GitHub Copilot · Your AI pair programmer (original) (raw)

Features

Customizable. Contextual.

AI-powerful.

Create tests, docs, and more. Ask GitHub Copilot a question, get the right answer for you, and accept the code with a single click.Our favorite Copilot prompts

Choose your model

Use models like Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet, OpenAI o1, and GPT 4o to excel at coding tasks one minute — and deeper reasoning and understanding the next.

Multi-file edits

Tell GitHub Copilot what to do, and watch it update multiple files right in your editor.

GitHub Copilot including multiple files in a working set

Get AI-based suggestions in real time

GitHub Copilot suggests code completions as you type and turns natural language prompts into coding suggestions based on your project's conventions.

Use slash commands

Instant feedback

Ask GitHub Copilot to review your work, uncover hidden bugs, fix mistakes, and more—before you get a human review.

Get early access

GitHub Copilot performing a code review

Extensions for your favorite tools

Check logs, create feature flags, and deploy apps—all from Copilot Chat, enhanced by an ecosystem of extensions from third party tools and services.

Explore GitHub Copilot Extensions

GitHub Copilot Extensions for Azure, Datastax, Docker, MongoDB and Sentry

Chat with your AI pair programmer on-the-go

Download GitHub on the Google Play StoreDownload GitHub on the Apple App Store

A phone showing GitHub Copilot in GitHub Mobile

Pricing

Take flight with GitHub Copilot

Free

For developers looking to get started with GitHub Copilot.

Get startedAlready have VS Code? Open nowIncludes up to 2,000 completions and 50 chat requests per month.

Pro

For developers who want unlimited access to GitHub Copilot.

$10 USD

per month. First 30 days free.

Get startedFree for verified students, teachers, and maintainers of popular open source projects. Learn more

Business

For teams ready to accelerate their workflows with GitHub Copilot.

Enterprise

For organizations seeking a fully customized GitHub Copilot experience.

Compare features

Features

Free

Pro

Business

Enterprise

Pricing

$0

$10 per month

$19 per user / month

$39 per user / month

Messages and interactions

Free planUp to 50 per month

Up to 50 per month

Pro planUnlimited

Unlimited

Business planUnlimited

Unlimited

Enterprise planUnlimited

Unlimited

Context-aware coding support and explanations

Debugging and security remediation assistance

Access to knowledge from top open source repositories

Generate tests, docs, and more with slash commands

Web search powered by Bing

Explain failed Actions jobs

Answers about issues, PRs, discussions, files, commits, etc.

Multi-file editing in VS Code

Real-time code suggestions

Free planUp to 2,000 per month

Up to 2,000 per month

Pro planUnlimited

Unlimited

Business planUnlimited

Unlimited

Enterprise planUnlimited

Unlimited

Tailor chat conversations to your private codebase (unlimited repositories indexed)

Unlimited integrations with GitHub Copilot Extensions

Build a private extension for internal tooling

Personalize responses with custom instructions

Attach knowledge bases to chat for organizational context

Business plan

Not included

Fine-tuned models for code completion (coming soon as add-on)

Business plan

Not included

Set coding guidelines for code review

Business plan

Not included

Inline chat and prompt suggestions

Slash commands and context variables

Commit message generation

Summaries for pull requests, issues, and discussions

Explanations in Visual Studio’s Quick Info

Debug assistant in Visual Studio

Upgrade assistant for Java in VS Code

Copilot Workspace in pull requests

Technical Preview access to Copilot Workspace

GitHub CLI and Windows Terminal

Public code filter with code referencing

Data excluded from training by default

Enterprise-grade security

SAML SSO authentication 1

Requires GitHub Enterprise Cloud

Business plan

Not included

Get the most out of GitHub Copilot

Frequently asked questions

General

What is GitHub Copilot?

GitHub Copilot transforms the developer experience. Backed by the leaders in AI, Copilot provides contextualized assistance throughout the software development lifecycle, from code completions and chat assistance in the IDE to code explanations and answers to docs in GitHub and more. With Copilot elevating their workflow, developers can focus on more: value, innovation, and happiness.

GitHub Copilot enables developers to focus more energy on problem solving and collaboration and spend less effort on the mundane and boilerplate. That’s why developers who use Copilot report up to 75% higher satisfaction with their jobs than those who don’t and are up to 55% more productive at writing code without sacrifice to quality, which all adds up to engaged developers shipping great software faster.

GitHub Copilot integrates with leading editors, including Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, and Neovim, and, unlike other AI coding assistants, is natively built into GitHub. Growing to millions of individual users and tens of thousands of business customers, Copilot is the world’s most widely adopted AI developer tool and the competitive advantage developers ask for by name.

