of ways than GitHub Copilot allows for.<\/p>\n
Despite the fact that Gemini 2.5 Pro is Google\u2019s most powerful model, the general<\/a> consensus<\/a> seems to be that Claude Sonnet 4 performs faster, smarter, and more consistently when it comes to coding. Nevertheless, the expansion provides more freedom of choice for GitHub Copilot users. At least, for those who pay.<\/p>\n Step up<\/p>\n GitHub Copilot is far from the only way to use Gemini 2.5 Pro for coding. The recently introduced Gemini CLI and Gemini Code Assist (for VS Code) are free ways to use this Gemini model for programming assistance. The only limitation is the automatic switch from Gemini 2.5 Pro to the significantly less powerful 2.5 Flash. Google adjusts this dynamically depending on overall capacity demand.<\/p>\n Either way, GitHub Copilot is a platform that is popular enough to make an impression. Anthropic\u2019s Claude, beloved by programmers for years for performance that far exceeds the set benchmarks, owes some of its success to its integration with the AI coding platform.<\/p>\n Implementation issues<\/p>\n Although Gemini was already available in public preview within GitHub Copilot, several parties have reservations about this tool compared to previous, free ways of using Gemini for coding. For example, a paying user told Windows Central<\/a> that Gemini\u2019s free tools are less restrictive than GitHub Copilot.<\/p>\n The question is whether paid coding tools are the way to make models popular. A large part of the installed base consults AI models via the interface of their creators, such as Claude at Anthropic. Incidentally, the latter company has done a better job than its competitors of publicly mapping how the LLM is used. What stood out in Anthropic\u2019s Economic Index was the extent to which Claude corrected and enriched existing work compared to starting from scratch.<\/p>\n