On December 2, 2025, GitHub changed how many organizations experience GitHub Copilot premium requests. For enterprises and teams created before late August, the old $0 budget safety net started to disappear. Translation: if your policy allows paid usage and you haven’t set fresh budgets, premium requests can become real spend—fast. The good news is you can get ahead of it in a month with a clear plan that finance, security, and engineering can all live with.
What actually changed on December 2, 2025?
Two shifts converged this fall. First, premium requests moved to cleaner, product‑specific tracking, with dedicated SKUs starting in November for features like the coding agent and Spark. Second, beginning December 2, GitHub started removing legacy account‑level $0 premium request budgets on many enterprise and team accounts created before August 22, 2025. Pro and Pro+ subscribers aren’t affected by that specific budget removal.
Practically, if your enterprise or org policy for premium request paid usage is Enabled and you don’t have an explicit cap, overage can accrue once users exhaust the monthly allowance. If it’s Disabled, premium extras won’t run beyond the included allowance; developers can still use the included models and code completions.
What didn’t change
Monthly allowances still reset on the first day of each calendar month. Usage visibility improved over the year: owners can track premium request consumption and download reports, and users get status indicators in their IDEs. Included models on paid plans—like GPT‑4.1 and GPT‑4o—don’t consume premium requests, though normal rate limiting still applies.
Who’s affected right now?
• Enterprises and orgs that were relying on the default $0 premium request budget created before August 22, 2025. If that describes you, review your policy and set explicit budgets.
• Engineering leaders who piloted high‑end models this summer and fall. Some features and models have multipliers that can torch allowances quickly if left on by default for all users.
• Finance teams that only see cost centers monthly. You’ll want a weekly view for December and January.
How GitHub Copilot premium requests are billed
Premium requests are counted per interaction with specific models or features that sit outside the included tier. Different models carry different multipliers. For example, a high‑end reasoning model like Claude Opus can count as multiple premium requests per interaction, while GPT‑4.1 or GPT‑4o on paid plans count as zero. Those multipliers matter more than people think: a few long agent sessions on a 10× model can burn a month’s personal allowance in a day.
In addition to multipliers, premium usage from new capabilities surfaces as distinct SKUs in your billing and usage exports. That’s a big win for cost attribution—if you structure your reports properly.
People also ask: Will chat stop working if we disable paid usage?
No. If you disable paid usage at the org or enterprise level, developers can still use the included models and code completions. What they lose are premium models/features beyond the monthly allowance. The day‑to‑day experience remains productive—especially if you set the default model to an included one.
People also ask: Can we cap spend per user?
Budgets are set at the org or enterprise level, not per seat. You can, however, use usage reports to spot heavy users and then tune seat types, team policies, or defaults. Some teams also gate premium models behind role‑based policies or IDE‑level defaults.
Let’s get practical: a 30‑day rollout plan
You don’t need a six‑month committee to do this right. You need a 30‑day sprint with clear owners and crisp defaults. Here’s a plan we’ve used with clients.
Week 0–1: Turn off silent risk, turn on visibility
1) Confirm your policy. In Copilot admin, check the “premium request paid usage” setting for your enterprise and any standalone orgs. If you’re not ready to accept overage, set it to Disabled. If you want continuity, keep it Enabled but add a budget cap now.
2) Set explicit budgets. Create a monthly cap that reflects a safe baseline: for example, 10–20% of seats × an assumed per‑user overage band you’re comfortable with this month. Better to start small and raise later than to investigate a surprise.
3) Pick sane defaults. Set the default model to an included one for all developers. Make premium models opt‑in for specific roles (e.g., platform reliability, security research, or a designated pilot team). Document those defaults in your internal wiki.
4) Turn on weekly reporting. Schedule usage export delivery and drop it into your BI stack or a shared spreadsheet. Slice by team, SKU, and model multiplier. A weekly stand‑up between finance and engineering halves the time to a good policy.
Week 2: Right‑size access and guardrails
5) Map roles to capability tiers. Define which scenarios truly need premium models: refactoring large codebases, complex reasoning across multi‑repo contexts, or agentic tasks that orchestrate tools. Everyone else gets included models by default.
6) IDE hygiene. Publish a one‑pager showing how to switch models, check usage, and avoid leaving agent mode running while away from the keyboard. Small behavior changes save real money.
7) Alerts and thresholds. Create alerts at 50%, 75%, and 90% of monthly budget. If a team spikes unexpectedly, investigate: was it a legitimate crunch or a misconfigured default?
Week 3–4: Prove ROI and create a durable policy
8) Tag use cases to outcomes. In your usage report, maintain a simple mapping: “Team → Feature/Model → Outcome.” If a premium agent helped cut bug triage time by half, that’s the story you want funding for next quarter.
9) Iterate the budget. Increase the cap for teams that show measurable wins, and reduce it elsewhere. Add a short request form for temporary premium access tied to specific deliverables.
10) Formalize policy. Write a two‑page policy with the defaults, budget governance, and who approves exceptions. Keep it boring and clear. Then publish it where your engineers actually read things.
A dead‑simple spend model you can copy
Finance doesn’t want a dissertation; they want a number they can trust and a lever they can pull. Build a spreadsheet with these columns:
• Seat type (Pro, Pro+, Business, Enterprise)
• Users
• Monthly included premium requests per seat (from GitHub’s current allowances)
• Expected premium interactions per user by role
• Model multiplier (e.g., 1×, 10×)
• Expected overage (Premium interactions × Multiplier minus Allowance)
• Premium price per request (pull from your billing settings)
• Budget cap and alert thresholds
Run two scenarios: “Default‑only” and “With premium pilots in two teams.” That will give you a baseline and a growth plan tied to outcomes.
