As of December 2, 2025, GitHub removed legacy $0 Copilot premium request budgets for enterprise and team accounts created before August 22, 2025. That change shifts control from a static budget to a policy toggle that either allows or blocks paid usage beyond your included monthly allowance. If you haven’t checked your settings yet, you could either be unintentionally blocking work—or quietly racking up charges. Here’s what the switch means, how GitHub Copilot premium requests actually work now, and the exact steps to stay in control. (github.blog)
What exactly changed on December 2, 2025?
For older enterprise and team accounts, GitHub removed automatically created $0 premium request budgets and now governs overage spending with a “Premium request paid usage” policy. Practically, that means if your policy is Enabled and your team exhausts its included monthly premium requests, Copilot will continue working on premium models and features and bill overages at the per-request rate. If your policy is Disabled, Copilot will block premium usage once the allowance is consumed. GitHub also introduced dedicated SKUs for specific AI tools (like coding agent and Spark), improving how you track and cap spend per tool. (github.blog)
By default, enterprises and organizations see “Enabled” as the overage policy, with a clear option to switch to “Disabled” to hard-stop spending. That default matters, especially for teams that assumed $0 budgets would keep guarding the door indefinitely. (github.blog)
GitHub Copilot premium requests: the quick primer
Premium requests are a metered bucket tied to advanced models and certain features. Your allowance resets on the first day of each month at 00:00 UTC. If you go over—and your policy allows it—overages are billed. Here are the current allowances per plan and the per-request price, all in USD: Copilot Free: 50 premium requests/month; Copilot Pro: 300; Copilot Pro+: 1,500; Copilot Business: 300 per user; Copilot Enterprise: 1,000 per user; additional usage: $0.04 per premium request. (docs.github.com)
Paid plans still include unlimited code completions and unlimited chat with the included models (currently GPT‑4.1/4o and GPT‑5 mini), subject to rate limits. The premium bucket is consumed when you choose certain models/features beyond those included. (github.blog)
Model multipliers (and a time-sensitive promo)
Not all premium requests are equal. Many models have a multiplier: 1x for Gemini 2.5 Pro or Claude Sonnet 4/4.5, 0.33x for lighter models like Grok Code Fast 1 or some “mini” models, and higher multipliers for large reasoning models like Claude Opus. Those multipliers determine how many premium requests are deducted per interaction. Example: a single chat using Claude Opus 4.1 with a 10x multiplier will consume 10 premium requests from a paid plan’s allowance. (docs.github.com)
There’s also an immediate wrinkle: Claude Opus 4.5 carries a promotional 1x multiplier through Friday, December 5, 2025—then increases to 3x. If your team is evaluating Opus 4.5 this week, factor that date into your pilots and budgets. (docs.github.com)
What’s actually counted as a premium request?
Beyond model selection in chat, several Copilot features also draw from the premium bucket. For instance, each Copilot Coding Agent session now consumes one premium request, making delegated work more predictable to budget. GitHub Code Review (when Copilot is assigned as a reviewer) and tools like Spark or Copilot CLI may also consume premium requests, sometimes with their own fixed rates or model multipliers. Check the feature’s docs as you plan workflows and quotas. (github.blog)
Why this matters right now
Three reasons. First, the $0 budget safety net is gone for many orgs, and the policy default is permissive. Second, premium models and agents are becoming central to day-to-day work—Gemini 2.5 Pro landed in Copilot for paying tiers earlier this year, and teams are leaning on agentic flows far more than in 2024. Third, GitHub is shifting to per-tool SKUs so finance and platform teams can treat Copilot more like cloud infrastructure: taggable, reportable, and accountable. (github.blog)
30-minute admin checklist to prevent surprise bills
If you do nothing else today, do this:
- Decide your stance: Open your enterprise or org settings and locate “Premium request paid usage.” Choose Disabled to block all overage, or Enabled with budgets to cap it. If you’re mid-quarter, default to Disabled until finance signs off. (docs.github.com)
- Create or update budgets: Use a Bundled premium requests budget for simplicity, or per-SKU budgets if you want tighter control (e.g., separate caps for coding agent vs. Spark). Ensure “Stop usage when budget limit is reached” is on if your goal is hard-stop. (docs.github.com)
- Download usage reports: Identify heavy users and top features, then right-size allowances by org/team. Make this a weekly task for the next month. (docs.github.com)
- Set alerts: If your finance tooling doesn’t pull Copilot data yet, start with manual checks plus calendar reminders at 40/70/90% budget thresholds. Copilot’s usage pages show near-real-time consumption. (docs.github.com)
- Pick default models wisely: On paid plans, keep chat defaulted to included models (GPT‑4.1/4o or GPT‑5 mini) and allow premium models only where justified. Multipliers can burn through quotas fast. (docs.github.com)
- Pilot agents with caps: Coding agent uses one premium request per session, so set a small budget during rollout and scale up with evidence. (github.blog)
- Clarify billing entity for users with multiple licenses: If a developer has seats from multiple orgs, choose which entity pays—otherwise their premium requests may be rejected. (docs.github.com)
- Communicate the Dec 5 Opus 4.5 change: If teams are benchmarking Opus 4.5, remind them its multiplier increases after Friday. Plan accordingly. (docs.github.com)
If you want a quick walkthrough, we covered the 24–72 hour triage moves in our note, GitHub Copilot Premium Requests: The Dec 2 Switch.
