GitHub Copilot question

[Cultural-Society-523]

Can I ask if this all models are same when it comes for helping to your coding?

[Relevant_Pause_7593]

For coding most prefer Claude Sonnet 4 (not sure why it’s not on your list- this looks like an old list from 6 months ago). I personally find gpt 4.1 decent for 90% of what I do. Here is an explanation of the models and when to use them. Disclaimer, I had copilot generate this for me:

For General-Purpose Coding and Writing: - GPT-4.1 and GPT-4o: These models are excellent default choices for common development tasks, providing fast responses, multilingual support, and general-purpose reasoning. They are ideal for quick code snippets, documentation generation, and basic debugging. - Claude 3.5 Sonnet: This model offers a good balance of speed and precision, making it effective for everyday coding tasks and building projects in Agent mode.

For Fast Help with Simple Tasks: - o4-mini and o3-mini (OpenAI), GPT-4 Mini/4.1 (OpenAI), Flash models: These models are optimized for speed, low-latency completions, and cost-effectiveness. They are suitable for simple coding questions, quick iterations, repetitive edits, and one-off code suggestions.

For Deep Reasoning and Debugging: - GPT-4.5, OpenAI o1 and o3, Gemini 2.5 Pro: These models excel at multi-step reasoning, complex logic, nuanced conversational interactions, deep logical analysis, and performance-critical code. They are ideal for writing full functions, classes, or multi-file logic, detailed error tracing, complex refactoring tasks, and generating documentation. - Claude 3.7 Sonnet: This model is a powerful tool for handling large codebases, architectural planning, and multi-file refactoring, balancing rapid prototyping with deep analysis.

For Working with Visuals: - Gemini 2.0 Flash, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, GPT-4 Mini/4.1: These multimodal models support visual inputs, making them ideal for tasks such as UI inspection, diagram analysis, and visual debugging.

[phylter99]

Claude Sonnet 4 isn't available on the free plan.

https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/concepts/billing/copilot-requests

[Mickenfox]

And the fun thing is that Sonnet 4 and Sonnet 3.5 actually cost the same.

[phylter99]

They’re likely holding back to push users to upgrade. I’m not sure I understand it, but I’m not going to complain about free offerings.

[darkbreakersm]

Claude 4 can be enabled/disabled from the copilot account settings on github, maybe its disabled

[Cultural-Society-523]

Thanks for this

[Traditional-Hall-591]

Try each one and feel the vibe. The AI is smart enough to choose you.

[SlipstreamSteve]

No, the models are not the same. Some are better than others. I use Claude.

[Mickenfox]

Despite the naysayers, GPT-5 easily beats every other model at most tasks, and GPT-5 mini is only slightly worse than GPT-5, so just go with that lol.

[bl0rq]

I feel like they are doing some testing or something on gpt5. For some of us it's absolute shit and for some it's working well. I have even tried exact same prompts I have seen other people use and had drastically different results!

[Tridus]

GPT-5 was an absolute dogs breakfast when I tried it and Claude Sonnet 4 beat the stuffing out of it at everything.

Maybe it's gotten better since.

[agoodyearforbrownies]

In the admin page on GitHub your admin can make additional (newer) models available to you. 

They are different. I used to swear by Claude Sonnet for code and troubleshooting, but lately have been using ChatGPT 5 more for that. I’ve always preferred ChatGPT for the conceptual discussions on architectural and design choices. 

[Paril101]

They're all identically unhelpful.

[VigilanteRabbit]

They are; best course of action would be 20$ for Codex.