What are GitHub AI Credits?
GitHub AI Credits are the billing unit for metered Copilot usage in organizations and enterprises.
When someone in your organization uses Copilot, the interaction consumes tokens: input tokens (what's sent to the model), output tokens (what the model generates), and cached tokens (context the model reuses or stores). Each token is priced based on the model used, and the total is converted into AI credits, where 1 AI credit = $0.01 USD.
The cost of an interaction depends on two things: the model and the number of tokens consumed. A quick chat question using a lightweight model might cost a fraction of a credit. A long coding agent session using a frontier model across multiple files will cost more, because it's doing more work.
What is billed in AI credits?
The following features consume AI credits:
- Copilot Chat
- Copilot CLI
- Copilot cloud agent
- Copilot Spaces
- Spark
- Third-party coding agents
Inline code completions and next edit suggestions are not billed in AI credits and remain unlimited. They remain available when a user has a $0 USD budget or reaches an enforced spending limit.
How is GitHub App usage billed?
A GitHub App installed on an organization can use an installation access token to make Copilot requests without a user signing in. The organization that owns the installation pays for the usage, and the organization’s model policies and spending controls apply.
You cannot create a budget for an individual app or installation. This authentication method does not require the Allow use of Copilot CLI billed to the organization policy, which applies to a different authentication path.
For information about approving access, identifying app usage, and blocking an app, see Manage GitHub Apps that use your organization's Copilot.
How do AI credits work?
Some plans include a monthly allowance of AI credits, while others do not:
- Copilot Business and Copilot Enterprise include credits that are pooled across the organization or enterprise. Usage draws from this pool first, and is billed separately only after the pool is exhausted.
- Copilot access, through GitHub Enterprise Cloud or as Copilot Standalone, has no included allowance. Metered usage is billed from the first use.
The AI credits paid usage policy is enabled by default for Copilot Business, Copilot Enterprise, and Copilot access. With Copilot access, it must remain enabled for users to use features that consume credits. If the policy is disabled, those features are blocked because there is no included allowance.
In both cases, budgets control how much users can consume and how much metered spending is allowed. Configure budgets before users begin consuming AI credits.
Included credits for Copilot Business and Copilot Enterprise
Each assigned license contributes a monthly allowance to the shared pool.
Allowances and monthly reset
| Plan | Total AI credits per user per month |
|---|---|
| Copilot Business | 1,900 |
| Copilot Enterprise | 3,900 |
A user's included AI credits are pooled at the billing entity level. For example, an enterprise with 100 Copilot Business users gets a shared pool of 190,000 AI credits rather than 100 individual buckets. This means power users can draw more when they need it, while lighter users offset that consumption.
Adding licenses mid-cycle increases the pool immediately. Removing licenses mid-cycle doesn't shrink the pool: the decrease is reflected at the start of the next billing cycle.
Included AI credits do not carry over between months. Unused credits are forfeited, and the pool resets to the full monthly amount at 00:00:00 UTC on the first day of each calendar month. This reset date is fixed and does not change based on when licenses are added, removed, or billed. See Billing cycles.
What happens if I exceed my included AI credits?
When your pooled AI credits are exhausted, what happens next depends on how you have configured policies for additional usage.
- Additional usage allowed: Usage continues at published per-credit rates. The additional spend is charged to your organization or enterprise. Note that additional usage may be capped: if you hit the cap, you'll need to pay off any additional usage you've already consumed in order to continue.
- Additional usage not allowed: Usage is blocked until the next billing cycle when monthly amounts are refreshed.
Note
On Copilot Business and Copilot Enterprise, additional usage is enabled by default. If you want to prevent any spending beyond your included AI credits, an administrator must explicitly disable the AI credits paid usage policy in your enterprise's or organization's AI Controls settings.
How can I control costs with budgets?
Budgets let you limit individual consumption and metered charges. They are set in US dollars, while usage is shown in AI credits. At 1 AI credit = $0.01 USD, a $10 USD budget covers 1,000 AI credits.
You can set budgets at multiple levels:
- User-level budgets cap an individual's total consumption per billing cycle, including any usage drawn from an included pool. They always enforce a hard stop. A $0 USD user-level budget immediately blocks features that consume AI credits.
- Cost-center budgets limit metered charges for a defined group of users.
- Enterprise spending limits limit total metered charges across your enterprise.
- Organization-level budgets limit metered charges for users whose Copilot seats are billed to the organization.
With Copilot access, spending limits apply from the first metered use. With Copilot Business and Copilot Enterprise, they apply after the included pool is exhausted. Enable Stop usage when budget limit is reached on spending limits to enforce them.
An enforced spending limit can block a user before they reach their user-level budget. Budget restrictions do not remove assigned seats.
For a full explanation of how these controls work together and when usage gets blocked, see Budgets for usage-based billing.
Update your IDE, client, and extension
For the best experience with usage-based billing, update your IDE, client, and Copilot extension to at least the versions listed below.
Note
Older versions will continue to work, but may display incorrect model pricing, inaccurate usage information, or outdated billing terminology. Usage alert notifications may also not appear as expected.
| IDE, client, or extension | Minimum version |
|---|---|
| VS Code | 1.120 |
| Visual Studio 2022 (17.x) | 17.14.33 |
| Visual Studio 2026 (18.x) | 18.6.0 |
| SQL Server Management Studio | 22.6 |
| JetBrains IDEs (plugin) | 1.9.1 |
| Eclipse (plugin) | 0.18.0 |
| Xcode (extension) | 0.50.0 |
| Copilot CLI | 1.0.48 |
We recommend keeping your IDE, client, and Copilot extensions on the latest available stable version. For information on configuring automatic updates, see Configuring GitHub Copilot in your environment. To update Copilot CLI, see Installing GitHub Copilot CLI.
Next steps
- To set up budget controls for your enterprise, see Getting started with budget controls.
- To compare per-token costs across models and estimate your spend, see Models and pricing for GitHub Copilot.