Cost scenarios you can explain to Finance
Scenario A: 40 engineers on Copilot Business, policy Enabled. Each engineer has 300 included premium requests. Ten power users average 600 requests/month using 1x models; 30 users stay under 200. Net overage: roughly (10 × (600−300)) = 3,000 requests × $0.04 = $120/month. Now swap five power users to a 3x model for 100 of their interactions: that’s an extra 5 × 100 × (3−1) = 1,000 effective requests ($40). Small multipliers add up quickly. (docs.github.com)
Scenario B: 12 engineers trialing Copilot Coding Agent with a 1,000 request budget. You cap the Bundled premium requests at 1,000 for the billing period and enable “Stop usage when budget is reached.” Each session consumes one request, so you can safely run 1,000 sessions across the team without overage. If you later allow 2x models inside those sessions, your cap still holds—usage stops at 1,000 effective requests. (github.blog)
Common questions policy owners are asking
Does this Dec 2 change affect Copilot Pro or Pro+?
Not directly. The removal of legacy $0 budgets targets enterprise and team accounts created before August 22, 2025. Individuals keep their per-plan allowances and can still purchase additional premium requests at $0.04/request if they choose. (github.blog)
We don’t have a card on file. Can we still be charged?
No payment method, no charges—Copilot will block paid usage and explain why the task can’t proceed. But remember: that can stall agent sessions, code review, or premium-model chats at the worst possible moment. Most orgs prefer a small capped budget to avoid hard stops during critical work. (docs.github.com)
Can we keep hard-blocking premium requests after the allowance?
Yes. Set the enterprise/org “Premium request paid usage” policy to Disabled, or keep budgets with “Stop usage when budget limit is reached.” If you do allow paid usage, pair it with budgets and alerts so overruns don’t surprise you. (docs.github.com)
Are included models really unlimited on paid plans?
Included models (GPT‑4.1/4o and GPT‑5 mini) do not consume premium requests on paid plans, though platform rate limits still apply. If developers explicitly switch to a premium model, consumption and multipliers kick in. (github.blog)
Implementation pitfalls we keep seeing
Budget sprawl after SKUs. With tool-specific SKUs, it’s easy to create overlapping budgets that conflict. If any applicable budget with “Stop usage” is exhausted, traffic is blocked—even if a different budget has room left. Keep one Bundled budget per billing entity unless you’ve got a clear chargeback need for per-SKU budgets. (docs.github.com)
Model choices buried in IDE defaults. Teams often forget that developers can change the chat model inside VS Code or JetBrains. Add a short Loom or screenshot guide in your dev onboarding to show which models are approved for day-to-day versus spikes. The discounted auto model selection option in VS Code can reduce multipliers by 10% for paid plans—use it. (docs.github.com)
Multi-license billing confusion. Contractors or staff with seats from multiple orgs need a billing entity selected, or all premium requests are rejected. Announce this in Slack and add a one-time setup step to your onboarding checklist. (docs.github.com)
A practical framework to right-size Copilot
Here’s the 3-layer approach we use with clients rolling Copilot out at scale:
Layer 1: Guardrails
Start with a Bundled budget and hard-stop enabled, then define a small buffer (e.g., $200–$500) for a pilot team so you learn with real usage. Set the overage policy to Enabled only when you’ve modeled costs and trained developers on model selection. (docs.github.com)
Layer 2: Allocation
Allocate premium request allowances by team function. For example, give platform engineering and SRE more access to agent sessions during migration weeks, while keeping standard dev squads mostly on included models. Revisit allocations monthly after reviewing usage reports and PR/code review metrics. (docs.github.com)
Layer 3: Optimization
Use the IDE usage indicator and monthly reports to spot waste. Encourage auto model selection in VS Code for the 10% multiplier discount on paid plans, keep expensive models for known-hard tasks, and turn on Copilot Code Review only where it demonstrably cuts cycle time. (docs.github.com)
Zooming out: where GitHub is headed
Between the overage policy, the SKUs per tool, and constant model additions (like Gemini 2.5 Pro for paying tiers), Copilot is evolving from a monolithic AI assistant into a portfolio of agentic tools you meter and manage like other cloud services. Expect more knobs, richer reporting, and—frankly—more ways to spend if you aren’t intentional. The upside is real velocity when you combine agents, code review, and premium models against the right problems; the downside is a drift toward invisible costs if you leave it on autopilot. (github.blog)
What to do next (today, this week, this quarter)
Today (15–30 minutes): Set the Premium request paid usage policy, create one Bundled budget with a safety cap, and align default models to included ones in IDE templates. (docs.github.com)
This week: Pull usage, meet with two squads to understand their real needs, and tune budgets. If you’re exploring agents, run a bounded pilot with a small request pool and a clear success metric (e.g., PR lead time reduction). (docs.github.com)
This quarter: Introduce per-SKU budgets if you need detailed chargeback; add model allowlists; benchmark multipliers’ ROI on real tasks; and fold Copilot spend into your FinOps reviews alongside cloud and CI minutes. (github.blog)
Need help making this stick?
If you want an experienced partner to design policies, budgets, and developer workflows that actually hold up under production pressure, our team at Bybowu has done this across fast-moving engineering orgs. See our services, browse a few relevant projects in the portfolio, and ping us on the contact page. Or keep reading the latest on our blog and share this post with your platform team.
