Since June 1, 2026, GitHub Copilot switched from flat-rate subscriptions to a credit-based billing model where one credit equals $0.01. Code completions remain free, but chat, agent mode, CLI, and code review all consume credits. Agent mode is particularly expensive — GitHub's own research found agentic tasks use roughly 1,000× more tokens than single-turn queries, with one session costing $6–$12 or more. Real developer reports show bills jumping from $29 to $750 and $50 to $3,000 per month. Critically, there is no automatic spending cap by default — Copilot continues billing overage indefinitely until you manually set a spending limit in Settings → Billing → GitHub Copilot. GitHub added this control on July 2, 2026. The post also includes a full pricing table across plans (Pro, Pro+, Business, Enterprise, Max) and per-model token costs for Claude, GPT-5.5, and Gemini.

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What changedWhy agent mode drains credits fastWhat the first billing cycle actually looked likeThe detail most coverage missesWhy this matters for development teams
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