On Wednesday, GitHub announced the introduction of a complimentary tier for its AI coding assistant, known as Copilot. This iteration of Copilot is specifically tailored for programming tasks and encompasses a range of third-party integrations, extensions, and features, including the ability to edit multiple files simultaneously. The free version is designed to offer enhanced rate limits for code completions and chat messages when compared to the paid subscription options. However, it will not include access to the Gemini AI models. Additionally, GitHub revealed that it has reached a significant milestone of 150 million registered users.
GitHub Launches a Free Tier of Copilot for Developers
In a blog post, GitHub detailed the rollout of this free version of Copilot. Previously, access to Copilot was restricted to a paid subscription starting at $10 (approximately Rs. 850), though verified students, educators, and maintainers of open-source projects could use it for free. This new option is now available to the entire user base of 150 million developers.
The GitHub Copilot Free edition will be seamlessly integrated into the Visual Studio Code platform, granting users access to 2,000 code completions and 50 chat messages each month. Notably, every code suggestion made by the AI counts towards the completion limit, regardless of whether the suggestions are ultimately accepted.
Earlier this year, GitHub announced support for multiple AI models within Copilot, enabling users to select from options including Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Google’s Gemini 1.5 Pro, and various models from OpenAI such as GPT-4o, o1-preview, and o1-mini. In the free tier of Copilot, users will only have access to the Claude 3.5 Sonnet or GPT-4o models.
Despite these limitations, developers will still benefit from full access to other functionalities, third-party integrations, and extensions available in the Copilot toolset. Furthermore, GitHub has made the Copilot chat feature directly accessible from its dashboard, which will also be included in the free offering.
With GitHub Copilot, developers have the ability to utilize AI for a variety of tasks, including code explanations, debugging assistance, Bing-powered web searches, handling pull requests, multi-file editing in Visual Studio Code, integrating with private codebases, and customizing instructions, among others.
Launched in 2021, GitHub Copilot marked Microsoft’s inaugural entry into AI-powered coding assistance under the Copilot brand, following the company’s investment in OpenAI and subsequent partnership.
