Copilot promotional credits ended September 1, 2026
Existing Copilot Business and Enterprise customers ran on an enlarged AI credit allowance from the start of usage-based billing on June 1, 2026. That promotion ended on September 1, 2026, and GitHub's billing documentation now publishes the standard allowance alone. Included credits fell by 37% per Business seat and 44% per Enterprise seat, and nothing about your usage had to change for the bill to move. Rates and allowances verified against GitHub's billing docs on 2026-10-12.
What changes per seat
| Plan | Until Aug 31 | From Sep 1 | Lost headroom | Worth |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Copilot Business | 3,000 credits/user | 1,900 credits/user | -1,100 (37%) | $11/user/mo |
| Copilot Enterprise | 7,000 credits/user | 3,900 credits/user | -3,100 (44%) | $31/user/mo |
The promotion applies to existing customers only; organizations that adopted Copilot after June 1, 2026 already run on the standard allowance. Credits pool at the billing entity, so the cut lands on the pool, not on individual seats.
What the lost headroom bought
In daily-coding requests (12K input tokens, half cached, 1.5K output, auto model selection on), the credits each seat loses cover roughly this much work per month:
Copilot Business: 1,100 credits
- GPT-5.4 mini ~1,044 requests
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 ~288 requests
- Claude Fable 5 ~86 requests
Copilot Enterprise: 3,100 credits
- GPT-5.4 mini ~2,943 requests
- Claude Sonnet 4.6 ~814 requests
- Claude Fable 5 ~244 requests
Worst-case exposure by team size
If every seat used the full promotional allowance and usage stays flat, the September overage bill is the lost headroom times $0.01 per credit:
| Seats | Copilot Business | Copilot Enterprise |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | up to $55/mo | up to $155/mo |
| 10 | up to $110/mo | up to $310/mo |
| 25 | up to $275/mo | up to $775/mo |
| 50 | up to $550/mo | up to $1,550/mo |
| 100 | up to $1,100/mo | up to $3,100/mo |
An upper bound, not a forecast: seats that stayed inside the standard allowance all along see no change at all. Your real exposure is your August usage minus the standard pool.
What to check now the cut has landed
- Pull your credit usage from the billing usage page and compare the per-user average against the standard allowance (1,900 on Business, 3,900 on Enterprise). The gap, times $0.01, is your overage at the standard allowance.
- Set the overage policy: a monthly budget that allows pay-as-you-go at $0.01 per credit, or a hard stop when the pool runs out. Silence defaults to one of these, and the promotion ended on a billing reset date, so the change landed at full force on day one.
- Check the model mix. Lightweight models cost a fraction of the credits of powerful ones per request, and auto model selection takes 10% off. The GitHub AI credits calculator prices your team's workload against the standard allowance per model.
FAQ
- When did Copilot promotional credits end?
- On September 1, 2026. Existing Copilot Business and Enterprise customers received a higher included AI credit allowance for the first three months of usage-based billing (June 1 to September 1, 2026): 3,000 credits per user on Business and 7,000 on Enterprise. Since September, included credits are the standard 1,900 and 3,900 per user, which is what GitHub's billing documentation published when this page was last verified.
- How many AI credits do Business and Enterprise get after September 1, 2026?
- The standard amounts: 1,900 credits per Copilot Business user and 3,900 per Copilot Enterprise user, pooled at the billing entity. That is 37% less than the promotional Business allowance and 44% less on Enterprise.
- Does the September change affect Copilot Pro, Pro+, or Max?
- No. The promotion applied only to existing Business and Enterprise customers. Individual plans keep their published allowances: 1,500 credits on Pro, 7,000 on Pro+, 20,000 on Max.
- What happens if our team keeps using the same amount of credits?
- Usage beyond the included pool bills at $0.01 per credit, if your organization has a budget that allows overage; otherwise premium usage stops until the next monthly reset. A seat that used the full promotional allowance costs up to $11 (Business) or $31 (Enterprise) extra per month at unchanged usage.