GitHub Copilot Statistics 2026: Users, Plans, Price Changes

GitHub Copilot has 50 million users, Microsoft said on its earnings call of July 29, 2026, up from 15 million in April 2025. The latest paid figure is older: over 4.7 million paid subscribers in January 2026. Copilot Pro costs $10 a month, and since June 1, 2026 every plan bills usage in AI credits.

Our read: the user count is the headline, but the 2026 story is the business model. GitHub paused sign-ups, removed models from its cheapest plan and moved every customer to metered credits within eight weeks, and Microsoft then said its results benefited from stronger-than-expected Copilot consumption after the change. For a developer budgeting a seat, the credit allowance now matters as much as the sticker price.

Toolradar data: GitHub Copilot is listed as an alternative to 124 other tools on Toolradar, the software directory we run, second of 179 AI coding tools, and its comparison pages drew 283 visits in the last 30 days, also second in the category, as of October 2026.

Every figure below links its first-party source: Microsoft's earnings call transcripts, GitHub's changelog and blog, and GitHub's plan and docs pages, read on October 21, 2026.

GitHub Copilot key statistics at a glance

Statistic	Figure	Date disclosed	Source
Total Copilot users	50 million	July 29, 2026	Microsoft FY26 Q4 call
Paid Copilot subscribers	Over 4.7 million, up 75% year over year	January 28, 2026	Microsoft FY26 Q2 call
Organizations using Copilot	Nearly 140,000	April 29, 2026	Microsoft FY26 Q3 call
Enterprise subscriber growth	Nearly tripled year over year	April 29, 2026	Microsoft FY26 Q3 call
Copilot Pro+ subscribers	Up 77% quarter over quarter	January 28, 2026	Microsoft FY26 Q2 call
Fortune 100 using Copilot	90%	July 30, 2025	Microsoft FY25 Q4 call
New GitHub developers starting with Copilot	80% within their first week	October 29, 2025	Microsoft FY26 Q1 call
Pull requests on GitHub involving an agent	One in three	July 29, 2026	Microsoft FY26 Q4 call
GitHub users	225 million	July 29, 2026	Microsoft FY26 Q4 call

Microsoft reports Copilot figures when it chooses to, not on a fixed schedule, so the latest number for each metric comes from a different quarter. The paid subscriber count has not been updated since January 2026.

How many people use GitHub Copilot?

Microsoft has disclosed the total user count four times since April 2025. Each figure comes from Microsoft's own investor relations transcripts.

Earnings call	Copilot users	Change
FY25 Q3, April 30, 2025	Over 15 million	Up over 4x year over year
FY25 Q4, July 30, 2025	20 million
FY26 Q1, October 29, 2025	Over 26 million
FY26 Q4, July 29, 2026	50 million

By our arithmetic, the count rose about 3.3 times in the 15 months from April 2025 to July 2026, and 2.5 times in the 12 months from July 2025. The jump from 26 million to the July figure came in nine months during which Microsoft's calls moved from autocomplete to agents: Agent HQ in October 2025, the Copilot SDK in January and fast-growing Copilot CLI usage by April.

"Users" is Microsoft's word, and it does not define it on the calls. The figure includes Copilot Free, which needs no payment, so it is a reach number, not a revenue number. Use the paid subscriber count below for anything about money.

How many developers pay for Copilot?

Over 4.7 million paid subscribers was the last paid figure Microsoft gave, on the FY26 Q2 call of January 28, 2026. It was up 75% year over year, which by our arithmetic puts the January 2025 base near 2.7 million. On the same call, Microsoft said Copilot Pro+ subscriptions for individual developers grew 77% quarter over quarter, faster than paid Copilot as a whole.

The company has not repeated a paid count since. On the FY26 Q3 call in April it switched to organizations: nearly 140,000 now use Copilot, and enterprise subscribers nearly tripled year over year. In July it said results benefited from stronger-than-expected Copilot consumption after the June billing change, again without a subscriber number.

What it means for a reader quoting these figures: a 2026 article that sets the user count beside the paid count is mixing a July number with a January one. Microsoft never reported the two together, so no honest paid-conversion rate can be computed from them.

Devshot sends Copilot plan and pricing changes to 28,000+ developers. Get the brief.

