AI costs finally appearing to end users - Github pricing models

[Non-Euclidean]

Oh noes! Github starting to charge actual costs (or closer to them).
People might start waking up.

In April, GitHub announced that it was moving subscribers from request-based billing to a usage-based model for its AI-powered Copilot service. As that new pricing model goes into effect today, many GitHub Copilot users are reporting some extreme sticker shock as they realize just how quickly their previous “normal” usage is burning through their newly limited monthly allotment of AI credits.

Across social media and forums, many Copilot users are sharing personal statistics showing how just a few hours of AI usage can now account for a large chunk of their new monthly subscription caps. For some users, it reportedly took less than a day to use up a month’s usage quota.

Article below.

AI costs how much? GitHub Copilot users react to new usage-based pricing system.

Some report burning through their whole monthly "AI credit" allotment in a single day.

arstechnica.com

 

[Non-Euclidean]

One thing the associated comments reiterated is that this will stop lazy use of AI. Using the top tier models and sending entire chat sessions back instead of minor tweaks, etc.

blookoolaid​

Ars Scholae Palatinae​

We went through something similar at work a few months ago with Cursor. My boss is all in on AI coding. And frankly its becoming indispensable annoyingly quickly. But you cant be naive about usage.

He got the whole team using it and we burned through our monthly allotment in a week. Whoops. Then I learned that keeping an agent around for multiple requests increases the context and hence the cost. And frontier models while better are ten times as expensive.

Im now careful to use cheaper models and spawn new agents frequently to control context. I only use Cursor (usually on auto occasionally on a recent Claude model) for coding tasks. Anything else that doesnt need the context of my whole codebase I use Chat GPT which is a flat monthly fee.

Its slightly annoying but works well for me without breaking the bank. A coworker is more sophisticated. She has three tiers of models. She has a smart model generate the overall plan. After review she has a midtier model break that down into simple tasks that she assigns to fairly stupid agents. She's able to get top tier results without top tier pricing by ensuring she only allows the appropriate agent to do each job. I think thats the future. We need better automation and instrumentation around agent use so we can tune our desired mix of cost vs quality.