GitHub Copilot's new token-based pricing draws sticker shock

GitHub Copilot is dropping its flat-rate subscription for token-based billing on June 1, and the early reaction from heavy users is open revolt. TechCrunch collected complaints showing reported bills jumping from about $29 a month to around $750, and from $50 to $3,000, on the same usage pattern that ran inside the old plan. One Reddit user summed up the mood: "What a joke. This new usage model is just stupidly expensive. I'm adjusting mine by cancelling." Microsoft did not respond to TechCrunch's request for comment.

Part of what makes the change land hard is the contrast with the previous direction. Microsoft kept widening Copilot's token budget while pushing agent features that naturally burn more tokens per task, then changed the meter under users who took the encouragement at face value. Defenders argue that the highest bills come from "vibe coders" running long agentic loops without much attention to cost, but the bills look the same to people running ordinary edits inside a tight context.

Copilot is following the trail Anthropic and OpenAI already cut. Both shifted enterprise pricing to API rates earlier this year, with serious users moving past $200 a month per seat. The era of fixed monthly fees buying unlimited coding agent time is closing on every major vendor.

Why it matters

If your team built Copilot into a daily workflow, June 1 needs an audit, not a renewal. Either pick the plan that matches your real token use, or move to a fixed-budget agent before the next bill arrives. The broader shift to usage pricing across vendors also means productivity gains and license costs now move together, so the ROI math for AI in engineering changes shape.