GitHub replaces Copilot PRUs with usage-based credits

GitHub will replace Copilot’s premium request units (PRUs) with a usage-based system of GitHub AI Credits effective June 1. Accounts will be billed by token consumption — input, output and cached tokens — at published API rates.

Each paid Copilot plan will include a monthly allotment of AI Credits equal to the plan price. Copilot Business remains $19 per user per month and includes $19 in credits; Copilot Enterprise stays $39 per user per month with $39 in credits. Individual Pro and Pro+ plans include $10 and $39 in monthly credits respectively. Annual subscribers retain current terms until their renewal date.

Mario Rodriguez, GitHub’s chief product officer, explained in a blog post that Copilot now runs features that generate longer and more complex inference workloads. He wrote, “Today, a quick chat question and a multi-hour autonomous coding session can cost the user the same amount,” and added that the premium request model has become unsustainable as the company has absorbed rising inference costs.

Credits will be consumed according to token usage for each model. Code completions and Next Edit suggestions are included in subscription plans and will not draw from AI Credits. Copilot’s code review feature will use both GitHub Actions minutes and AI Credits; Actions minutes are billed at the same per-minute rates used for other workflows.

The existing PRU fallback option, which allowed users who exhausted PRUs to fall back to a lower-cost model, will be removed. Usage limits will be governed by available credits and budgets set by administrators. When pooled or allocated credits run out, organizations or users must either purchase additional credits or cap spending.

GitHub is introducing pooled included usage for businesses so unused credits are shared across an organization instead of being isolated per user. Administrators will be able to cap spending at enterprise, cost-center and user levels, track usage, and control purchases of additional AI Credits.

To help customers plan, GitHub will display a preview bill in the Billing Overview page in May showing projected costs under the new system. Business subscribers will receive a $30 monthly credit bonus in June, July and August; Enterprise customers will receive a $70 monthly bonus for the same three months. Monthly subscription prices will not change.

GitHub warned that intensive agent-based or autonomous usage is likely to increase costs because those features consume more compute. The company applied temporary restrictions last week to Free, Student and some paid plans for reliability and said limits will be relaxed once usage-based billing is active. Model multipliers for individual users will increase on June 1, and annual subscribers who let plans expire will convert to Copilot Free unless they switch to a paid monthly plan.