Copilot Premium Requests: Dec 2 Changes, Now What?

On December 2, 2025, GitHub began removing legacy $0 budgets on many enterprise and team accounts. That flips how Copilot premium requests are controlled: your “premium request paid usage policy” now governs whether overage is allowed or blocked, not a static $0 budget. And because monthly allowances reset on the first of each month, the change hit right after the December 1 reset—catching a lot of admins mid‑cycle.

What exactly changed on December 2?

GitHub is removing account‑level $0 budgets for enterprise and org accounts created before August 22, 2025. When that $0 budget disappears, paid usage for premium requests is no longer blocked by default. Instead, your premium request paid usage policy determines whether users can incur charges beyond the monthly allowance. If the policy is Disabled, requests beyond the allowance are blocked. If it’s Enabled, overage is allowed up to any budgets you’ve set above $0 (or uncapped if you didn’t set a cap).

Who is not affected? Individuals on Copilot Pro and Pro+ still default to a $0 budget. The removal targets enterprise and team accounts with the old account‑level $0 cap.

Why this change is happening (and why now)

GitHub has been marching toward a policy‑based, SKU‑aware model all year. A quick timeline you can share with finance and engineering leadership:

• June 18, 2025: Monthly allowances for premium requests became enforced across paid plans. Allowances reset on the 1st of each month.
• August 22, 2025: Premium request paid usage policy (Enabled/Disabled) reached general availability for Business and Enterprise.
• November 2025: Dedicated premium request SKUs began rolling out for distinct AI tools (for example, the coding agent and Spark) so you can track and budget per feature.
• December 2, 2025: Removal of legacy account‑level $0 budgets began for eligible enterprise/team accounts.

Here’s the thing: the old $0 cap didn’t scale with multiple AI features and SKUs. As GitHub splits features into their own billable buckets, policy‑first control and per‑SKU budgeting is cleaner than juggling a pile of $0 caps.

Copilot premium requests: what counts and what doesn’t?

Premium requests are billable interactions that hit certain advanced models or features beyond what’s covered in your base plan. The specifics vary by model and feature, and GitHub may adjust which actions count over time. Code completions remain unlimited on paid plans (with rate limits), and interactive chat/agent features are included with allowances. The paid portion kicks in when you go beyond that monthly allocation for premium requests.

Two practical implications for engineering managers:

1. Heavy users will cluster. Expect a power‑law distribution: 10–20% of your developers will consume the majority of premium requests. Those are the folks to monitor early.
2. Features drive cost spikes. Large prompts, long‑running agent sessions, and newly enabled tools tend to increase request counts. Launches that expand access can shift the curve overnight.

Will Dec 2 create surprise bills?

It depends on your policy state. If your premium request paid usage policy is Disabled, overage is blocked and you can sleep tonight. If it’s Enabled and you haven’t set a sane budget above $0, your org can incur charges as soon as heavy users exhaust the allowance—often in the first week of the month.

We’ve already seen the same pattern across clients: the first month after allowances reset and policies take precedence is the messiest. Admins discover a few power users chew through their allocation quickly. The good news: this is manageable with basic guardrails and comms.

The 45‑minute admin drill to stabilize December

If you only have an hour today, run this sequence. It’s the fastest way to keep developers productive without letting spend run away.

1) Confirm your policy and budget state (10 minutes)

In Copilot admin settings, find the premium request paid usage policy. Set it to Disabled if leadership wants a hard stop on overage in December. If access must stay uninterrupted, set Enabled and configure a monthly budget that’s appropriate for the month’s remaining weeks. Remember: allowances reset on the 1st, not mid‑month.

2) Pull usage reports and sort by outliers (10 minutes)

Download the usage report and sort users by premium requests consumed. Identify the top 10% by volume. Assign an engineering lead to talk to those folks today: what features are they using, which workflows are essential, and where can you trim?

3) Set a budget ladder (10 minutes)

Give yourself safety rails:

• Block: policy Disabled, no overage (use when finance wants a freeze).
• Cap: policy Enabled with a modest budget above $0 (use when you must keep access but avoid runaway costs).
• Watch: keep alerts at 75%/90%/100% and analyze daily.
• Expand: raise the cap for teams with clear ROI (after a quick review).

4) Communicate the ground rules (15 minutes)

Send a short note to engineering: allowances reset on the first; premium requests are a shared resource; and overage may be blocked or capped. Share a form for exceptions and a weekly update with the current usage heatmap. Clear guardrails avoid the “why did my agent stop?” tickets.

How dedicated SKUs change your budgeting

With dedicated SKUs, you can budget per AI tool rather than lumping everything together. That matters because different features exhibit different usage patterns and business value. For example, an agent that drafts refactors may consume requests in predictable bursts, whereas a doc‑analysis feature might be spiky during planning cycles.

Move to per‑SKU budgets where the spend is justified by measurable outcomes (faster PR turnaround, fewer defects, or improved ticket closure times). Keep a general budget for exploratory features and a stricter cap for new rollouts until you have data.

People also ask: common questions we’re hearing

Do Copilot premium requests reset monthly?

Yes. The monthly allowance resets on the 1st of each month. That’s why the December 2 change was jarring—many teams had just reset usage.

How do I prevent any overage right now?

Set the premium request paid usage policy to Disabled. That blocks charges after the allowance is consumed. If you need selective access, enable the policy but set a low budget and review exceptions weekly.

Is this only about budgets? What about rate limits?

