GitHub Copilot premium requests were replaced by GitHub AI Credits on June 1, 2026, for every monthly plan, so most accounts now see a credit balance instead of a request count. The exception is Copilot Pro and Pro+ subscribers on an annual plan, who keep premium requests until that plan runs out. If you want both kinds of counter in one place on your desktop, UsageAtlas shows whatever your Copilot account reports, without guessing at the rest.
What a premium request was #
GitHub started billing premium requests on June 18, 2025, for paid plans on GitHub.com. Each chat message or agent action that used a premium model counted as one or more requests, depending on that model's multiplier. A quick question and a long agent session could cost about the same, which is the problem GitHub named when it announced the change on April 27, 2026.
What replaced it #
AI credits measure tokens instead of messages. GitHub's docs say one AI credit equals one US cent, and credits are spent on input, output and cached tokens at each model's published API rate. A few points from GitHub's own pages:
- Chat, the CLI, cloud agent, Spaces, Spark and third-party coding agents spend credits.
- Code completions and next edit suggestions are not billed in credits and stay unlimited on paid plans.
- The monthly allowance resets at 00:00 UTC on the first day of each calendar month, and unused credits do not roll over.
- The old fallback to a cheaper model when you ran out is gone.
Who still sees premium requests #
| Your plan | Unit you are billed in | What happens next |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly Free, Pro, Pro+ or Max | AI credits | Nothing; you are already on credits |
| Annual Pro or Pro+ | Premium requests, with model multipliers | Moves to Copilot Free at expiry unless you switch to a paid monthly plan |
| Business or Enterprise seat | AI credits, under the organization's budgets | Set by your admins |
GitHub's request page now says it applies only to annual Pro and Pro+ subscribers who stayed on legacy billing. Its monitoring page still uses premium-request wording in places, so you will see both terms for a while.
Read the unit before the number #
A request counter and a credit counter cannot be converted into each other, and neither one is a token total. If your account shows only what you have used, do not divide that by another plan's published allowance to work out what is left. Allowances differ by plan and change over time, so check the figure on your own billing page.
Tracking Copilot in UsageAtlas #
UsageAtlas is a free, open-source desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux that tracks AI coding usage across Copilot, Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and other tools. For Copilot it shows the premium, chat and completion quotas your account reports, plus seat credits used and the reset time when GitHub supplies them.
- If GitHub returns a limit, you see remaining capacity. If it does not, the limit shows as unknown, not zero.
- If you go into overage, the reported usage is kept and remaining capacity stops at zero.
- To connect, open Settings, then Sources, find GitHub Copilot and paste a Copilot-authorized GitHub OAuth token.
It does not read prompts or responses, and local tracking needs no account. For Copilot it does not record per-request tokens or cost history; for that, GitHub's own usage report is the better tool, and GitHub's billing page remains the record for what you are charged.
FAQ #
Do GitHub Copilot premium requests still exist? Only for Pro and Pro+ subscribers on an annual plan that started before the switch. Everyone on a monthly plan is billed in AI credits.
When do Copilot premium requests reset? GitHub's docs give 00:00 UTC on the first of each month, the same reset time as AI credits.
Can I convert premium requests into AI credits? No direct conversion exists. Credits depend on tokens and the model, and requests depended on a per-model multiplier.