Starting December 2, 2025, GitHub will remove the automatic $0 budgets that many organizations relied on to block overage charges for GitHub Copilot premium requests. If you’re on Copilot Business or Copilot Enterprise and your account was created before August 22, 2025, this change likely affects you. Individuals on Pro or Pro+ are not impacted by the $0 budget removal, but org admins still need to confirm policies and usage caps. This is a good change for flexibility—if you prepare. If you don’t, your first week of December might come with unexpected spend.
Here’s the thing: this isn’t about turning Copilot off. It’s about setting a sane policy and knowing what a “premium request” costs, how they’re counted, and the safeguards you can enable today. Let’s get practical.
What exactly is changing on December 2?
For many enterprise and team accounts created before August 22, 2025, GitHub is removing the legacy account-level $0 Copilot premium request budget on December 2. After that, premium request usage will be governed by your premium request paid usage policy—a setting you control per enterprise or organization. You can either:
• Enable paid usage (allow overages beyond your included monthly premium requests), or
• Disable paid usage (block premium requests once your included monthly amount is exhausted).
Why the change? GitHub is moving toward clearer, SKU-based tracking and simpler policy control. Dedicated SKUs are rolling out for specific AI tools (for example, the coding agent), making it easier to allocate, monitor, and charge back usage per capability.
Bottom line: the protective “$0 and forget it” default goes away for many orgs. Your policy toggle becomes the source of truth.
What are premium requests, and how are they counted?
Think of premium requests as a monthly allowance tied to advanced Copilot features and higher-end models. Typical numbers you’ll see today:
• Copilot Pro: 300 monthly premium requests per user
• Copilot Pro+: 1,500 monthly premium requests per user
• Copilot Business: 300 monthly premium requests per user
• Copilot Enterprise: 1,000 monthly premium requests per user
Allowances reset on the 1st of each month. If users exhaust their included amount and you’ve enabled paid usage, additional premium requests are charged on a metered basis (pay‑as‑you‑go), with pricing that starts at a few cents per request depending on the tool and model. Importantly, GitHub standardized the coding agent to count as one premium request per session. That makes forecasting far easier than the early preview days where consumption varied widely.
Included agent/chat usage with baseline models is still part of your Copilot seat; premium requests kick in when you invoke select features or models that sit above the included tier. Your IDE indicator and org-level usage reports show real-time counters—use them.
Who needs to act right now?
Three groups:
• Enterprise or organization accounts created before August 22, 2025 that still rely on a $0 premium request budget. On December 2, that $0 budget will be removed and your paid usage policy will take over.
• Any org with the premium request paid usage policy set to Enabled but without a meaningful budget cap or monitoring. You may be fine—but verify before the change lands.
• Teams piloting the coding agent or using higher-end models. These teams are most likely to hit the included allowance and incur overages.
If you’re an individual on Copilot Pro or Pro+, you’re not affected by the Dec 2 budget removal. Still, the same discipline applies: track usage, understand your monthly allowance, and decide whether pay‑as‑you‑go makes sense.
“We’re busy—what’s the minimum we must do?”
If you only have 30 minutes before the change, do this:
• Open Copilot Admin → Billing or Policies for each enterprise and org.
• Decide the premium request paid usage policy for each: Enabled (allow charges) or Disabled (block when included usage is exhausted).
• If Enabled, set a budget or internal threshold that finance can live with for December.
• Confirm whether the coding agent is enabled and for whom; align the policy with that rollout.
• Turn on usage reporting and alerts. Make someone on the engineering ops or FinOps team the owner.
That’s the line between “we saw a spike and handled it” and “we learned about it from the corporate card.”
How GitHub Copilot premium requests map to real cost
Let’s do a quick model you can adapt. Assume Copilot Enterprise with 500 active users and a 1,000 premium requests per-user monthly allowance. That’s 500,000 included premium requests per month. If you run a targeted coding agent rollout to 100 developers doing two agent sessions per business day, that’s roughly 4,000–4,400 premium requests per month just for the agent. Add sporadic premium model usage across the wider team (say 10,000 requests). You’re still well within your included 500,000.