Budgets and allowances gate how many billable requests you permit. Rate limits are separate guardrails applied by GitHub per model or feature to preserve system health. You can hit a rate limit even if you’ve budget left, and vice versa.

Do Pro or Pro+ users need to change anything?

Individuals on Pro or Pro+ aren’t included in the December 2 removal. They continue to default to a $0 budget unless they raise it themselves.

Cost control that won’t torpedo developer flow

Blunt blocks create shadow tooling. A better pattern is progressive enablement:

1. Start small: Enable premium requests for a pilot team with a shared budget. Track impact on lead time for changes and MTTR.
2. Measure outcomes: Tie spend to KPIs: time to green PR, bug escape rate, adoption of large refactors.
3. Gate features: Not every team needs every AI feature. Enable agents where the workflow is stable and ROI is measurable.
4. Automate alerts: Pipe the 75%/90%/100% notifications into a Slack channel that engineering and finance can see.

In our client work, the highest ROI appears in code review, test authoring, and safe refactors—tasks with clear acceptance criteria. That’s where premium requests earn their keep.

A practical framework: the ABCs of Copilot spend

Use this weekly rubric to keep budgets dialed without micro‑managing every team.

A — Assess

Every Friday, run a one‑page report: requests used vs. allowance, budget burn, top users by delta vs. prior week. Flag anomalies (for example, a tool rollout you forgot to budget for).

B — Bound

Set bounds where the data is noisy: cap per‑SKU budgets for new features; leave room where usage is predictable. If a team’s burn fluctuates by more than 50% week‑to‑week, they’re still learning—cap and revisit.

C — Communicate

Publish a short weekly note: what changed, who’s at risk of hitting limits, and which teams earned more capacity. Engineers hate surprise stoppages; proactive comms defuse tension.

What good looks like by January 2026

By the first January reset, aim for three outcomes:

• Policy clarity: Org‑wide understanding of when overage is allowed vs. blocked.
• Per‑SKU budgets for critical features: Agents and any high‑impact tools get their own caps and alerts.
• Usage transparency: Team and individual dashboards that highlight outliers without shaming them.

When those guardrails are in place, teams stop worrying about the meter and focus on shipping. Finance still gets predictability. Everyone wins.

Edge cases and gotchas

Some nuances we’ve run into while tuning policies for clients:

• Partial‑month budgeting: If you raise a budget mid‑month, it applies immediately. Don’t forget to revisit on the next reset—you may be over‑provisioned.
• New SKUs silently increasing burn: When a new feature rolls out org‑wide, your consolidated budget may hide the spike. Move heavy users to a per‑SKU cap early.
• “Unlimited” isn’t infinite: Paid plans include unlimited code completions and chat/agent baseline usage, but practical rate limits still apply. Users can feel “slowed” even with budget left.
• Team changes: Onboarding waves (interns, new squads) skew estimates. Temporarily boost caps, then ratchet back.

How this affects procurement and finance

Procurement wants forecastable costs; engineering wants frictionless tools. The bridge is a rolling forecast anchored on your top users and per‑SKU caps. Treat premium requests like any other metered cloud resource: apply cost centers, tag your budgets, and review variance weekly. As your data stabilizes, move from monthly to quarterly targets and negotiate volume where appropriate.

Let’s get practical: a 30‑day plan

If you’re standing up policies in December, here’s a tight plan you can run between now and the January 1 reset.

Week 1: Stabilize

Confirm policy state, set an initial budget ladder, and alert at 75/90/100%. Identify the top 10% users and book 15‑minute calls to understand workflows.

Week 2: Segment

Create per‑SKU budgets for any features with consistent usage. Move the heavy users into a dedicated budget and track outcomes in a lightweight doc.

Week 3: Optimize

Trim slack. If a team doesn’t use a feature for five consecutive days, lower that SKU’s budget and watch for impact. Increase caps where clear ROI shows up.

Week 4: Lock for January

Publish a one‑pager: current policy, per‑SKU caps, and how exceptions are approved. Set up an automated report to ship on the morning of January 1.

Where to go deeper

If you want a prescriptive walk‑through, our Dec 2 Copilot playbook covers exact toggles, recommended cap values, and a template Slack message to announce new guardrails. For leaders who prefer a broader, budget‑first approach, see how to control your Copilot spend now and the 30‑day rollout plan. If you’ve already hit a charge and need to reset expectations, read stopping surprise bills for a triage checklist we use with clients.

Risks if you ignore the change

There are two. First, you either pay more than you intended or block your best developers at the worst possible time. Second, your usage data stays noisy, which makes 2026 budget negotiations harder. It’s far easier to negotiate volume when you can point to stable per‑SKU trends and clear ROI from the teams that use Copilot most.

What to do next (today)

• Open Copilot admin and check your premium request paid usage policy.
• Decide: block overage (Disabled) or allow with a cap (Enabled + budget).
• Download the usage report; identify the top 10% users and talk to them.
• Set 75%/90%/100% alerts to Slack and email.
• Create at least one per‑SKU budget where usage is consistent.

If you want help, our team works with engineering and finance to set these guardrails in one working session. See what we do on our services page or just drop us a note via contacts.

Zooming out

AI usage is settling into the same governance patterns we learned from cloud: start with defaults that are safe, carve out fast lanes for teams that prove value, and turn on the money when the data supports it. Copilot premium requests are just another metered resource. Treat them that way, and the December change becomes a one‑time cleanup—not a recurring fire drill.