Who is eligible to access GitHub Copilot for free?

GitHub Copilot Free is a new free pricing tier with limited functionality for individual developers. Users assigned a Copilot Business or Copilot Enterprise seat are not eligible for access. Users with access to Copilot Pro through a paid subscription, trial, or through an existing verified OSS, Student, Faculty, or MVP account may elect to use Free instead.

What languages, IDEs, and platforms does GitHub Copilot support?

GitHub Copilot is trained on all languages that appear in public repositories. For each language, the quality of suggestions you receive may depend on the volume and diversity of training data for that language. For example, JavaScript is well-represented in public repositories and is one of GitHub Copilot’s best supported languages. Languages with less representation in public repositories may produce fewer or less robust suggestions.

GitHub Copilot is available as an extension in Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, Vim, Neovim, the JetBrains suite of IDEs, and Azure Data Studio. Although code completion functionality is available across all these extensions, chat functionality is currently available only in Visual Studio Code, JetBrains and Visual Studio. GitHub Copilot is also supported in terminals through GitHub CLI and as a chat integration in Windows Terminal Canary. With the GitHub Copilot Enterprise plan, GitHub Copilot is natively integrated into GitHub.com. All plans are supported in GitHub Copilot in GitHub Mobile. GitHub Mobile for Copilot Pro and Copilot Business have access to Bing and public repository code search. Copilot Enterprise in GitHub Mobile gives you additional access to your organization's knowledge.

Does GitHub Copilot “copy/paste”?

No, GitHub Copilot generates suggestions using probabilistic determination.

What are the differences between the GitHub Copilot Business, GitHub Copilot Enterprise, and GitHub Copilot Individual plans?

GitHub Copilot has multiple offerings for organizations and an offering for individual developers. All the offerings include both code completion and chat assistance. The primary differences between the organization offerings and the individual offering are license management, policy management, and IP indemnity.

Organizations can choose between GitHub Copilot Business and GitHub Copilot Enterprise. GitHub Copilot Business primarily features GitHub Copilot in the coding environment - that is the IDE, CLI and GitHub Mobile. GitHub Copilot Enterprise includes everything in GitHub Copilot Business. It also adds an additional layer of customization for organizations and integrates into GitHub.com as a chat interface to allow developers to converse with Copilot throughout the platform. GitHub Copilot Enterprise can index an organization’s codebase for a deeper understanding of the customer’s knowledge for more tailored suggestions and will offer customers access to fine-tuned custom, private models for code completion.

GitHub Copilot Individual is designed for individual developers, freelancers, students, educators, and open source maintainers. The plan includes all the features of GitHub Copilot Business except organizational license management, policy management, and IP indemnity.

What data has GitHub Copilot been trained on?

GitHub Copilot is powered by generative AI models developed by GitHub, OpenAI, and Microsoft. It has been trained on natural language text and source code from publicly available sources, including code in public repositories on GitHub.

Which plan includes GitHub Copilot Autofix?

GitHub Copilot Autofix provides contextual explanations and code suggestions to help developers fix vulnerabilities in code, and is included in GitHub Advanced Security.

What if I do not want Copilot?

Copilot is entirely optional and requires you to opt in before gaining access. You can easily configure its usage directly in the editor, enabling or disabling it at any time. Additionally, you have control over which file types Copilot is active for.

How do I control access to Copilot in my company?

Access to Copilot Business and Enterprise is managed by your GitHub Administrator. They can control access to preview features, models, and set Copilot policies for your organization. Additionally, you can use your network firewall to explicitly allow access to Copilot Business and/or block access to Copilot Pro or Free. For more details, refer to the documentation.

Plans & Pricing

What are the differences between the Free, Pro, Business, and Enterprise plans?

GitHub Copilot has multiple offerings for organizations and an offering for individual developers. All the offerings include both code completion and chat assistance. The primary differences between the organization offerings and the individual offering are license management, policy management, and IP indemnity.

Organizations can choose between GitHub Copilot Business and GitHub Copilot Enterprise. GitHub Copilot Business primarily features GitHub Copilot in the coding environment - that is the IDE, CLI and GitHub Mobile. GitHub Copilot Enterprise includes everything in GitHub Copilot Business. It also adds an additional layer of customization for organizations and integrates into GitHub.com as a chat interface to allow developers to converse with Copilot throughout the platform. GitHub Copilot Enterprise can index an organization’s codebase for a deeper understanding of the customer’s knowledge for more tailored suggestions and will offer customers access to fine-tuned custom, private models for code completion.

