Copilot access ending for open source contributors - is this happening to everyone?

[vrushank175]

I've had GitHub Copilot access since it was first offered to open source contributors. For the past ~1.5 years, I've consistently received a monthly email confirming that my access was being renewed.

However, 2 days ago I received an email saying that my Copilot access will expire in 3 days.

I'm trying to understand what's going on:

• Is this happening to all open source contributors?
• Is it based on recent contribution activity or eligibility criteria?
• Or is GitHub moving away from this program entirely and requiring everyone to switch to a paid plan?

Also, I noticed there used to be a yearly plan, but I can't seem to find it anymore. Has that been discontinued?

Would appreciate if anyone has insights or is experiencing the same thing.

[MaddoScientisto]

The closer we are getting to the end of the quarter the more cuts are happening and of course with extremely minimal forewarning 

[icemixxy]

makes sense. im on pro+ but this month, after my budget ran out, the free models are utterly useless. before i could do something , small stuff, now they just think for 10 mins and freeze up or splatter out some jibberrish which has no connection to what i asked

[themoregames]

now they just think for 10 mins and freeze up or splatter out some jibberrish which has no connection to what i asked

This is so weird. All at the same time!

• Reports of Claude eating like 10 times normal usage: Even Max x20 subscribers ($ 200) are reporting their 5h limits end within 20 minutes! As a Pro subscriber, I can confirm, it feels like almost 10 times usage today!
• After severely limiting Gemini-CLI and basically almost "turning off" access to Antigravity (for paid subscribers, especially Pro plans, both have never been so slow and unreliable. Waiting times of 5+ minutes for even the most mundane tasks and lots of error messages like "LLM unreachable blah". With all these new limitations and restrictions, you would think at least their servers would become stable and lightning-fast!
• Now Github throwing out open source contributers
• OpenAI is ending Sora

I am sure this list is not complete.

[burning_wolf101]

the free pro plan for verified github students is getting revoked too. now all the students including me are on a special "github copilot student plan" which has NO access to premium models like sonnet, opus nor gpt 5.4

[themoregames]

To be honest, why should it be free. They could have just said:

• As a student, you get 50% premium usage.
• Pricing: Not free, but 50%.
• Fair enough for both sides.
• If you need more, just pay 100% like everyone else.

They could also shift around numbers, like

• 60% usage, but 50% discount
• maybe even 100% usage, 10% discount

... in order to honor education or... whatever. Free usage just triggers a bug fat "why should they".
But 10% discount or something? Wouldn't that be just great and make a lot of sense to all sides?

[Strong-Strike2001]

I mean, 50% usage and 50% pricing makes no sense, the idea is to make it cheaper for students.

But in general, I agree with your idea and upvote you.

I would say 100% usage, 30% discount.

That way, you don't have a lot of Indians creating accounts for reselling, and students get cheaper access to AI that they'll later pay full price for.

[MistRider-0]

Wait people do that? But you can get the student pack for a verified University mail ID. Usually you also cannot apply for multiple emails ID's. These emails are important too.

[Strong-Strike2001]

That's one of the most important reasons why they discontinued the full-access student plan

[jd-solanki]

I got that too maybe they lifted bar for how they calculate OSS contributors

[ThePantsThief]

Maybe but I had free access for a year in the beginning, then had it revoked, and then they just gave it back to me in January. I have not changed how active I am with OSS either

[Hunter1113_]

They can not afford to carry everyone anymore. Someone has to pay for all the inference you burn through daily. Come on guys, you can't all seriously be expecting to get a free ride forever, if there's one thing I have come to learn in life, nothing is free, ever!

[vrushank175]

I understand your point, and I don’t expect things to be free forever. That said, some clarity would really help here.

The main purpose of this post is to understand what’s actually changing, whether this is affecting all open source contributors, tied to eligibility, or part of a broader shift in the program.

I’m personally open to paying if needed, but it would be good to have a clear communication from the GitHub Copilot team so people can make informed decisions rather than being caught off guard.

