Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot, one of the most widely used AI coding tools, could potentially become costlier for many developers as the tech giant explores new pricing structures tied to usage.
The Windows-maker is set to switch its billing system for GitHub Copilot from a flat subscription rate to a token-usage system, according to a report by TechCrunch. This means that users will be charged based on how many tokens they burn through as they work instead of a low flat rate based on requests.
The change is expected to happen from Monday, June 1, onwards. It is unlikely to affect large enterprises by much. However, smaller firms and developers could potentially be billed at a significantly higher rate as they struggle to balance the monthly of AI usage.
In January this year, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that GitHub Copilot has amassed , up by 75 per cent year-over-year. More recently, the company cancelled Claude Code licences for several of its employees in an effort to push them toward using the Copilot CLI instead, as per a report by The Verge.
With its shift to token-based pricing, Microsoft is following rivals such as Anthropic, whose Claude Code has adopted a similar model. As companies increasingly push employees to use AI tools more extensively, a trend dubbed as ‘tokenmaxxing’, rising AI token consumption is emerging as a cost burden for enterprises, some of which are looking to offset this through layoffs.
In recent days, several developers have taken to social media platforms such as Reddit and X to bemoan the potentially drastic escalation in cost of using GitHub Copilot. “What a joke. This new usage model is just stupidly expensive. I’m adjusting mine by cancelling. At that cost, it is no longer cost-effective or useful in any practical way,” said a Reddit user, who claimed that they currently only pay $29 per month, and that the new rate will increase their costs to nearly $750 a month.
Another Reddit user posted a screenshot which appeared to show that their costs had shot up from around $50 to some $3,000. “WOW, didn’t expect new pricing model to be this ridiculous,” they said.
However, some Copilot users have argued that only ‘vibe coders’, rather than experienced developers, are likely to burn through so many tokens to face significantly higher costs.
“The vast difference between some of us working all day and still barely having overage and then these screenshots. I struggle to believe it’s complexity differences in the workload. The only way it gets crazy like that is if you are purely ‘vibe coding’ with a ton of bloated iterations,” one user said. “It’s pretty affordable for even small outfits if used as a tool, on pretty much any provider,” they added.
In response, others have argued that developers have every reason to be frustrated since Microsoft spent years encouraging heavy use of GitHub Copilot only to now pull back on those expectations.
“To all the people blaming…the people who actually used the system the way that Microsoft built it (and even encouraged it to be used this way), honestly the only one at fault here is Microsoft. Microsoft provided this billing method and they kept making it easier and easier to burn through massive numbers of tokens on single premium requests that could churn for hours or even days while spawning dozens or even hundreds of sub-agents,” one user wrote.