GitHub Copilot Pro is designed for individual developers, freelancers, students, educators, and open source maintainers. The plan includes all the features of GitHub Copilot Business except organizational license management, policy management, and IP indemnity.

How can I upgrade my GitHub Copilot Free license to Copilot Pro?

What is included in GitHub Copilot Free?

GitHub Copilot Free users are limited to 2000 completions and 50 chat requests (including Copilot Edits).

Which plan includes GitHub Copilot Autofix?

GitHub Copilot Autofix provides contextual explanations and code suggestions to help developers fix vulnerabilities in code, and is included in GitHub Advanced Security and available to all public repositories.

Privacy

What personal data does GitHub Copilot process?

GitHub Copilot processes personal data based on how Copilot is accessed and used: whether via GitHub.com, mobile app, extensions, or one of various IDE extensions, or through features like suggestions for the command line interface (CLI), IDE code completions, or personalized chat on GitHub.com. The types of personal data processed may include:

Does GitHub use Copilot Business or Enterprise data to train GitHub’s model?

No. GitHub does not use either Copilot Business or Enterprise data to train its models.

How does GitHub use the Copilot data?

How GitHub uses Copilot data depends on how the user accesses Copilot and for what purpose. Users can access GitHub Copilot through the web, extensions, mobile apps, computer terminal, and various IDEs (Integrated Development Environments). GitHub generally uses personal data to:

These practices are outlined in GitHub’s Data Protection Agreement (DPA), which details our data handling commitments to our data controller customers.

GitHub also uses certain personal data with customer authorization under the DPA, for the following purposes:

For details on GitHub's data processing activities as a controller, particularly for Copilot Pro customers, refer to the GitHub Privacy Statement.

How long does GitHub retain Copilot data for Business and Enterprise customers?

If and for how long GitHub’s retains Copilot data depends on how a Copilot user accesses Copilot and for what purpose. The default settings for Copilot Business and Enterprise Customers are as follows:

Access through IDE for Chat and Code Completions:

All other GitHub Copilot access and use:

Why do some Copilot features retain prompts and suggestions?

Retaining prompts and suggestions is necessary for chat on github.com, mobile, and CLI Copilot because those features’ effectiveness depends on using thread history to improve responses. The Copilot model requires access to previous interactions to deliver accurate and relevant suggestions.

Does GitHub Copilot support compliance with the GDPR and other data protection laws?

Yes. GitHub and customers can enter a Data Protection Agreement that supports compliance with the GDPR and similar legislation.

Does GitHub Copilot ever output personal data?

While we've designed GitHub Copilot with privacy in mind, the expansive definition of personal data under legislation like the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) means we can't guarantee it will never output such data. The Large Language Model (LLM) powering GitHub Copilot was trained on public code and there were instances in our tests where the tool made suggestions resembling personal data. These suggestions were typically synthesized and not tied to real individuals.

How does Copilot allow users to access, alter or delete personal data?

Responsible AI

What are the intellectual property considerations when using GitHub Copilot?

The primary IP considerations for GitHub Copilot relate to copyright. The model that powers Copilot is trained on a broad collection of publicly accessible code, which may include copyrighted code, and Copilot’s suggestions (in rare instances) may resemble the code its model was trained on. Here’s some basic information you should know about these considerations:

Copyright law permits the use of copyrighted works to train AI models: Countries around the world have provisions in their copyright laws that enable machines to learn, understand, extract patterns, and facts from copyrighted materials, including software code. For example, the European Union, Japan, and Singapore, have express provisions permitting machine learning to develop AI models. Other countries including Canada, India, and the United States also permit such training under their fair use/fair dealing provisions. GitHub Copilot’s AI model was trained with the use of code from GitHub’s public repositories—which are publicly accessible and within the scope of permissible copyright use.

What about copyright risk in suggestions? In rare instances (less than 1% based on GitHub’s research), suggestions from GitHub may match examples of code used to train GitHub’s AI model. Again, Copilot does not “look up” or “copy and paste” code, but is instead using context from a user’s workspace to synthesize and generate a suggestion.

Our experience shows that matching suggestions are most likely to occur in two situations: (i) when there is little or no context in the code editor for Copilot’s model to synthesize, or (ii) when a matching suggestion represents a common approach or method. If a code suggestion matches existing code, there is risk that using that suggestion could trigger claims of copyright infringement, which would depend on the amount and nature of code used, and the context of how the code is used. In many ways, this is the same risk that arises when using any code that a developer does not originate, such as copying code from an online source, or reusing code from a library. That is why responsible organizations and developers recommend that users employ code scanning policies to identify and evaluate potential matching code.