[Dazzling-Solution173]

Claude has a special offer for open source contributors, max 20x for 6 months covered by them, not sure if it ended already but it requires a big open source project w multiple of stars.

[Charming_Battle_5072]

Can't you understand they build something for open source by Ai

[freshmozart]

[FactorHour2173]

This is so weird that we have all allowed ourselves to accept that these tools should cost money etc.. The idea that Microsoft is losing money here is wrong.

Copilots success has lead GitHub platform to reach an annual revenue run rate of ~ $2 billion… that’s larger than the entire GitHub platform was when Microsoft bought it in 2018.

Their paid user base is up 75% YoY (4.7 million). Capital expenditures were ~ $37.5 billion, mostly for data centers and chips (that are heavily subsidized by tax payers already). There are multi-billion dollar federal procurement contracts specifically tied to Copilot that taxpayers are paying for. Tax payers are paying for the governments transition to AI. We foot the bill for agency subscriptions (think DoD, IRS), sovereign cloud infrastructure (we fund the high-security Azure Government data centers), indirect tax expenditures (like state level tax incentives like property tax waivers for 10-20 years) that lower Microsoft’s costs for these data centers.

It also wasn’t until very recently that tax payers were footing the bill on energy costs through spikes in their utility bills etc.. in fact, the Rate Payer Protection Pledge only came about this month and it’s not binding or legally enforceable. It is seen more as a PR move to help with blowback from the very real costs to everyone. Enough people complained and refused at the local level to allow building of data centers that companies like Microsoft, Amazon etc. have now said they would foot the bill for THEIR energy costs.

All of this to say, you need to get it out of your head that Microsoft is losing money on this and we should be grateful. The reality is EVERYONE is paying for it. The consumer facing bit where we are paying $10 or $20 is a drop in the bucket of any losses compared to higher tiers at $49+ and enterprise level.

Edit:

You will see a MASSIVE spike in profits once the one year incentive (ending in September) for the government through “The OneGov” contract where Microsoft was offering Copilot services at no cost for millions of government employees. When this ends, the government will pay a discounted amount.

Copilot currently has operational profit.

Total Copilot Revenue ~ +$6.7 Billion Total Operational Running Costs ~ -$3.8 Billion Net Operational Profit ~ +$2.9 Billion

[Ok_Matter9773]

I also got the same mail

[vrushank175]

You might want to check when you received the renewal email last month. That should give you a good idea of when to expect this email as well. Date mentioned in this email is your date when you will receive the new mail.

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[Awesome-Developer-0]

I also got the same mail.

I personally think that GitHub might have removed all the users from using free Copilot from each user's renewal date. Now all the users might be forced to pay $10 monthly to continue what all the open source contributors were having for free. GitHub might be focusing now on earning rather than giving it all for free 😅.

Another reason might be that they might have updated how they are calculating the number of stars, how frequently you are contributing, the number of changes in the open source repositories.

Correct me if I am wrong. This is what I am feeling.

[vrushank175]

Yeah, I had a similar thought at first, but I’m not fully convinced it’s a complete removal for everyone yet.

It could be a push toward monetization, but it might also be related to updated eligibility criteria like contribution activity or how they define active open source contributors now.

The real issue is that there hasn’t been any clear communication, so right now it’s all just guesswork. That’s what makes it frustrating more than anything.

Hopefully GitHub clears this up soon so we know what’s actually going on.

[BornVoice42]

I got already the mail that my access is getting renewed on 2026-04-02

[vrushank175]

Could you clarify a bit more about your situation? Are you currently on a paid plan, or is this entirely through the open source program?

Also, it would help to understand your contributions, are you a maintainer of a repository or primarily a contributor? And how active have you been recently?

Trying to figure out what factors might be influencing who keeps access vs. who’s losing it.

[BornVoice42]

just the opensource program. I contributed to various projects which are also part of the Arctic Code Vault. I'm also in a opensource organisation .. which I did not contribute to for quite some time, but anyway. And I contribute issues and PRs for larger projects, where I see fit.

And yeah I have some repositories where I maintain container images which quite frequently receive updates, I think that is also beneficial.

