Companies offering AI solutions have for years distributed the computing power required by AI to users almost for free, incurring huge losses themselves. Now it appears that all the biggest companies in the industry are tightening their policies and making users actually pay the true price for the AI resources used.
Now, the latest to join the ranks is Microsoft-owned GitHub. Its AI assistant, GitHub Copilot, was in many ways the first significant, modern AI product and was released long before ChatGPT.
GitHub stated that the explosive growth of so-called agentic programming has made its fixed monthly pricing model impossible (i.e., significantly unprofitable).
The company is immediately suspending the opening of all new GitHub Copilot accounts for individual users. The change affects all common price tiers, meaning GitHub Copilot Pro, Pro+, and Student are all frozen for new users for the time being.
At the same time, the company is significantly tightening usage limits for existing customers. This change also applies to Pro, Pro+, and Student subscriptions. The tightening of usage limits practically means that on certain days and times, an individual user can only use the AI assistant for programming help for a limited amount. In addition, there are also weekly restrictions on the use of tokens. If the limits are reached, the user must simply wait for the limits to reset.
Furthermore, Pro and Student subscriptions will completely lose access to Anthropic's Claude Opus language models. Pro+ subscribers will still retain access to the Claude Opus 4.7 language model, but older Claude Opus models will be completely removed from use.
GitHub allows existing customers to cancel their subscriptions if they wish. If the subscription is canceled now, usage for April will not be billed at all.
Written by: Petteri Pyyny @ 20 Apr 2026 15:55