A practical framework for decision‑makers
Use the RAIL framework—Roles, Allowances, Insights, Limits.
• Roles: Define which roles get access to premium models and why.
• Allowances: Know the monthly allowance per plan and how SKUs roll up.
• Insights: Stand up weekly reporting and annotate spikes with context.
• Limits: Set org‑level budget caps and enable/disable paid usage deliberately.
How to keep developers fast while costs stay predictable
Here’s the thing: developers don’t care about your budget—until it breaks their flow. So meet them halfway.
• Default to included models and offer a hotkey to toggle a premium model for 15 minutes. Short windows limit runaway usage and match moments of peak complexity.
• Pre‑approved premium buckets. Each pilot team gets a fixed bucket per sprint. When it’s gone, they can request a refill with a one‑line justification tied to a deliverable.
• Context discipline. Encourage smaller prompts and targeted agent tasks. Long, meandering agent sessions correlate with both higher cost and lower signal.
How this intersects with your model strategy
Model strategy matters because multipliers vary. If your organization is exploring advanced reasoning models or speech‑to‑speech workflows elsewhere, make sure your Copilot defaults reflect those trade‑offs. For a pragmatic overview of multi‑modal options and what to try first, see our take on enterprise‑ready models in Nova 2 Omni for builders. It’s the same budgeting story: start with included tiers, add premium where the outcome justifies the spend.
Operational gotchas most teams miss
• Multiple orgs, one developer: users with seats in more than one enterprise or standalone org need to choose which billing entity funds premium requests. Make sure your onboarding doc explains how to pick the right one.
• Seat upgrades without policy updates: upgrading to Copilot Enterprise for a cohort doesn’t automatically mean they should use premium models all day. Keep your default model and budget policy aligned with roles.
• IDE variance: VS Code, JetBrains, Xcode, and terminal agents surface settings differently. Include screenshots in your internal guide so developers can confirm they’re on the included model setting by default.
• SKU drift: with dedicated SKUs rolling out, your cost attribution can improve—but only if you tag teams consistently and keep your BI mapping up to date.
What success looks like by the end of January
• Zero surprise invoices. Your budget caps either blocked overage or allowed it within agreed limits.
• A shortlist of teams with proven ROI from premium models—and a repeatable process to fund them.
• Developers still fast, defaults still sane, and a simple policy everyone can explain in one minute.
People also ask: Do we need a premium budget at all?
If your engineering work rarely needs complex reasoning or agentic orchestration, you can leave paid usage disabled and rely on included models. Many teams do exactly that. If you occasionally need a burst of premium power—say, an agent to refactor a monorepo—set a small budget and require a request tied to a sprint goal.
What to do next (today)
1) Open your Copilot admin and check the policy: Disable paid usage if you’re risk‑averse this month; otherwise, set a small cap.
2) Set your default model to an included one for everyone.
3) Turn on weekly usage exports and build the dashboard with team, SKU, multiplier, and outcome tags.
4) Publish a one‑pager for developers: where to see their usage, how to pick models, and when to request premium access.
5) Pick one pilot team and measure a single outcome (e.g., PR lead time or bug backlog) tied to premium usage.
Need a playbook tailored to your stack?
If you want a deeper dive into the policy mechanics and real‑world guardrails, we broke down the December shift here: what December 2 changed. If you need help rolling out budgets, dashboards, and developer defaults across multiple business units, our services team has shipped this with startups and large enterprises. You can also browse how we structure modernization projects in our portfolio, or just get in touch and we’ll map a 2‑week plan.
FAQ: quick hits for busy leaders
Does Copilot Free use premium requests?
Yes. On Copilot Free, all eligible chat interactions consume premium requests. That’s one reason many organizations standardize on paid seats with included models for predictable usage.
Do allowances roll over?
No. Monthly allowances reset on the first day of each month and don’t carry over. Treat unused headroom as a sign to tighten defaults or redistribute access.
Where do I see the actual price per premium request?
In your billing settings and usage exports. Don’t hard‑code a number in your policy doc—pull it directly from your account so finance and engineering both reference the same source of truth.
Architecture: how policy, budgets, and teams interact
It helps to visualize the flow. A request from the IDE hits a model endpoint with a given multiplier. The Copilot service checks monthly allowance, then your org/enterprise policy, then the budget cap. If allowance remains, it’s free. If allowance is exhausted and paid usage is enabled, the request draws from budget. If the cap is reached or paid usage is disabled, the premium request is blocked—and the developer still has included models available. That’s why clean defaults prevent frustration when a cap kicks in.
Zooming out: tie spend to software delivery
Premium models are a power tool, not a lifestyle. Use them where they unlock measurable outcomes: faster incident resolution, safer migrations, or complex refactors. Build the muscle to turn them on for a sprint, prove value, then either bake the cost into the team’s baseline budget or turn them off again. That’s the operating model that survives audits and board questions.
If you treat this as a one‑time configuration, you’ll be back in firefighting mode. Treat it as a small, ongoing product with owners, SLAs, and feedback loops. Do that, and you’ll keep developers fast while keeping finance calm.
