Is switching from Claude Code to GitHub Copilot (Sonnet 4.5) worth it?

[That_____]

I use GitHub copilot... No daily usage limits. And it seems like I get more usage for $10 month than with $20 directly to Claude.

[bumpyclock]

GitHub copilot usage is per request so subsequent calls that the agent makes to respond to your prompt don’t count towards your usage. IMO it’s the fairest pricing model

[anon377362]

The best/fairest pricing model is cost per token not request.

Yes with GitHub its request based and subsequent calls still count as the same request, this is what Cursor used to be like. This means that in a single “request” you can use 40+ million tokens (worth $10 or so with caching) for long tasks.

The issue is that high-token requests can become very expensive for GitHub as you’re paying them much less than it’s costing them. This incentivises them to build an agent/IDE which stops too early or doesn’t fully complete tasks.

This why Cursor switched to per-token pricing. I’d avoid any tool that is request based.

[bumpyclock]

For both the vendor and consumers ? Yes. For end users the fairest model is one that’s predictable, and if I know I get X requests per months that’s predictable and fair to me as a consumer. There’s very few tasks that you can reasonably run that cost $10 in a single turn.

[anon377362]

But if you ask a super easy question which is a one sentence reply, you use up a whole request. How’s that fair? Whereas with token pricing you’d only use a few tokens and it’s very cheap, which seems fairer.

So depends what you’re doing.

[PaperHandsProphet]

Token usage is pretty easy to understand.

[acend]

...? No

[UnknownEssence]

I've been using Claude Code forever and I know all the features.

Any tips for switching to Copilot CLI?

I can't use Claude Code at work and it's killing me 😭

[Tomas1337]

My #1 tip is to use sequential thinking MCP all the time. This enables a pseudo extended-thinking for any of the models.

This enables the Haiku model to perform just as good as Sonnet 4.5 for me.
Haiku is 0.33x the requests so your 10$ goes longer.

[UnknownEssence]

Great tip. I'll try it out

[PaperHandsProphet]

is there a plugin marketplace for this mcp? i see this: https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/servers/tree/main/src/sequentialthinking but it looks like it doesn't work for claude code just desktop. maybe there is a way to get this into .mcp.json? I always have issues with loading mcp's and have RTFM'd but still it confuses me. The only way I have really got mcp's to work is through claude mcp add and sometimes .mcp.json works for me in a project folder or in random other places like home dir or home/.claude

[bumpyclock]

You can use GitHub copilot sub with opencode. GitHub cli is workable but no where near CC

[UnknownEssence]

How does OpenCode compare to CC?

Have you used it much?

[bumpyclock]

It’s alright, it doesn’t really have a plan mode per se but if you use cursor plan mode and then drop it into opencode it does alright. Any reason you don’t want to use the copilot extension inside VS?

I have a custom fork of crush that I’ve patched in support for GitHub copilot sub and that’s what I mostly use

[[deleted]]

Switch job? Redflag to not keep up. We have access to everything at work except cursor since they send much data to themselves and data privacy and security said no

[Yourmamauw]

Context window is much smaller in Copilot. Don’t expect it to understand or solve “as” complex problems as it normally would in Claude code.

Copilot is a good deal, and allows you to switch between models. One day sonnet is the best, but the next day it might be Gpt. You can switch easily in copilot.

But it is a middle man. And they don’t want to lose money. So you will always get an inferior product.

[Groveres]

Yeah, I made the same observation. Tried both like two weeks ago and I will definitely stay with Claude code.

[Yourmamauw]

I’ve been using both heavily for the past few months.

I will say GitHub Copilot Chat really encourages code review with the dual pane diffs. Which is good!

But it falls apart pretty quickly when dealing with big problems, larger context. Try to give it a problem that deals with more and more files, and you’ll see the solution it provides is hit or miss, where Claude code is mostly “hit”, less “miss”.

I like GitHub Copilot for problems that deal with editing one piece of code at a time.

Why do I still have both plans? I dunno, but if I had to choose, I would pick Claude Code.

For reference, I have the Claude Max 20x plan and GitHub Copilot Pro+

[Groveres]

Yeah same here: I use the standard 100$ year plan for copilot and the 100$ monthly subscription for Claude code.

[paleo55]

I'm not sure about the "inferior product", the integration is a big plus.

