What GitHub Copilot's Usage-Based Billing Means for Zed Users
Mirrored from Zed Editor for archival readability. Support the source by reading on the original site.
GitHub is changing Copilot Chat from request-based billing to token-based billing on Monday. If you use Copilot Chat in Zed, your usage will be metered by GitHub AI Credits instead of the old Premium Request Unit system. Copilot edit predictions, which GitHub calls code completions and Next Edit suggestions, will not.
This applies anywhere you choose a Copilot Chat model in Zed. Agent turns, inline assists, commit-message generation, tool calls, and subagent work all count when they use a Copilot Chat model. If you use Copilot Chat heavily, especially with agents, you should expect this to cost more.
Check your billing preview
GitHub lets you preview what your recent Copilot usage would have cost under the new pricing. Download the usage report and look for aic_quantity and aic_gross_amount. If you manage Copilot for a team, use GitHub's organization and enterprise docs to set budgets before overages start.
What you can do in Zed
If the new pricing works for you, you can keep using Copilot Chat in Zed without changing anything. You can also switch the Agent Panel to another model provider. Zed supports hosted models, subscription-based options like ChatGPT and OpenCode, your own API keys, and local models.
Related Posts
Check out similar blogs from the Zed team.
Looking for a better editor?
You can try Zed today on macOS, Windows, or Linux. Download now!
We are hiring!
If you're passionate about the topics we cover on our blog, please consider joining our team to help us ship the future of software development.
Discussion (0)
Sign in to join the discussion. Free account, 30 seconds — email code or GitHub.
Sign in →No comments yet. Sign in and be the first to say something.