What is it

GitHub Copilot is GitHub's flagship AI developer tool, positioned as "your AI pair programmer." Beyond inline code completion it now ships agent mode in the IDE, a Copilot cloud agent that plans/codes/opens pull requests in the background, Copilot CLI for terminal-native agentic workflows, Copilot code review, Copilot Spaces for shared project context, and native Model Context Protocol (MCP) integration. Copilot is sold in six plans: Free, Student (free for verified students), Pro ($10/mo), Pro+ ($39/mo), Business ($19/seat/mo), and Enterprise ($39/seat/mo).

What it can do

Generate inline code suggestions, rewrite and refactor code, write unit tests, explain and debug code in Copilot Chat, review pull requests, summarize PRs, run autonomous tasks via Copilot cloud agent and Copilot CLI (`/plan`, `/model`, `/fleet`, `/delegate`, `/diff`, `/mcp`), assign tasks to third-party agents such as Claude (Anthropic) and OpenAI Codex, and on Enterprise tier index org repositories and Markdown knowledge bases for tailored answers.

Who is it for

Individual developers and students (Free / Pro / Pro+), engineering teams on GitHub Free or GitHub Team (Business), and large enterprises on GitHub Enterprise Cloud (Enterprise) that need centralized policy, audit logs, IP indemnity, private repository indexing, and per-org custom instructions.

Key Features

Inline Code Completions with Multi-Model Support

Real-time code completions in the editor across all supported languages, with model selection across Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI (Haiku 4.5 and GPT-5 mini included on Free; Claude, OpenAI Codex, and additional models on Pro and above; Claude Opus 4.7 unlocked on Pro+). Free is capped at 2,000 completions per month; Pro and above remove the cap.

Copilot Chat in IDEs and on GitHub

Natural-language chat for explaining code, generating snippets, debugging, and slash commands inside Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, Eclipse, and Xcode, plus chat on github.com and in GitHub Mobile. Free is limited to 50 chat messages per month; paid plans get unlimited messages with included models.

Agent Mode in the IDE

Agent mode lets Copilot plan a multi-step change, edit and validate multiple files, and run iteratively against the open project — moving beyond single-suggestion completion to longer, file-spanning edits where the user reviews the diff.

Copilot Cloud Agent for Background PRs

A managed cloud agent that researches a repository, builds an implementation plan, makes changes on a branch, and opens a pull request asynchronously. Available from Pro and above; tasks can be assigned to GitHub Copilot, Claude by Anthropic, or OpenAI Codex and run in parallel in the background while the developer keeps working.

Use Cases

Inline code completion in the IDE

Daily inline suggestions while coding in VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains, Eclipse, Xcode, Vim/Neovim, or Azure Data Studio — the original Copilot use case and still the most common entry point for new users.

Conversational debugging and code explanation

Open Copilot Chat in the IDE or on github.com to ask why a function fails, get a step-by-step explanation, paste in a stack trace, and accept a proposed fix without leaving the editor.

Multi-step edits with agent mode

Use agent mode for changes that span multiple files (e.g., renaming an API across the codebase, threading a new option through several layers) where Copilot can plan, propose edits, and run validation iteratively.

Background pull requests via cloud agent

Hand off an issue to Copilot cloud agent (or to Claude/OpenAI Codex via the same UI), let it research the repo and open a draft PR while the developer continues other work, then review the diff before merging.

Pricing plans

Frequently Asked Questions

Discussion

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GitHub Copilot