GitHub celebrates reaching 150M developers with a Copilot free tier
GitHub has launched a free version of its AI coding assistant Copilot with limited monthly completions and chat messages, aiming to expand access to AI programming tools as part of its mission to reach one billion developers worldwide.
Continuing its commitment to expanding access to its products and services by offering them free, GitHub recently announced GitHub Copilot Free, a new tier thought for occasional users that provides access to Copilot's pair programming capabilities free of charge, albeit with some limitations. Github Copilot Free includes 2000 code completions and 50 chat messages monthly. Developers should keep in mind that all completions count towards that limit, regardless of whether the completions are accepted or not. The free tier also limits the eligible models developers can work with to Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet or OpenAI’s GPT-4o model; paid tiers can select models such as OpenAI o1, and Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro.
Other significant departures from Copilot's paid tiers include the lack of AI-generated summaries for pull requests, issues, and discussions; preview features like the upgrade assistant for Java in VS Code, Copilot Workspace in pull requests, code review in GitHub; and the technical preview access to Copilot Workspace. Lastly, GitHub Copilot Free is unavailable as a mobile experience, or in the GitHub CLI and Windows Terminal—the tier only works in github.com and the supported editors and IDEs. However, it must be noted that it is still a solid offering, considering it includes many of the paid features available to Pro, Business, and Enterprise users at no cost.
GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke frames this move as part of the company's mission to enable one billion developers worldwide by lowering the barrier of entry to software development. With the GitHub Copilot Free launch, the company aims to follow through on this commitment by making the product more accessible in regions where the $10 monthly fee for a Pro subscription represents a significant expense. Dohmke also stated that GitHub hopes the launch will encourage more students to use the coding assistant. Students and educators can obtain an unlimited Copilot Pro account, but they must complete a verification process that confirms their status to claim the benefit.
