The changes to GitHub’s pricing model are in line with similar changes from other companies. Anthropic and OpenAI have now moved their enterprise customers to token-based billing. Unlike those two, however, Microsoft – owner of GitHub – is a profitable business overall, and has to date been able to subsidise the use of GitHub Copilot with revenues from other parts of the business, such as its software and cloud divisions.
Up until the change on 1st June, users will have been able to ‘spend’ between three and eight times the number of tokens their monthly subscription costs have covered, and incurred no penalty.
Microsoft’s move is a change that affects the very users that it was hoping to attract to Copilot’s features, immediately forcing new and existing users to become aware of their token spend per query – a figure that has been abstracted away by per-month subscriptions to date. The new billing model may make more economic sense from Microsoft’s point of view, but it discourages the exploration and testing that new users will want to do.
For businesses that deploy AI coding agents in their development teams, the cost implications of the industry-wide shift in pricing policies are significant. In the case of Uber, for instance per The Information [paywall], its CTO has said it had spent the year’s AI budget for 2026 already this year, pointing out that 11% of updates to Uber’s code are now written by AI agents. Uber primarily uses Anthropic’s Claude coding agents.
Outside the IT department, companies deploying AI automation should be aware that complex tasks, which may involve running agentic LLMs unsupervised for long periods, could soon be charged on a similar per-token use basis. Thus, the delivered efficiency gains from AI in the workforce will have to be measured against any rise in costs stemming from the AI vendors’ bills.
(Image source: Pixabay under licence.)
Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. The comprehensive event is part of TechEx and co-located with other leading technology events. Click here for more information.
AI News is powered by TechForge Media. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars here.