The risk isn’t typical usage—it’s unexpected spikes. Examples: a production incident triggers heavy agent sessions for a week; a team enables a premium model in CI or documentation workflows; or a new internal tool starts invoking premium APIs by default. Those can eat allowances fast. If paid usage is enabled and uncapped, that’s how you get bill shock.
Dec 2 Playbook: a 12‑step cutover checklist
Run this once per enterprise or org. Time-box it to an hour if you must.
1) Confirm scope. List every enterprise and organization you administer. Don’t forget sandboxes.
2) Check current setting. In Copilot policies, note whether the premium request paid usage policy is Enabled or Disabled.
3) Decide guardrails. If you enable paid usage, define a monthly budget for December. If you disable, set expectations with teams that premium features stop at the allowance boundary.
4) Map usage. Pull the last 60–90 days of premium request usage by team and user. Identify top consumers and the features they use (e.g., coding agent).
5) Right-size rollout. If you’re piloting the agent, scope it to a named cohort and document the success criteria and cap.
6) Align with finance. Share the December and January forecast. State the maximum exposure under current settings.
7) Configure alerts. Turn on usage notifications at 50%, 75%, 90%, and 100% of allowance and at budget thresholds. Route to the same channel your on-call leads watch.
8) Lock IDE defaults. Ensure IDE extensions are on the approved channel and not enabling premium features by default for unintended users.
9) Tag usage. Take advantage of the dedicated SKUs GitHub is rolling out (for example, the coding agent). This helps chargeback later.
10) Document policy. One page: what’s enabled, who’s allowed to exceed, and the process to request temporary increases.
11) Educate the cohort. Two slides: “What counts as a premium request” and “How to check your counter.”
12) Recheck on Dec 3. Verify usage since the switch and adjust caps before the first full workweek of December.
People also ask: will individuals be charged automatically?
No. Pro and Pro+ users are not part of the Dec 2 budget removal for orgs. Individuals can opt into pay‑as‑you‑go beyond their included allowance, and the default remains safe. Still, if you’re a consultant or contractor on a client’s enterprise, your usage may be governed by their policy. Ask.
Does the coding agent change how much we’ll spend?
It can. The good news is that a coding agent session now counts as a single premium request, which is predictable. The gotcha is session frequency. Agents are sticky—when they’re good, developers delegate more. If you greenlight the agent for a large cohort, monitor adoption in the first two weeks and be ready to tune policies and caps.
Do we need a PO or budget before December 2?
That’s a business process question, but here’s a practical pattern: set paid usage to Disabled for December while you finalize a purchase order, then open a small, controlled budget in January for the pilot cohorts. If your teams are already constrained by the included allowance, you can enable paid usage with a tiny cap (for example, $200) and review every Friday.
Forecast template you can copy
Use this lightweight spreadsheet model to set expectations with finance and leadership:
Inputs:
• Seats per plan (Pro/Pro+, Business, Enterprise).
• Allowance per seat (e.g., 300, 1,500, 300, 1,000).
• Average premium requests per active developer per workday (split by cohort: “agent pilot,” “advanced models,” “baseline”).
• Workdays per month (20–22).
• Overage price per request (start with a conservative per‑request estimate appropriate to your plan and region).
Outputs:
• Included allowance total (sum of seats × allowance).
• Forecast consumption (sum over cohorts).
• Overage forecast = max(Forecast consumption − Included allowance, 0) × per‑request price.
• Sensitivity (+/− 25% usage). This is where you learn what a “busy month” costs.
Pro tip: keep the per‑request price assumption explicit and up to date. As GitHub introduces dedicated SKUs for tools, the effective mix may shift. Don’t bury that number in a formula; put it in a labeled cell anyone can see.
Governance: policies, SKUs, and telemetry that actually stick
Strong Copilot governance is light-touch and observable. Here’s what works in practice:
• Make the premium request paid usage policy explicit per org. If you’re a multi-org enterprise, copy settings isn’t enough—audit them quarterly.
