GitHub Copilot

How GitHub Copilot works and why it’s worth paying for if you write any code or config files. It’s like having a coding buddy who never gets tired of your questions. We’ll show you the basics and some useful tricks.

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3 minute read

GitHub Copilot is an LLM service that works throughout their platform, but the primary integration is with Visual Studio Code. It helps you write code, config, and documentation.

Interaction Model

There are three main ways to interact with GitHub Copilot:

Inline Suggestions: As you type, Copilot suggests code completions and snippets that you can accept or modify.
Chat Interface: This is where you can talk with a Copilot LLM model and include context, like refer to a file or a line of code. Since it can “see” your code, it can provide more relevant suggestions which can then optionally “Apply”.
Edit & Agent: Edit & Agent are similar in that you can ask questions and get answers. However, Edit will stage your changes in the editor for review, while Agent will stage your changes, and then keep on interating over the code until the problem is solved.

There are also other smaller features like:

Code Review: Copilot can help you review code by suggesting improvements or identifying potential issues.
Git Commit Messages: It can generate commit messages based on the changes made in your code.
Pull Request Descriptions: Copilot can assist in writing pull request descriptions by summarizing changes and providing context.

The “Agent Mode” however, is probably the biggest deal. How you can use this is you give it a complete definition of a feature you want to implement, or a problem that you are having, and ask it to solve it. Agent Mode will then iterate over the code, making/staging changes until it thinks the problem is solved. For a large problem, it will stop after 15 iterations to ask you if you want to continue, but usually, it’s finished on it’s own by then.

Pricing

As of May 2025, GitHub Copilot is available as a subscription service with a monthly fee:

Feature	Free	Pro	Pro+
Price/Mo	$0	$10	$39
Agent/Chat Requests	50 agent or chat requests per month	Unlimited agent and chats with GPT-4.1	Unlimited
Completions	2,000 completions per month	Unlimited completions	Unlimited
Models Available	Claude 3.5, GPT-4.1	GPT-4.1, Claude 3.7/4.0, Gemini 2.5 Pro	Claude 4.0, o3, GPT-4.5
Code Reviews		Included	Included
Coding Agent			Included
Notes	Limited features	Includes code reviews, more models	Most advanced models, agent

The prices are lower per/year. So the Pro level for example is $100/year, or $8.33/month.

There is also a free tier with limited features, as well as discounts for students and educators.

https://github.com/features/copilot/plans

Summary

If you write documentation, create software, or work with code in any capacity, you must have a Coding LLM. If you work in enterprises, GitHub Copilot is very likely going to be the tool that is used. I choose to use this because I find it to be the easiest to work with. However, you do have other options:

Cursor: https://www.cursor.com/ this is a fork of Visual Studio Code with their own approach. Pricing is nearly identical to Copilot.
Lovable: https://lovable.dev/ this is a web-based IDE that has a lot of features, but is not as mature as Copilot. They have a free tier for public projects, but otherwise have a similar pricing model to Copilot, but this is based on credits.
Claude Code: https://www.anthropic.com/claude-code this is a CLI-only tool. They have a pay-as-you-go model, but otherwise it’s $100/person/month and up. It is not integrated into an IDE/editor, but their models are the best at the moment.