My GitHub Copilot Pricing Test: 7 Days, 287 Requests
GitHub Copilot pricing tested: I burned 287 premium requests in 7 days, hit Pro's limit on Thursday. See my Pro vs Pro+ break-even math + June 1 changes.
I hit GitHub Copilot Pro's 300 premium request limit on day 4 — Thursday around 2pm, in the middle of refactoring an OATH landing page. That moment cost me $39 (the upgrade to Pro+) and turned this into a real-week test of GitHub Copilot pricing, instead of the casual eval I'd planned.
TL;DR
- GitHub Copilot pricing is in flux: Pro stays $10/mo, Pro+ stays $39/mo, but new sign-ups are paused (April 20, 2026) and usage-based billing arrives June 1.
- I burned ~287 premium requests in 7 days on Pro, then ~64 more on Pro+. Mostly Sonnet 4.6 (1x), a few Opus 4.7 calls (7.5x each — pricey).
- Pro+ break-even hits around ~110 premium requests/month — under that, stay on Pro; above, the math flips.
- If you use Opus 4.7 at all, you must be on Pro+ — Opus was removed from Pro in this cycle. That's the real story behind the new GitHub Copilot pricing.
Why I Bothered Testing GitHub Copilot Pricing This Week
I'm Jim Liu, a Sydney-based indie dev running 5 sites (OATH, LRTS, SubSaver, AlphaGain, LevelWalks). My daily driver is normally Cursor 3 + Claude Pro. But when GitHub announced the Copilot plan changes on April 20, my inbox lit up with "should I switch?" questions from readers — and I didn't have a real answer. So I spent the past week using Copilot as my primary coding tool. Five sites, ~40 hours of coding, real shipping work. Below every number is a thing I actually did, not a marketing claim.
My 7-Day Premium Request Burn Chart
| Day | Work | Premium Requests | Models Used |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mon | Exploring Agent mode | ~35 | Sonnet 4.6 mostly |
| Tue | OATH sitemap fix | ~48 | Sonnet + 2 Opus 4.7 |
| Wed | LRTS IPO calculator refactor | ~92 | Sonnet + 4 Opus 4.7 |
| Thu | OATH landing page rewrite — hit Pro limit at 2pm | ~112 (cap) | Sonnet + heavy Opus |
| Fri | SubSaver Supabase migration | ~71 (Pro+) | Sonnet, GPT-5.4 |
| Sat | Light fixes | ~22 | Sonnet, GPT-4.1 (free) |
| Sun | Documentation + this article | ~18 | Sonnet, Haiku 4.5 |
About 351 premium requests across the week. I checked the counter via VS Code's status bar (Copilot CLI shows the same number). The full burn chart is the kind of own-data point I think matters more than published benchmarks — try our AI ROI Calculator if you want to plug in your own numbers.
Which Multipliers Were Actually Worth It
Sonnet 4.6 at 1x is the workhorse — 80% of my week, and honestly I couldn't tell most of its output apart from Opus on standard refactors. Opus 4.7 at 7.5x earns its multiplier on hard problems (one tricky generic-types bug it solved in two turns that Sonnet kept missing), but it's a luxury tool — call it deliberately, not by default. GPT-5.4 at 1x is a decent second opinion when Sonnet drifts, but I rarely reached for it. GPT-4.1 stays at 0x (free) and works fine for boilerplate. Grok Code Fast 1 at 0.25x is interesting if speed matters; the quality is rougher.
Pro vs Pro+: The Break-Even Math
GitHub Copilot pricing splits into two SKUs right now. Pro is $10/mo with 300 premium requests. Pro+ is $39/mo with >5x that — call it ~1,500. Naive math says you need 5x usage to justify Pro+, but the real break-even sits lower because of two things: Opus 4.7 is Pro+ only (so any Opus need forces Pro+), and overage on Pro will cost you per-request after June 1. My back-of-envelope: if you average more than ~110 premium requests/month and sometimes need Opus, Pro+ pays off. Under that and you don't touch Opus, stay on Pro. The full pricing comparison logic is similar to what we walk through in ChatGPT Plus vs Claude Pro — the framework transfers, the numbers don't.
What Changes on June 1 (And Why I'm Not Pre-Paying Annual)
June 1, 2026 is when GitHub Copilot pricing flips to usage-based billing — every plan gets a monthly allotment of "GitHub AI Credits" instead of fixed premium request counts, and multipliers update across the GitHub Copilot pricing matrix. The catch: GitHub paused new sign-ups, and existing annual subscribers are locked in until renewal. Refunds for unused time are available until May 20, 2026 via Billing settings. I'm not pre-paying annual right now. Too many unknowns about how Credits convert and what the new multipliers look like. Monthly buys flexibility for $0 extra.
Who Stays on Pro vs Moves to Pro+
If you're a hobby dev shipping 1-2 features a week and never touch Opus, Pro at $10 is genuinely fine — the Sonnet 4.6 / GPT-5.4 / GPT-4.1 mix covers most coding. Move to Pro+ ($39) if any of these are true: (a) you ship daily, (b) you run an Agent loop that fans out into 30+ tool calls per task, (c) you actually want Opus 4.7 for hard architecture work, or (d) you're on a team and your colleague's session limit is also yours to share. Solo devs working casually don't need Pro+. Pros and small teams shipping serious code probably do. The GitHub Copilot pricing decision turns on Opus access and weekly request volume — not on which features come bundled.
4 GitHub Copilot Pricing Surprises I Wish I'd Known on Day 1
- Hitting the limit doesn't auto-upgrade — it just stops working. Thursday afternoon I lost about 20 minutes before realizing I needed to manually upgrade in browser settings. There's no "graceful degradation" to free models.
- The status bar counter lags. It updated every ~10-15 minutes during heavy use, so I crossed 300 before the UI showed I was close. Set a personal cap at 250 if you're on Pro.
- Opus 4.7's 7.5x multiplier is brutal in Agent mode. A single agentic task chain ate ~12 PRUs in three minutes. I now manually swap to Sonnet when entering Agent loops.
- Refunds have a hard May 20 deadline. If you're on annual and want out before June 1's billing flip, calendar this. After May 20 you're stuck until renewal.
FAQ
Is GitHub Copilot Pro worth it at $10/mo? For solo devs writing under ~110 premium requests/month, yes — it's the cheapest credible AI coding tool right now. Heavier users hit the wall fast.
Can I use Claude Opus on Copilot Pro? No — as of April 2026, Opus 4.7 is Pro+ only ($39/mo). Pro lost Opus access in this round of changes. If Opus matters to you, that decides the tier.
What's a multiplier in GitHub Copilot pricing? Each model burns a different number of "premium requests" per call. Sonnet 4.6 = 1x, Opus 4.7 = 7.5x, GPT-4.1 = 0x (free). Your plan gives you a fixed PRU pool per month.
Should I pre-pay annual before June 1? Probably not. June 1 introduces AI Credits and updated multipliers — the conversion math is unclear. Monthly billing keeps options open until the new GitHub Copilot pricing structure stabilizes and we can see real receipts.
Sources: GitHub Copilot plan changes (April 20, 2026) · Models and pricing reference (May 2026). Methodology: 7-day daily-driver test on a single Pro account, upgraded to Pro+ on day 4 after hitting the limit. PRU counts from VS Code status bar + Copilot CLI usage view, rounded.