GitHub Copilot Pricing Explained (2026): Free, Pro, Credits, and Teams

GitHub Copilot pricing is a completion cap, then a $10 agent plan, then a credit pool for premium models. Free is not a trial of Pro. Pro is not “unlimited Claude.” Business is not a larger Pro. Each step adds a different control, and buying the next logo because the current week felt slow is how a $10 seat becomes a $100 seat.

Prices are US list prices excluding tax, from GitHub’s plan pages as checked October 16, 2026. This explainer is published October 24, 2026. A live refetch of the pricing URL that day did not return numbers, so the table keeps the October 16 figures. The product review, which is not this bill, is GitHub Copilot review. The editor comparison is Cursor vs GitHub Copilot.

The ladder

Plan	Monthly list	What is new versus the cheaper plan
Free	$0	2,000 completions a month. Access to models such as Haiku 4.5 and GPT-5 mini. No card
Pro	$10/user	Cloud agent, code review, model selection, third-party agents including Claude Code and Codex, and $15 of monthly credits
Pro+	$39/user	Premium models, including Opus, audit logs, and $70 of monthly credits
Max	$100/user	Priority access to new models and $200 of monthly credits
Business	$19/user	Admin controls, budget controls, IP indemnity, and 1,900 credits per user. Completions are not the Free cap
Enterprise	$39/user	The company tier. GitHub’s plan summary describes it as 2,000 more credits per user than the Business comparison
Student	A verified-student plan exists	We do not have a separate public price in the pages we checked. Use the student offer in your GitHub account

flowchart TD
  q1{"Do you need the agent, or only completions?"}
  q1 -->|Completions, light use| free["Free: 2,000 a month"]
  q1 -->|Agent and review| pro["Pro at 10 USD"]
  pro --> q2{"Did premium models spend the 15 USD credit pool?"}
  q2 -->|No| pro
  q2 -->|Yes| proplus["Pro+ at 39 USD"]
  proplus --> q3{"Is the blocker indemnity and admin, not credits?"}
  q3 -->|Yes| biz["Business at 19 USD"]
  q3 -->|No, the pool is still short| max["Max at 100 USD"]

Business can be the right plan at a lower price than Pro+ because the thing you are buying is indemnity and administration, not Opus. Do not “upgrade” from Pro to Business for a smarter autocomplete. Read the row.

How to read the credits

Pro includes $15 of credits. Pro+ includes $70. Max includes $200. Business includes 1,900 credits per user, which GitHub counts as credits rather than as a dollar voucher in the summary we used. Those units are not the same sentence. Do not divide $15 by 1,900 and call it a rate. The docs have to say the conversion, and the page we used did not give us one clean ratio to reprint.

What you can do instead:

1. Use Pro for a normal week with the models you already accept.
2. Open the usage view and see whether the $15 moved.
3. If it did not, stay on Pro. The cloud agent and code review are already on that plan.
4. If a premium model is what you are selecting every hour, Pro+ is the plan that lists those models and a larger credit amount.
5. Max is the plan for a person who can point at a month where $70 was not enough. It is not a team default.

Third-party agents are included on the paid plans. They draw on the same idea of a meter. Turning on Claude Code or Codex inside Copilot does not mint a second, unlimited subscription to those products. If you live in the terminal, compare a direct Claude Code plan, which rides on Claude Pro at $20/month or $17 annual, with the credit line above. The primer is Claude Code for beginners.

Four buyers

A developer in VS Code who accepts completions and rarely chats. Free, until 2,000 completions is the wall. Then Pro. Not Pro+.

A developer who wants a pull request from an issue. Pro at $10. That is the plan that lists the cloud agent and code review. Measure credits before you add $29 to reach Pro+.

A developer whose team standard is a premium model. Pro+ at $39, after a week of evidence, not on the day you read a model announcement. Max at $100 when the $70 credit line is the constraint you can show.

A company that asked for IP indemnity. Business at $19 per user. Enterprise at $39 when you need the extra credit allotment and the enterprise controls in the same contract. Pair this with the admin guide your counsel already has. A personal Pro seat on a company repo is a different risk decision, and it is not “basically Business.”

Students should use the student plan if the account is eligible, and Free if it is not. We will not invent a $0 or $10 student price the pages did not print.

The mistakes that change the bill

• Paying for Pro+ to escape the Free completion cap. Pro removes that cap’s reason for existing. Pro+ is the premium-model tier.
• Buying Max for the whole team. Max is a personal credit pool at $100. Business at $19 is the seat with admin and indemnity. They solve different problems, and Max is not the volume discount.
• Ignoring Cursor’s bundle. Cursor Plus is $8 on The X Subscription and includes Grok. If you are about to pay for Copilot Pro and a separate chat seat and an editor migration, price the bundle once. The daily-coding choice is the comparison linked above.
• Assuming annual discounts we did not see. The individual prices above are the monthly lists GitHub published in the summary we used. If a yearly toggle appears in your account, read that number in the account. Do not apply another vendor’s “save 20%” habit to this table.
• Counting a third-party agent as free Claude. Credits are the meter. Watch them.

FAQ

How much is GitHub Copilot Pro?

$10 per user per month. It includes the cloud agent, code review, model selection, third-party agents, and $15 in monthly credits.

Is GitHub Copilot free?

Yes. Free includes 2,000 completions a month and a smaller set of models. It is a real plan with a real cap. Verified students may have a separate student plan. Check the account for that offer.

What is the difference between Pro+ and Max?

Pro+ is $39 and includes premium models such as Opus, audit logs, and $70 in credits. Max is $100 and includes $200 in credits plus priority access to new models. Move to Max when the credit pool, not the model list, is what ran out.

Is Business worth it for a solo developer?

Usually no. Business is $19 and the new things are governance, budget controls, and IP indemnity, with 1,900 credits. A solo developer who wanted a better model wanted Pro or Pro+, not an admin console.

Last verified

October 16, 2026. Published October 24, 2026. The plan page did not return a fresh fetch that day. Credit units on Business are printed as credits. Dollar credits on Pro, Pro+, and Max are printed as dollars. Do not merge those units in a spreadsheet without GitHub’s current rate card.

Sources: GitHub Copilot plans, GitHub Copilot documentation.

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