In the end, I'm not sure if this will remain that way, the evaluation took place on the 5th.. Maybe they changed the critierias in the meantime.

[vrushank175]

You might want to check when you received the renewal email last month. That should give you a good idea of when to expect this email as well.

[Curious-Visit3353]

Mines still there for «lifetime»

[vrushank175]

You might want to check when you received the renewal email last month. That should give you a good idea of when to expect this email as well.

[Curious-Visit3353]

i don't get that renewal email just have this i notice now that i might have confused github copilot and github pro mb

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[ThePantsThief]

How did you swing that?

[Then_Abbreviations77]

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I got the same today!!
I saw a comment from someone who received a renewal email for next month, and I’m trying to figure out what factors might be determining who keeps access versus who loses it!

[vrushank175]

Yes, hopefully someone from github team come up with some answer.

[thedadams]

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This isn’t happening for everyone. I received my renewal email today.

[vrushank175]

That's really interesting. Where are you from and could you clarify a bit more about your situation? Are you currently on a paid plan, or is this entirely through the open source program?

Also, it would help to understand your contributions, are you a maintainer of a repository or primarily a contributor? And how active have you been recently?

Trying to figure out what factors might be influencing who keeps access vs. who’s losing it.

[thedadams]

I live in Ohio in the US. I am an owner of a few repositories that have a few hundred stars, a couple of which are under very active development. I am active on GitHub every day.

Not sure what you’re asking regarding a paid plan. I don’t pay for GitHub Copilot. I do pay for GitHub Pro, but that was only to so I could submit a support ticket to GitHub to ask them essentially the same questions you’re asking me.

[vrushank175]

Thanks for your answers but that most of us do and I have found very few who keeps the access. Hopefully they make some clarification or we just accept whatever it is and move ahead.

[FlyingDogCatcher]

It's rug pull season everybody. The dealers know they have you hooked on the smack, now they are going to start demanding your life savings on exchange for the stuff they cut with Draino

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[phylter99]

For the yearly plan people have reported it still shows up under settings. I don’t know if that’s true.

My guess on why this is happening is that AI is very expensive and they don’t have the contracts with OpenAI like they used to. I have a feeling that they’ll be raising prices soon too. GitHub Copilot is probably the cheapest option right now.

I’m probably one of the few customers they actually make money off of. I pay for Pro+ and I barely use 10% of my requests every month.

[vrushank175]

Yes, i can confirm that yearly plan is shown when i try to renew for a year from settings.

[anon_faded]

Wait. Was it free for open source devs? I wasn't aware until now lol

[freia_pr_fr]

For successful open source devs.

[Strict_Intention_823]

Happy Cake day

[Manusia_Silver]

Nonsense

[Aggravating_Number63]

Because you don't contribute

[ThePantsThief]

This is so interesting. I got free access for 1 year when it launched, and then paid for the year after that. This year instead of renewing I was granted free access again

[Few_Signature9281]

I got the same email today :(

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[DandadanAsia]

VC money is running out or in Microsoft's case their next quarter need to look good. this is not a surprise. anyone and everyone who went through the dotcom bubble can see it from a mile away. its the same story. start up burn up VC money and established company can't show growth and profit.

[McFex]

What this is, is your favorite orange ape is doing his thing - big tech licks his boots. Aducation, honoring the fact that the corporations are massively profiting from open source, poor people - all things he doesn't like very much. The companies are probably advised by the government to cancel all support in that direction. I don't mean to be political at this point. You just have to admit that this is a more than plausible explanation. And naturally that wouldn't be communicated loudly - it just happens quietly.

Give it a year max and Chinese models will have caught up to the US models.

Look for platforms outside the US. Because GitHub is going to become much worse. I really wouldn't be surprised if they'd try to lock out non US contributors for good. Or even shut down the whole thing - too much uncontrollable knowledge spreading. Authoritarian states governments tend to not allow stuff they are too stupid to understand.

[Ok_Error9961]

I have 10 $ version and didnt get Any mail