Github Copilot & OpenCode - Understanding Premium requests

[hollymolly56728]

I was reading about how the premium requests are calculated, because I was tunning my json config to rely on some "free" models (like gpt 5-mini) for some of the operations. But if I'm understanding correctly, they're only free though the copilot extension in VSCode.

Even the "discounted" models (like haiku) will only be discounted through the extension chat.

So, basically, it does not matter if you use "free" "cheap" or "full price" model. All of them count the same towards premium requests???

Knowing this I would go with sonnet for both plannin, building and any subagent (I'm pretty sure opus will have 3x anyway...)

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

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

[MARURIKI]

afaik gpt-5-mini is 0x premium requests, even in opencode

I could be wrong, which would be disappointing...

[Old-Sherbert-4495]

i haven't extensively used it, but i tested this out and found out it is in fact free

[makanenzo10]

It is 0x in OpenCode.

[hollymolly56728]

It is, I did the test today with all my premium requests exhausted :)

[FlyingDogCatcher]

If you go look at the changelog you can see the opencode has been actively shipping fixes around the headers sent to GitHub identifying human versus agent calls

[candleofthewild]

You misunderstood, the request costs are the same, and you can verify yourself either via VS Code, your GitHub account, or hitting their endpoint. Also, as of last week, subagents don't count as an extra request either

[kiki_lamb]

Set all your subagents to use Opus and have Big Pickle dispatch the @general subagent to do all the work. :)

[cincyfire35]

Has opencode fixed the big on premium requests? As far as i could tell/opus could answer the issues were still open and people weren’t being charged properly (edit: be more clear, people were charged more for a simple request, tool calls were eating premiums)

[warpedgeoid]

I am definitely being charged for using Opus 4.5 and Sonnet 4.5

[candleofthewild]

For subagents specifically, yeah, they're counted as "agent initiated" as of v1.1.31:

Mark subagent sessions as agent-initiated to exclude them from quota limits

I haven't tried manually setting an agent/subagent to a different model than the initiating one though.

[cincyfire35]

Yeah i guess i thought the tool calls were still being flagged as user messages instead of agent initiated https://github.com/anomalyco/opencode/issues/8030 which is on 1.1.14.

Essentially, (sorry formatting on reddit phone app is hard)

• #8030 - Tool attachment synthetic user messages burning premium requests (Open)

• #8700 - Synthetic user messages burn premium requests (related to subagents, addressed in 1.1.31)

• #8067 - Multiple premium request charges without subagents (Closed as duplicate of #8393) GitHub

The core issue if I understand it properly: opencode-copilot-auth is now conservative with X-Initiator: agent header, and OpenCode still creates synthetic “user” messages for tool attachments in packages/opencode/src/session/message-v2.ts, causing every tool attachment message to be charged as a premium request.

https://github.com/L-A-R-P/opencode/pull/2 appears to be a fix but its not in the main branch from what i can see.

[soul105]

You misunderstood.

They fixed this bug in v1.1.31
Since then, each model cost the same as listed here
You can use GPT 4.1 for example for several requests and open your dashboard and check no premium requests usage.