• Use dedicated SKUs where available (coding agent is the obvious one). Tag them to cost centers in your internal ledger.
• Wire usage events into your analytics stack. Even a CSV drop to your data lake is enough to drive weekly dashboards.
• Add an access request workflow for premium features. A simple form with manager approval and a cost center lowers surprises.
• Treat December as an observation month. The switch happens on December 2; your first full workweek is a great time to sanity-check the slope.
If your organization is formalizing an AI operating mode, our piece on what to change when AI modes shift pairs well with this governance approach—same muscle, different vendor.
Edge cases and gotchas
• Multiple orgs under one enterprise: the Dec 2 change applies at the account level. Don’t assume one policy cascades everywhere—verify.
• Month boundary: allowances reset on December 1. The removal of $0 budgets lands on December 2, meaning your counters are near zero. That’s good, but it can hide runaway usage until mid‑month. Watch week one closely.
• IDE defaults: power users often switch to models that consume premium requests without telling anyone. Lock extension channels and publish a one‑pager on “safe defaults.”
• CI or doc tooling: if you’ve scripted Copilot interactions in pipelines or docs tooling, confirm whether those calls consume premium requests and under which identity they’re billed.
• Contractors: ensure external contributors fall under the intended policy. If they’re on your enterprise seats, they follow your policy; if they’re on personal plans, they follow theirs.
A fast implementation framework for teams
Use this five-part framework to roll out without drama:
1) Policy: pick Enabled with cap or Disabled by org. Document it in your runbook.
2) People: nominate an EngOps/FinOps owner and a deputy. They get the alerts.
3) Process: weekly 15‑minute review until January. Look at consumption slope, cohort adoption, and requests for policy change.
4) Platform: enable dedicated SKUs, tag usage, and standardize IDE settings.
5) Proof: agree on success metrics—time-to-fix for common tasks, PR throughput, or incident MTTR—so finance sees ROI, not just a bill.
If you need a partner to stand this up quickly, our what we do page explains how we help teams ship safely with AI at the core, and our blog covers related playbooks you can adapt.
Data you can bring to leadership this week
• The switch date: December 2, 2025.
• Affected cohort: enterprise and org accounts created before August 22, 2025 with legacy $0 budgets.
• Not affected: individuals on Pro/Pro+ for the budget removal; their defaults remain safe unless they opt into pay‑as‑you‑go.
• Allowance examples: Pro 300, Pro+ 1,500, Business 300, Enterprise 1,000 monthly premium requests per user.
• Counting model: coding agent = one premium request per session.
With those five bullets and a one‑page forecast, you can get fast alignment from finance and product leadership.
What if we just disable paid usage entirely?
That’s a valid choice for December if you’re still negotiating a PO or you want to observe demand. The tradeoff is usability: once teams hit their included allowance, premium features stop. If you take this path, identify the users most impacted (agent pilots, LLM‑powered doc tooling) and schedule a check‑in for the first Friday after the switch. Be ready to open a small cap to unblock them.
What to do next (today)
• Confirm your premium request paid usage policy per org and enterprise.
• Decide: Disabled for December, or Enabled with a conservative cap.
• Lock IDE defaults and document which features consume premium requests.
• Turn on usage alerts and route them to a monitored channel.
• Share a one‑page forecast and exposure cap with finance.
If you want the deep dive behind the change itself, read our earlier explainer: why GitHub is changing premium request budgets on Dec 2. If you need a second set of hands to implement the checklist, reach out via our contact page. And if Copilot is part of a broader platform modernization, our services page shows how we connect AI tooling to secure, scalable delivery.
Zooming out: why this is good for teams who prepare
GitHub moving to predictable accounting for premium features is healthy. It aligns cost with specific capabilities (like the coding agent), gives you a clean on/off switch for overages, and lets you budget precisely. The organizations that benefit will do two simple things: make an explicit policy choice and watch the early data. The ones who struggle will be the ones who assumed the old $0 guardrail would stick around forever.
Take the hour. Set the policy. Ship with confidence into December.