In Copilot, you can opt whether to allow Copilot to suggest code completions that match publicly available code on GitHub.com. For more information, see "Configuring GitHub Copilot settings on GitHub.com". If you have allowed suggestions that match public code, GitHub Copilot can provide you with details about the matching code when you accept such suggestions. Matching code does not necessarily mean copyright infringement, so it is ultimately up to the user to determine whether to use the suggestion, and what and who to attribute (along with other license compliance) in appropriate circumstances.

Does GitHub Copilot include a filtering mechanism to mitigate risk?

Yes, GitHub Copilot does include an optional code referencing filter to detect and suppress certain suggestions that match public code on GitHub.

Does GitHub Copilot include features to make it easier for users to identify potentially relevant open source licenses for matching suggestions?

Yes, GitHub Copilot is previewing a code referencing feature as an additional tool to assist users to find and review potentially relevant open source licenses. Code referencing is currently available in Visual Studio Code. This feature searches across public GitHub repositories for code that matches a Copilot suggestion. If there’s a match, users will find its information displayed in the Copilot console log, including where the match occurred, any applicable licenses, and a deep link to learn more. The deep link will take users to a navigable page on GitHub.com to browse examples of the code match and their repository licenses, and see how many repositories—including ones without licenses—that code appears in, as well as links to those repositories. Copilot users can review this information to determine whether the applicable suggestions are suitable for use, and whether additional measures may be necessary to use them.

Who owns the suggestions provided by GitHub Copilot?

We don’t determine whether a suggestion is capable of being owned, but we are clear that GitHub does not claim ownership of a suggestion. Whether a suggestion generated by an AI model can be owned depends on many factors (e.g. the intellectual property law in the relevant country, the length of the suggestion, the extent that suggestion is considered ‘functional’ instead of expressive, etc).

Can GitHub Copilot introduce insecure code in its suggestions?

Public code may contain insecure coding patterns, bugs, or references to outdated APIs or idioms. When GitHub Copilot synthesizes code suggestions based on this data, it can also synthesize code that contains these undesirable patterns. Copilot has filters in place that either block or notify users of insecure code patterns that are detected in Copilot suggestions. These filters target the most common vulnerable coding patterns, including hardcoded credentials, SQL injections, and path injections. Additionally, in recent years we’ve provided tools such as GitHub Advanced Security, GitHub Actions, Dependabot, and CodeQL to open source projects to help improve code quality. Of course, you should always use GitHub Copilot together with good testing and code review practices and security tools, as well as your own judgment.

Is GitHub Copilot intended to fully automate code generation and replace developers?

No. Copilot is a tool intended to make developers more efficient. It’s not intended to replace developers, who should continue to apply the same sorts of safeguards and diligence they would apply with regard to any third-party code of unknown origin.

Can GitHub Copilot users simply use suggestions without concern?

Not necessarily. GitHub Copilot users should align their use of Copilot with their respective risk tolerances.

Does GitHub Copilot support accessibility features?

We are conducting internal testing of GitHub Copilot’s ease of use by developers with disabilities and working to ensure that GitHub Copilot is accessible to all developers. Please feel free to share your feedback on GitHub Copilot accessibility in our feedback forum.

Does GitHub Copilot produce offensive outputs?

GitHub Copilot includes filters to block offensive language in the prompts and to avoid synthesizing suggestions in sensitive contexts. We continue to work on improving the filter system to more intelligently detect and remove offensive outputs. If you see offensive outputs, please report them directly to copilot-safety@github.com so that we can improve our safeguards. GitHub takes this challenge very seriously and we are committed to addressing it.

Will GitHub Copilot work as well using languages other than English?

Given public sources are predominantly in English, GitHub Copilot will likely work less well in scenarios where natural language prompts provided by the developer are not in English and/or are grammatically incorrect. Therefore, non-English speakers might experience a lower quality of service.

What data has GitHub Copilot been trained on?

GitHub Copilot is powered by generative AI models developed by GitHub, OpenAI, and Microsoft. It has been trained on natural language text and source code from publicly available sources, including code in public repositories on GitHub.

  1. Data from June 2023. Additional research can be found here.
  2. Feature in public beta for Copilot Pro and Business plans. Requires use of repositories, issues, discussions, Actions, and other features of GitHub.
  3. Authentication with SAML single sign-on (SSO) available for organizations using GitHub Enterprise Cloud.

General

What is GitHub Copilot?

