AI + ML<\/p>\n
‘16% of my monthly Pro+ allowance. Gone. For basically nothing’\u00a0<\/p>\n
Developers seem to hate Microsoft\u2019s new usage-based<\/a>\u00a0billing<\/a> policy for GitHub Copilot as they report burning through a month’s worth of credits in hours.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a staggering shift from a ‘predictable subscription’ to a ‘stressful meter-based’ service that hinders my productivity rather than helping it,\u201d wrote<\/a> 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.\u00a0\u201cAt this rate, my 7,000-unit quota will be depleted in less than two days.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Their outrage is a consistent and growing theme among the business users of AI who suddenly see eye-popping bills <\/a>after years of experimenting with a nearly free service<\/a>. One GitHub Copilot developer requested a single change to their project and burned more than $6, they wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNot after a day of usage. Not after dozens of prompts. After ONE request,\u201d the developer stated on GitHub\u2019s user forum. \u201cI 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?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The changes went into effect across the site on Monday. In GitHub\u2019s April post<\/a> announcing the new billing scheme, Microsoft said the change was made from monthly billing to usage-based because GitHub Copilot is \u201cnot the same product it was a year ago.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt 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,\u201d the post to its user community reads. \u201cWe 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.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n 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+.<\/p>\n Now, each request from users is dynamically priced depending on the model used, the request, and the amount of material submitted by the user, as well as the complexity of the answer returned.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWoke up to the new billing UI this morning. Figured I’d test it out on some actual work \u2014 just needed Claude 4.8 to help fix a couple things on a site I’m editing,\u201d one Reddit<\/a> user posted. \u201cIt gave some pretty mediocre suggestions. Didn’t really solve the problem, I still had to do most of the work myself \u2026 Then I checked the actual usage page. 1,180 credits used. 16% of my monthly Pro+ allowance. Gone. For basically nothing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The comments online have been overwhelmingly negative, with users on GitHub\u2019s forum and Reddit vowing to abandon the product and move their work directly to Anthropic, OpenAI, and some creating their own workarounds through a series of free or cheaper AI vendors, like RooCode, LM Studio, or OpenRouter.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve opted to stick to Pro+, burn through my allocated credit in a week, and then pivot to using OpenRouter for the remainder of the month,\u201d one user posted<\/a>. \u201cOpenRouter offers a similar set of advantages that Copilot has over other providers. It can be used within the same VS Code interface. Plus it has more models and credit rolls-over for up to a year.”\u00a0<\/p>\n