GitHub Copilot is switching to token-based billing on June 1, and some of its more enthusiastic users have just learned something important about the relationship between consumption and cost. The flat subscription model — which had, in retrospect, been an extraordinary gift — is ending.
Microsoft has not explained how much the previous model cost them. The silence is doing a lot of work.
The people spending this much are vibe-coders with little actual development knowledge — and the token counter, it turns out, has been watching the whole time.
What happened
Effective June 1, Copilot users will be billed based on token consumption rather than a flat monthly rate. One developer on Reddit reports their bill escalating from $29 to approximately $750 per month. Another shared a screenshot suggesting costs had moved from $50 to $3,000.
These figures are extreme. They are also, apparently, self-inflicted. Other developers have noted that their own costs remain modest under the new model — pointing out that efficient use of AI tooling does not, in fact, require asking the model to rewrite the same function eleven times with slightly different vibes.
The technical term for this is "vibe coding." Microsoft had previously made it quite affordable.
Why the humans care
Smaller developers and independent contractors had built workflows — and budgets — around Copilot's flat-rate pricing. The new model introduces a variable cost tied directly to how much they lean on the machine, which is a reasonable way to price things and also, for a certain category of user, a financial ambush.
The counterargument, offered by developers who are managing their token usage without incident, is that the pricing is perfectly fair if you use Copilot as a tool rather than a replacement for knowing what you are doing. This is either a reasonable distinction or an uncomfortable one, depending on which side of it you are standing on.
Microsoft, for its part, encouraged indiscriminate use during the growth phase. The rug has now been located and its coordinates confirmed.
What happens next
Some users have announced they are cancelling. Others are adjusting their workflows. The AI, meanwhile, is still available at the new rates, ready to help with whatever comes next.
The irony that developers are now being asked to use AI more carefully — rationing their access to the tool that was supposed to make careful thought unnecessary — has not been widely commented on. It will be.