GitHub Copilot transforms the developer experience. Backed by the leaders in AI, Copilot provides contextualized assistance throughout the software development lifecycle, from code completions and chat assistance in the IDE to code explanations and answers to docs in GitHub and more. With Copilot elevating their workflow, developers can focus on more: value, innovation, and happiness.

GitHub Copilot enables developers to focus more energy on problem solving and collaboration and spend less effort on the mundane and boilerplate. That’s why developers who use Copilot report up to 75% higher satisfaction with their jobs than those who don’t and are up to 55% more productive at writing code without sacrifice to quality, which all adds up to engaged developers shipping great software faster.

GitHub Copilot integrates with leading editors, including Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, and Neovim, and, unlike other AI coding assistants, is natively built into GitHub. Growing to millions of individual users and tens of thousands of business customers, Copilot is the world’s most widely adopted AI developer tool and the competitive advantage developers ask for by name.

Who is eligible to access GitHub Copilot for free?

GitHub Copilot Free is a new free pricing tier with limited functionality for individual developers. Users assigned a Copilot Business or Copilot Enterprise seat are not eligible for access. Users with access to Copilot Pro through a paid subscription, trial, or through an existing verified OSS, Student, Faculty, or MVP account may elect to use Free instead.

What languages, IDEs, and platforms does GitHub Copilot support?

GitHub Copilot is trained on all languages that appear in public repositories. For each language, the quality of suggestions you receive may depend on the volume and diversity of training data for that language. For example, JavaScript is well-represented in public repositories and is one of GitHub Copilot’s best supported languages. Languages with less representation in public repositories may produce fewer or less robust suggestions.

GitHub Copilot is available as an extension in Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, Vim, Neovim, the JetBrains suite of IDEs, and Azure Data Studio. Although code completion functionality is available across all these extensions, chat functionality is currently available only in Visual Studio Code, JetBrains and Visual Studio. GitHub Copilot is also supported in terminals through GitHub CLI and as a chat integration in Windows Terminal Canary. With the GitHub Copilot Enterprise plan, GitHub Copilot is natively integrated into GitHub.com. All plans are supported in GitHub Copilot in GitHub Mobile. GitHub Mobile for Copilot Pro and Copilot Business have access to Bing and public repository code search. Copilot Enterprise in GitHub Mobile gives you additional access to your organization's knowledge.

Does GitHub Copilot “copy/paste”?

No, GitHub Copilot generates suggestions using probabilistic determination.

What are the differences between the GitHub Copilot Business, GitHub Copilot Enterprise, and GitHub Copilot Individual plans?

GitHub Copilot has multiple offerings for organizations and an offering for individual developers. All the offerings include both code completion and chat assistance. The primary differences between the organization offerings and the individual offering are license management, policy management, and IP indemnity.

Organizations can choose between GitHub Copilot Business and GitHub Copilot Enterprise. GitHub Copilot Business primarily features GitHub Copilot in the coding environment - that is the IDE, CLI and GitHub Mobile. GitHub Copilot Enterprise includes everything in GitHub Copilot Business. It also adds an additional layer of customization for organizations and integrates into GitHub.com as a chat interface to allow developers to converse with Copilot throughout the platform. GitHub Copilot Enterprise can index an organization’s codebase for a deeper understanding of the customer’s knowledge for more tailored suggestions and will offer customers access to fine-tuned custom, private models for code completion.

GitHub Copilot Individual is designed for individual developers, freelancers, students, educators, and open source maintainers. The plan includes all the features of GitHub Copilot Business except organizational license management, policy management, and IP indemnity.

What data has GitHub Copilot been trained on?

GitHub Copilot is powered by generative AI models developed by GitHub, OpenAI, and Microsoft. It has been trained on natural language text and source code from publicly available sources, including code in public repositories on GitHub.

Which plan includes GitHub Copilot Autofix?

GitHub Copilot Autofix provides contextual explanations and code suggestions to help developers fix vulnerabilities in code, and is included in GitHub Advanced Security.

What if I do not want Copilot?

Copilot is entirely optional and requires you to opt in before gaining access. You can easily configure its usage directly in the editor, enabling or disabling it at any time. Additionally, you have control over which file types Copilot is active for.

How do I control access to Copilot in my company?

Access to Copilot Business and Enterprise is managed by your GitHub Administrator. They can control access to preview features, models, and set Copilot policies for your organization. Additionally, you can use your network firewall to explicitly allow access to Copilot Business and/or block access to Copilot Pro or Free. For more details, refer to the documentation.

  1. Authentication with SAML single sign-on (SSO) available for organizations using GitHub Enterprise Cloud.