GitHub Copilot Free vs Pro vs Business: Plan Guide

In short

Copilot Free costs nothing, Pro $10 a month, Pro+ $39 and Business $19 per user. For one developer paying their own way, Pro is the default: it removes Free's 2,000-completion cap and adds 1,500 AI Credits for chat and agents. Move to Pro+ when you need the models Pro leaves out, such as Claude Opus 5.5 and GPT-6 Sol, or use more than about 4,400 credits a month. Business is for a company paying for its developers: it gives fewer credits per dollar than Pro+ but adds IP indemnity, SAML SSO, policy controls and no training on your code.

On this page4

Pro lifts the completion cap, Pro+ adds the top models, Business adds controls

Read the table as three steps: Pro lifts Free's completion cap, Pro+ adds the models Pro leaves out and nearly five times the credits, and Business trades credits per dollar for organization controls and no training.

	Free	Pro ($10)	Pro+ ($39)	Business ($19 per user)
Code completions	2,000 a month	unlimited	unlimited	unlimited
AI Credits a month	a limited allowance, not numbered	1,500 (1,000 base + 500 flex)	7,000 (3,900 base + 3,100 flex)	1,900 per user, pooled across the organization
Models	automatic selection only	Sonnet 5.5, Haiku 5.5, Gemini 3.8 Flash, GPT-6 Luna, Grok and others; no Opus, Fable, Gemini 4 Argon or any GPT Sol or Astra model	all models	all models
Cloud agent, full code review, PR summaries	no	yes	yes	yes
Training on your interactions	yes, unless you opt out	yes, unless you opt out	yes, unless you opt out	no
Org controls (SSO, content exclusion, policies, indemnity)	no	no	no	yes

Agent mode in the IDE, MCP and Copilot CLI are on every plan, Free included. GitHub also sells Max ($100 a month, 20,000 credits) for individuals and Enterprise ($39 per user, 3,900 pooled credits) for organizations. Verified students get Copilot Student free, and verified teachers and maintainers of popular open-source projects get Pro free. GitHub lists no free trial: Pro trials have been paused since April 2026.

What 1,500, 7,000 and 1,900 credits buy

One AI Credit is $0.01, and a request costs the selected model's token price. As an illustration, a chat turn that sends 20,000 tokens of code context and gets 1,000 tokens back costs about 5 credits on Claude Sonnet 5.5 and about 10 on Claude Opus 5.5. Agent sessions resend context on every step and cost far more per task.

Plan	Sonnet 5.5 turns of that size	Opus 5.5 turns of that size
Pro (1,500 credits)	about 300	not available on Pro
Pro+ (7,000)	about 1,400	about 700
Business (1,900 per user)	about 380	about 190

When Pro+ costs less than Pro plus extra credits

Paid individual plans can buy extra usage at $0.01 a credit through a budget you set. That makes the upgrade arithmetic simple: Pro plus extra credits reaches Pro+'s $39 at about 4,400 credits a month, and Pro+ plus extra credits reaches Max's $100 at about 13,100. Above those points the bigger plan is cheaper, before counting the models Pro lacks. The flex part of each allowance is the variable share that GitHub says will change over time, so recheck the totals before relying on these break-evens. Upgrading takes effect immediately and you pay only the price difference. Unused credits do not roll over, so size the plan to a typical month and cover peak months with extra credits.

Business is about who controls the account

A Business seat costs $9 more than Pro and includes 400 more credits, but the reasons to buy it are the controls. Business gives SAML SSO, content exclusion for sensitive repositories, organization-wide model and feature policies, usage metrics, and IP indemnity for unmodified suggestions while the public-code filter is on. Copilot does not use Business interaction data for training, while Free, Pro and Pro+ do unless each user opts out. Credits are pooled across all seats, so one heavy user can draw on the team's allowance.

One default needs attention: on Business, usage beyond the pool is billed at $0.01 a credit unless an admin turns off the paid-usage policy or sets budgets. Copilot Pro+ vs Business covers the choice between a heavy individual plan and a company seat, and GitHub Copilot AI Credits explained covers metering in detail.

Official sources

Editorial guidance grounded in official product sources.

FAQ

Common questions

What is the simplest Copilot plan recommendation?

Use Free to test Copilot personally, Pro for regular individual coding, Pro+ when one person needs premium models and a larger usage allowance, and Business when an organization should own seats, policies, billing, and budget controls.

Do premium requests still matter for GitHub Copilot?

They can, but mainly for legacy request-based billing on some annual Pro and Pro+ subscriptions. GitHub's active usage-based billing docs use GitHub AI Credits, so most buyers should check the AI credit allowance, model costs, and budget settings shown in their account.

Is GitHub Copilot Business just Pro+ for teams?

No. Pro+ is an individual power-user plan. Business is the organization-owned plan with seat assignment, admin policies, pooled usage, spending controls, and business governance. Choose Business when the company needs to control access and spend, not merely when one developer wants a bigger personal allowance.

What happens if my company assigns me a Copilot Business seat?

GitHub says an active personal Copilot Pro, Pro+, or Max plan is automatically canceled when the user is assigned a Copilot Business or Enterprise seat, with a prorated refund for the remaining part of the personal billing cycle. The user then works under company policies.

When should I choose Pro+ instead of Pro?

Choose Pro+ when the constraint is premium model access, heavier AI usage, or priority advanced capabilities for one individual. If the constraint is shared billing, policy management, auditability, offboarding, or department-level spending controls, evaluate Business instead.

Should a heavy individual user skip Business and buy Max?

Only if the purchase is still personal and sustained usage is the main problem. Max is the adjacent high-volume individual path listed by GitHub. Business is the better path when the problem is organization ownership, governance, team spending, or license management.

Next steps

GitHub Copilot Free vs Pro vs Pro+ vs Business: Which Plan Should You Choose?