Enterprise adoption

Copilot's business customers are where the growth figures are steepest. Microsoft's disclosures, in order:

1. 90% of the Fortune 100 use GitHub Copilot (July 2025), and on the same call Copilot Enterprise customers rose 75% quarter over quarter.
2. 80% of new developers on GitHub start with Copilot within their first week, and GitHub had over 180 million developers (October 2025).
3. Nearly 140,000 organizations use Copilot, and enterprise subscribers nearly tripled in a year (April 2026). Copilot CLI usage was nearly doubling month over month.
4. One in three pull requests on GitHub now involves an agent, and GitHub has 225 million users (July 2026).
5. Named rollouts: Siemens adopted the full GitHub platform after a Copilot rollout to 30,000 of its developers (January 2026), and tens of thousands of developers at AMD use Copilot (October 2025).

The agent figure is the one to watch. Microsoft says every major coding agent runs on GitHub, including agents from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Cognition and xAI through Agent HQ, so a share of those pull requests comes from tools that compete with Copilot.

GitHub Copilot plans and prices in 2026

Copilot now sells an AI credit allowance with each plan, at 1 credit = $0.01. Code completions and next edit suggestions do not use credits and stay unlimited on every paid plan. Chat, agents, code review and Copilot CLI draw from the allowance. Prices come from GitHub's Copilot plans page and plans documentation.

Plan	Price	Monthly AI credits	Credits per dollar
Copilot Free	$0	A limited allowance	n/a
Copilot Pro	$10 a month	1,500 (1,000 base + 500 flex)	150
Copilot Pro+	$39 a month	7,000 (3,900 base + 3,100 flex)	About 179
Copilot Max	$100 a month	20,000 (10,000 base + 10,000 flex)	200
Copilot Business	$19 per seat a month	1,900 per user, pooled	100
Copilot Enterprise	$39 per seat a month	3,900 per user, pooled	100

The last column is our arithmetic, and it holds the most useful finding on this page: individual plans currently include 1.5 to 2 times more credits per dollar than business seats, because of the flex allotment. GitHub says flex allotments may change over time, so treat that bonus as variable. Business and Enterprise credits pool across the organization, which suits a team where a few heavy users and many light ones share one budget.

Verified students get Copilot Student for free, and verified teachers and maintainers of popular open source projects may qualify for free Copilot Pro. Copilot Free lists 2,000 completions and 50 chat requests. Our how to get GitHub Copilot for free guide covers each route, and our GitHub Copilot pricing explainer covers the plans in depth.

The 2026 price and billing timeline

Copilot's plans and billing changed seven times between April and October 2026. Every entry below links the GitHub announcement.

Date	Change
April 10, 2026	New Copilot Pro trials paused over trial abuse; on April 13, existing trials were paused too
April 20, 2026	New sign-ups paused for Pro, Pro+ and Student; Opus models removed from Pro; Pro+ given more than 5x Pro's limits
April 27, 2026	Usage-based billing announced: premium requests replaced by AI credits from June 1; seat prices unchanged
June 1, 2026	Usage-based billing live on every plan; Copilot Max launched as an upgrade; code review starts using GitHub Actions minutes
June 17, 2026	Individual sign-ups reopening gradually for Student, Pro, Pro+ and Max
September 3, 2026	Business and Enterprise sign-ups reopening for card and PayPal customers, with each seat paid upfront
October 1, 2026	Upfront seat charges apply to existing Business and Enterprise customers paying by card or PayPal

Three consequences matter for buyers. First, annual Pro and Pro+ subscribers stayed on premium-request pricing until their plan expires, then move to Copilot Free unless they switch to a monthly plan, and the plans page now lists monthly prices only. Second, GitHub ended the fallback to a cheaper model when an allowance runs out: work now stops at the credit and budget limits, or continues as paid usage at $0.01 a credit. Third, Copilot code review now spends both AI credits and Actions minutes, so a team that reviews every pull request pays on two meters for one feature.

GitHub's stated reason, in its April post, was that a quick chat question and a multi-hour agent session cost users the same while GitHub absorbed the inference bill. Microsoft's July call then reported stronger-than-expected Copilot consumption after the June change. In plain terms, heavy agent users now pay closer to what they use.

