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GitHub Copilot's Price Held for Nine Days. Six of Its Defaults Didn't.

News by OneHuman

GitHub changed six Copilot defaults in nine days: billing, retention, model access, review cost. List prices held. M365 adds a 60-credit consumer AI sidebar.

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Published: September 7, 2026 Impact: High. Affects every paid GitHub Copilot subscriber and, separately, Microsoft 365 Personal, Family, and Premium subscribers.

Six Changes, Nine Days, One Price

Between August 26 and September 3, 2026, GitHub published six changes to Copilot. List prices held. True.

GitHub disclosed all six changes, at a rate no subscriber tracks in real time. The change most likely to cost money, code review's default effort level moving to a heavier, more credit-hungry setting, sits in linked documentation the customer notification never mentioned.

Date Change Effective
Aug 26 Open-weight/retention-requiring models off by default Through Sept 1
Aug 28 Business/Enterprise signups reopen Sept 1
Aug 28 Seats go prepaid, upfront charge New: Sept 1. Existing: Oct 1
Aug 28 Chat retention: 28 days to life of account No earlier than Sept 28
Aug 28 Code review default: Lite to Balanced Sept 28
Aug 31 Model access narrowed to billing org only Immediate

One change favors users: disabling retention-requiring models by default is privacy-protective. The other five push toward more spend, retention, or less choice. GitHub's Aug 28 notification called this "even better for you" without mentioning that Balanced, the new default, draws more credits than Lite, with no published dollar range.

The Billing Math I Confirmed Myself

GitHub retired premium request units for AI Credits on June 1, 2026 (annual-plan subscribers keep the old system until renewal). I confirmed on GitHub's own docs and plans pages: Copilot Pro now gets 1,000 base plus 500 flex credits, 1,500 total, for $10. OneHuman first reported 1,000 credits for Pro in May; GitHub has since added the 500-credit flex allotment (see our May 27 report).

My Pro account shows 24 of 1,500 credits used, additional usage at $0 of a $0 budget. What happens at zero is unclear: GitHub warns "fallback experiences will no longer be available," unconfirmed for individual accounts. Annual-plan subscribers are grandfathered twice: GitHub's August 31 notice also spares them the Sonnet-4.6-to-5 switch, "still available to individual GitHub Copilot subscribers on annual plans." Same population, same exception, two systems.

What This Costs You

The retention change reaches every github.com and Mobile user, any tier, not just repo owners. Chat history, deleted after 28 days today, becomes permanent unless you opt out, and opting out forfeits Copilot on github.com and Mobile entirely, with no middle setting. Light users lose nothing they'd notice; regular users can't keep both shorter retention and the product.

Separately: Microsoft 365 Gets a Consumer AI Sidebar

Different product, different Microsoft division. Confirmed on Microsoft's support page: M365 Personal and Family get 60 AI credits monthly covering Copilot edit, draft, rewrite, summarize, and Excel data analysis, plus image generation and editing, owner-only ("cannot be shared with others," even on Family plans). Premium, $19.99, removes the cap. Standalone Microsoft Copilot Pro, the $20/month consumer subscription, a different product from GitHub Copilot Pro above, is no longer available for purchase; support ended August 1, 2026, Premium the named replacement. OneHuman covered M365's enterprise pricing in July; this is the personal side.

The Same Week's Other Number

On September 4, Satya Nadella posted that "Project HydraFusion" cuts Copilot costs up to 67%. GitHub confirms it: a research preview in Copilot CLI, behind an /experimental menu, billed at each model's standard rate, best of three offline benchmarks. The 67% belongs to a preview you opt into; the heavier, costlier review default flips on automatically September 28. Opt-in savings, opt-out costs, same product, same week.

What to Do Next

  • Set code review effort to Lite explicitly before September 28 if you want to keep it.
  • Decide on chat retention before it takes effect. There's no partial opt-out.
  • On a multi-org seat, confirm your billing org still grants the model you rely on.

Bottom Line

Nothing here was hidden. Six defaults moved in nine days; list prices held; the costliest number sat in documentation nobody reads twice. Disclosure at this rate is still disclosure, and a test of whether inaction reads as consent.

Sources

Verified by OneHuman · September 7, 2026

Independent. AI-assisted. Human-verified. No ads. No affiliates. No investors.

Share This Article

"GitHub published six Copilot default changes in nine days. The new default code review setting draws more AI credits than the old one, and GitHub doesn't say how much more. The list price did not move once."
— News by OneHuman
"GitHub Copilot's chat retention moves from 28 days to the life of your account on September 28. Opting out costs you Copilot on github.com and Mobile entirely."
— News by OneHuman
"My own Copilot Pro account shows 24 of 1,500 AI credits used, additional usage set to zero. OneHuman reported 1,000 credits in May. GitHub has since added 500 more."
— News by OneHuman
"Opt-in savings, opt-out costs, same product, same week. HydraFusion's 67 percent sits behind an experimental menu. The review-cost default flips on automatically."
— News by OneHuman

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