GitHub Copilot, the AI coding assistant under Microsoft’s umbrella, is rolling out a new pricing strategy that’s bound to raise eyebrows. Premium requests are now a thing, with rate limits applied when users opt for models beyond the base GPT-4o. This move, effective from May 5 for Copilot Pro users and mid-May for Business and Enterprise tiers, caps usage at 300 to 1,000 requests monthly, depending on your subscription. Need more? That’ll be $0.04 per request or an upgrade to the new Copilot Pro+ at $39/month for 1,500 requests.
Smells like a hack to monetize higher compute costs, especially with models like Anthropic’s 3.7 Sonnet, which, while more reliable, are also more resource-intensive. Microsoft’s Satya Nadella claims Copilot drove 40% of GitHub’s revenue growth in 2024, but this pricing shift feels like a squeeze. I’d check the source of these models’ reliability claims before jumping on the premium bandwagon.
Not something you’d push to prod without a thorough cost-benefit analysis. The question remains: is the incremental value worth the extra spend, or is this just padding GitHub’s bottom line? 🤔