What a team pays under credits

Take a 10-developer team on Copilot Business. The seats cost $190 a month and put 19,000 credits in a shared pool. If the team's chat, agent and review work burns 25,000 credits in a month, the extra 6,000 credits cost $60, for a $250 bill. That is our arithmetic on GitHub's listed rates, with an assumed usage level; GitHub does not publish typical consumption per developer.

The same team on Enterprise pays $390 for 39,000 pooled credits and would stay inside its allowance at that usage. The break-even sits where overage on Business would exceed the $200 a month seat difference, which by our arithmetic is 20,000 credits of overage, or 39,000 credits of total usage. Below that, Business plus paid overage costs less, unless the team needs Enterprise features such as codebase indexing.

Admins can cap the risk. Business and Enterprise admins decide whether paid usage beyond the pool is allowed, and if it is not, Copilot pauses until the next cycle. User-level budgets have been generally available since June 1.

How Copilot compares with other coding tools

Copilot's $10 Pro plan remains one of the cheaper entries in AI coding. Toolradar's catalog ranks it joint 11th of 62 AI coding tools with a verified entry price, against a category median of $19.50 a month, as of October 2026. Our AI coding assistant pricing roundup sets its plans next to Cursor, Claude Code and Windsurf, and our Cursor vs GitHub Copilot page covers the most common head-to-head.

If the 2026 billing changes push you to look elsewhere, our GitHub Copilot alternatives list ranks the options, and the GitHub Copilot review covers the product itself. For category-wide figures beyond one brand, see our AI coding statistics page, and for the agent tools that now open pull requests on GitHub, our Codex vs Claude Code comparison and best AI coding agents ranking.

How we compiled these statistics

User, subscriber and adoption figures come from Microsoft's earnings call transcripts on its investor relations site, for the quarters reported April 30, 2025 through July 29, 2026. Plan prices, credit allowances and billing rules come from GitHub's Copilot plans page, GitHub Docs and the GitHub changelog and blog, all read on October 21, 2026. Growth multiples, credits per dollar and team costs are our arithmetic on those published figures; the team scenario uses an assumed usage level. Toolradar figures come from the GitHub Copilot profile on Toolradar, October 2026. This page is refreshed when Microsoft or GitHub publishes a new Copilot figure.

Cite this: Devshot, "GitHub Copilot Statistics 2026: Users, Plans, Price Changes", October 2026. Figures verified on Microsoft and GitHub pages, October 21, 2026.

FAQ

How many users does GitHub Copilot have in 2026?

GitHub Copilot has 50 million users, Microsoft said on its July 29, 2026 earnings call. That is up from 20 million in July 2025 and over 15 million in April 2025. Microsoft does not define "users", and the count includes the free plan.

How many paid GitHub Copilot subscribers are there?

Over 4.7 million, as of Microsoft's January 28, 2026 earnings call, up 75% year over year. Microsoft has not given a newer paid count; in April 2026 it reported nearly 140,000 organizations using Copilot instead.

How much does GitHub Copilot cost in 2026?

Copilot Free costs nothing, Pro is $10 a month, Pro+ $39 and Max $100 for individuals. Business costs $19 per seat a month and Enterprise $39. Each paid plan includes a monthly AI credit allowance, and extra usage costs $0.01 per credit.

When did GitHub Copilot switch to usage-based billing?

On June 1, 2026. GitHub announced the change on April 27, replacing premium requests with AI credits charged on token use at each model's API rates. Code completions and next edit suggestions stayed unlimited on paid plans.

What share of the Fortune 100 uses GitHub Copilot?

90%, Microsoft said in July 2025. A year later it said over 90% of the Fortune 500 use GitHub, the wider platform, and that nearly 140,000 organizations use Copilot.

Can new users still sign up for GitHub Copilot Pro?

Yes. GitHub paused new Pro, Pro+ and Student sign-ups on April 20, 2026 and began reopening them, along with the new Max plan, on June 17, 2026. Business and Enterprise sign-ups for card and PayPal customers began reopening on September 3, 2026.

Devshot's brief covers Copilot, Cursor and the coding agents as their plans change. Sign up at devshot.co.

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