GitHub Copilot Billing
Add a seat, pay by the day.
Remove one, and it's gone for good.
On August 28, 2026, GitHub announced a major change to how Copilot Business / Enterprise seats are billed. From October 1, assigned seats are charged upfront at the start of each billing cycle. Adding seats is still prorated — but removing one no longer earns a refund.
What actually changes
This applies only to Business / Enterprise org seats. Individual Copilot Pro plans are unaffected.
Until now, Copilot Business / Enterprise seat counts adjusted with prorated billing as you added or removed people mid-month. Add someone and you're billed from that day to month-end; remove them and you get the remaining days back — an ordinary usage-based arrangement.
In a changelog post dated August 28, 2026, GitHub said that premise is going away. Existing Business / Enterprise customers paying by credit card or PayPal will, from October 1, 2026, be charged upfront for every assigned seat at the start of each billing cycle, and revoking a seat no longer triggers a prorated refund. New seat assignments have already required upfront payment since September 1. The details are also documented on GitHub's official billing page.
| Until September | From October |
|---|---|
| Adding a seat: prorated charge | Adding a seat: prorated charge (unchanged) |
| Removing a seat: prorated refund | Removing a seat: no refund. Drops off the next cycle |
| Payment timing: settled at month-end | Payment timing: charged upfront at cycle start |
| Scope: proration applies to every plan | Scope: Business / Enterprise only (Copilot Pro unaffected) |
Add a seat, and it's prorated.
Remove one, and it's paid in full.
The proration asymmetry
Adding and removing seats are now treated differently — miss that gap and the bill catches you off guard.
Cycle start: charged upfront
At the start of each billing cycle, every seat assigned at that moment is billed in one lump sum. Pricing is unchanged — $19/month per Business seat, $39/month per Enterprise seat — a level set back in the June 1, 2026 pricing update.
Mid-cycle addition: still prorated
Assign a new seat mid-cycle and, as before, you're billed only for the days from assignment to month-end. This is the one half of the arrangement that stays symmetric.
Mid-cycle removal: no refund
Revoke a seat for an offboarded employee or a plan change, and what's already paid stays paid. The seat remains usable for the rest of the current cycle, but the removal only takes effect starting the next billing cycle — this month's charge is locked in either way.
The numbers worth remembering
Prices haven't moved. What changes is when — and in which direction — you're charged.
The impact splits cleanly by role. For admins and IT (business), monthly seat management effectively becomes a snapshot fixed at cycle start. The old habit of "add a few seats this month, drop them if we don't need them, and get the days back" no longer works — the moment you revoke a seat, no refund follows, so treat any experimental headcount bump as a full month's cost, locked in.
PMs and engineering managers should plan seats at the quarter or sprint level. Time new-hire onboarding to land right after a billing cycle starts whenever you can — it wastes less money. Conversely, revoking a seat late in the month buys you little, since that month is already billed in full; treat offboarding as something to batch and confirm before the next cycle begins, rather than something to rush. Individual plans like Copilot Pro are not affected by this change — the impact is limited to Business / Enterprise org admins.
Three things to handle before October
Just three, and they're worth doing now.
Audit your seats
List active and dormant seats now, and drop anything unneeded before October 1 — after that, removing a seat won't get that month's charge back.
Update approval workflows
If your request process assumed "adding a seat is cheap to try, since it's prorated," update it — from October, removals no longer settle instantly.
Confirm who's affected
Only Business / Enterprise org seats are in scope. Make sure your team knows Copilot Pro and free-tier individual plans aren't touched.
Caveats and risks
Not everything is settled yet. GitHub's announcement explicitly names existing customers paying by credit card or PayPal; whether Enterprise Agreement customers on invoiced billing follow the same timeline can't be confirmed from what's public as of this writing — a separate notice for that group seems likely.
Also worth flagging: since new seats have required upfront payment since September 1, some organizations will see their invoices look different across the two months — seats added in September under the new-seat rule, and existing seats switching to prepaid in October. It's worth checking October's invoice more carefully than usual during this transition.