GitHub Copilot licenses - GitHub Enterprise Cloud Docs (original) (raw)

Learn how licenses for Copilot work, including usage measurement and managing your budget.

Usage of GitHub Copilot is measured through a combination of licenses and monthly usage tracking. For more information about how usage costs in Copilot work, see GitHub Copilot premium requests.

Licenses for Copilot

Copilot licenses are required for each user who uses Copilot. Licenses are available through different plans depending on your account type.

Note

If you have an active Copilot Pro or Copilot Pro+ plan, and are then assigned a seat as part of a Copilot Business or Copilot Enterprise plan, your personal Copilot plan will be automatically canceled. You will receive a prorated refund for any remaining portion of your personal plan's current billing cycle. You will then be able to continue using Copilot according to the policies set by your company.

Free use of Copilot

There are several ways to use Copilot for free.

Copilot Free

• Provides limited access to Copilot features at no cost.
• Includes a monthly allowance of completions and premium requests.
• Intended for individual use only (not suitable for organizations or enterprises).
• For usage beyond the free plan limits, upgrade to Copilot Pro.

30-day trial for Copilot Pro

• Before starting a paid plan for a personal account, you can activate a one-time 30-day trial. Start using Copilot Free.
• You must choose a monthly or yearly billing cycle and provide a payment method.
• If you do not cancel before the end of the trial, it automatically converts to a paid plan.
• You can cancel any time during the 30 days. If you cancel, you will not be charged and will keep access until the trial ends.

Educational and open source benefits

• Copilot Pro is free for verified students, teachers, and maintainers of popular open source projects. See Getting free access to GitHub Copilot Pro as a student, teacher, or maintainer.

How usage of Copilot licenses is measured

Usage of Copilot licenses is measured by the number of seats used.

Personal accounts

• You choose monthly or yearly billing.
• Plan changes (upgrades, downgrades, or switching between monthly and yearly) take effect immediately, with proration applied where relevant.
• Canceling a monthly plan keeps access until the end of the cycle; yearly plans run until the end of the paid term.

For details on billing and proration, see About billing for individual GitHub Copilot plans.

Organizations and enterprises

• A seat is a license for one user.
• Organizations and enterprises are billed for the number of assigned seats at the end of each monthly billing cycle.
• If a user has seats in multiple organizations within the same enterprise, the enterprise is only billed once per cycle.
• If both a Copilot Business and a Copilot Enterprise seat are assigned, only the enterprise seat is billed.

For more information about seat assignment, see GitHub Copilot seat assignment.

Using more than your plan's included seats

Individual plans are tied to a single account and can’t include additional seats. To license multiple users, upgrade to an organizational plan.

For organizations and enterprises:

• You can assign additional Copilot seats at any time.
• Additional seats are billed immediately on a prorated basis for the rest of the current billing cycle.
• Assigned users gain access to Copilot features right away.

For details about how added seats are billed, see Making changes to your GitHub Copilot license.

Paying for Copilot licenses

You pay for additional licenses using the payment method set up for your GitHub account. See Managing your payment and billing information.

Managing your budget for Copilot licenses

To help manage your budget for Copilot licenses, consider the following strategies.

Personal accounts

• You can set budgets for your personal account to receive email alerts at 75%, 90%, and 100% of the budget.
• Budgets help you monitor spending but do not stop license charges.

For more information about using budgets to control spending, see Setting up budgets to control spending on metered products.

Organizations and enterprises

• Owners and billing managers can set budgets at the organization or enterprise level, or by cost center.
• Budgets for licenses are monitoring-only: spending can exceed the budget, but alerts notify you when thresholds are reached.
• Use cost centers to track spending across teams or initiatives.

For more information about managing company spending, see Managing your company's spending on GitHub Copilot.