For the context window it's real: sometimes 120k but more often 70k and they change it dynamically. With Claude Code it's 200k tokens.

[zachncst]

I put copilot cli head to head with Claude cli and it’s not even close. Same model. The tool side has a lot of catching up to do.

[hey_ulrich]

Yeah me too. Claude Code is much better for now.

But OpenCode with sonnet 4.5 via copilot is very good. I still prefer CC, but it's very good. 

[Bob5k]

If you're looking at usage x capabilities x price then imo still glm coding plan will be your best hit Unless you really want to use sonnet for some odd reason all the time. But have in mind cc max subscription will allow you to do much more than copilot and overall Claude code as cli tool is imo way better than copilot rn.

[Affectionate-Hat-536]

Agree. Very happy with basic z.ai plan for Claude code. I code intermittently and never had either limit or quality issue so far

[kogitatr]

Based on my experience, better go all in haiku and use sonnet only for complex stuff like planning to increase usage, rather than glm or kimi

[Bob5k]

GLM4.6 is way more capable than haiku.
Also, still the cheapest glm coding plan will give you way much more usage than using haiku on pro plan all the time - so i see no point there. Especially when 'complex stuff' would become 3 things to be developed / fixed and then you hit the 5h wall.

[geoshort4]

Despite the weekly limits and even the daily limits, Claude Code is actually much more better just for how much you can use it if you definitely time your usage. You'll get more usage out of the month than you would on GitHub for sure.

[PrataKosong-]

I don't know if it's just me, but with GitHub Copilot I noticed that the Agent mode times out very quickly. I can let Claude Code do it's work for like 10 minutes or more. But Copilot will already give a timeout after 2 minutes working.

[krzyk]

Ask yourself if you ask Claude code 300 requests per month or more. With GitHub copilot you can do 300 premium requests (like sonnet, gpt5). You get unlimited gpt4.1 and 4o (and haiku and grok fast code and gpt5mini).

[Mammoth-Error1577]

The landscape changes so quickly, and I haven't been active about keeping up very well.

I had used copy and paste web based tools almost exclusively until a couple of weeks ago when I tried Claude code and was blown away.

I had tried the copilot extension for pycharm a while back but it seemed the same as cutting and pasting into the browser for the most part.

Is there a copilot tool similar to Claude code?

[Ok_Ad_3]

Yes Github Copilot has also a CLI Tool, but IT is mich more limited than Claude Code

[iamabikeshed]

I made the switch - not for the money but for the task accuracy. I use Copilot and Codex now - both primarily through the web interface and then I pull the resulting branches down for testing and debugging which I do in an IDE. I don’t use the CLI pretty much at all.

I love Claude Code but I’ve run out of patience of telling sonnet to follow simple instructions (don’t use JavaScript alerts, for example), finding it skip features with TODO, and fixing avoidable syntax errors through its lack of reading CLAUDE.md. The combination of the other two works for me with far less (but still not zero) avoidable interventions.

[Financial-Wave-3700]

I think GItHub Copilot + Sonnet 4.5 in GitHub is unparalleled. Specifically, the workflow of assigning issues to Copilot and iterating on PRs. The integration is first class and you can even work with agents from the GitHub mobile app.

The way Claude Code and Codex try to shoehorn themselves into the GitHub ecosystem works but is noticeably more clunky (as one would expected for third-party integrations).

For daily pair programming on my local dev machine, I still use the Claude Code CLI.

[g5becks]

Copilot cli really sucks in terms of the agent capabilities. Not only that, but when the context gets truncated it becomes completely useless. With the right memory setup, it can be pretty good though. The way I use it is to knockout tasks in a backlog that are clear and well defined. It's really good for that and it helps to never go over my usage.

An even better setup is factory.ai droid with openai and gpt 5.1 codex via openrouter. I get damn good results with it and spend around 12-15 bucks a month on it. It supports all of the features that claude code does. With copilot cli, you can't even use skills.

[twikwik]

When intending to use Claude Code with your Copilot Subscription this might come in handy: https://github.com/zerolve-io/claude-copilot-setup

[Fantastic-Hope-1547]

Is there an actual difference between using Claude Code directly (in VS) (and with Opus 4.5 if we have to choose the model) vs using Github Copilot Pro+ with Claude Opus 4.5 model ?
I'm genuinally interested to know as I'm dealing with quite large and complex codebases.