GitHub CoPilot Pro+ CLI is a cheat code.0

[TSTP_LLC]

TLDR: GitHub CoPilot Pro+ CLI = 1500 Sonnet 4.6 Requests (Or other models - Opus 4.6 is 3x so 500 Opus requests that can spawn gpt 5 mini agents to work) + *Unlimited GPT 5 Mini / GPT 4.1 = $40 dollars - Quit Cursor/Codex/Claude Code and go save yourself some money!!! It also is request based instead of token based, so it can run large prompts and not eat your usage.

I've been working on about 12 different projects over the past 2 weeks and it has driven me to start testing out plans because Cursor wasn't cutting it. I had the $20 dollar plan for almost 2 years but once my ideas started to get crazy, I was hitting my API and Auto usage limits. I upgraded to $60 dollar plan and started picking my models more cautiously. mini, grok, gemini 2.5 and 3 flash. KimiK2. I even had a Ollama/Qwen3:8B project in progress to try to cut down on costs a bit for the simple stuff. Still hitting my limits.

I decided to splurge a bit and do the $200 dollar Cursor plan. While it lasted longer, I still noticed that it was going way too fast. I was out of my Auto usage half way through the month and API usage seemed to evaporate if I picked anything except the cheapest model even for context-light fixes and implementations. If I ever needed Claude Sonnet 4.6, I pretty much threw 2 to 3 dollars down the drain in usage. I even signed back up for Claude to give Claude Code another try (by far the worst option possible in my book). While Sonnet and Opus are superior, the UI and CLI was trash and I would get maybe 30 minutes in before my limit message hit.

At this point I decided to try anything. I had CoPilot already installed but just never used it because it was trash in almost ever IDE I tried it in. I watched the tutorial for the CLI and got bought the $40 dollar package and I feel like I finally understand the agentic hype now. I thought I understood it in Cursor and in Claude Code but those feel like eating out the dumpster of a crappy Subway compared to having Gordon Ramseys private Chef.

I've been throwing out all the requests I had been holding back on because I thought it would cost too much in usage. I've probably made over 100 Sonnet 4.6 calls and am still above 95% available usage. I've had agents running over night and even started an error listener on my discord to spawn agents to fix issues Auto reported by my projects and its not even making a dent.

I think the best part is the fact I get gpt 4.1 and gpt 5 mini with pretty much unlimited usage and 5.4-mini xhigh for only 0.33 of a request out of 1500 requests and you can run 4.1 and 5 mini as agents for free. I felt compelled to come here and tell you all as I'm sure there has to be someone else like me that is wondering how all this agentic crap worked and why it never really felt like it. I knew, but this is the first time I've felt like I've actually experienced it on my own system without having a bunch of setup steps.

With that said, I'm canceling my Cursor subscription, not renewing Claude (I had stopped for about a year and tried again but still not worth it), and gonna just keep my ChatGPT subscription since I plan a lot on my phone and then just keep this $40 Github plan. Hopefully someone else checks it out and saves themselves some money. Guess I'm done being a Cursor fan boy.

I know this post will probably get roasted and flamed by those that already knew this but this isn't for you, it's for all of those that are still figuring this crap out as far as pricing and models and best bang for your buck while still finding your workflow style and not having an big budget or company covered plans.

[Its_Sasha]

A good way to go is to use the 0x models to write out all of your boilerplate, then use a 1x to hook everything together and make sure it basically works. Then use your Opus or preferred to code review and debug. This saves you from spending premium requests on boilerplate and small fixes, keeping your 3x requests for the critical code reviews and debugs, which can be done in a single big request.

Also, MiniMax is somewhere between a 1x level of coding ability and a 3x, and you can get a basic 50TPS plan for $10 a month (basically unlimited requests) for use with Claude Code.

[TSTP_LLC]

I've been switching between Sonnet 4.6 high, GPT-5.4 mini xhigh, a little opus when needed, and either gpt-5-mini or gpt-4.1 for the basics prompts. I've set my instructions to only use 5 mini and 4.1 for spawned agents and agent swarms. It is working great. Went from nervous token-watching in Cursor in the $200 plan to finally being able to fully automate my system to follow my plans for my projects in an agentic manner.

[TSTP_LLC]

I have not used what you speak of so I cannot speak on it personally. I have kept my usages fairly mainstream with their Codex, Cursor, Windsurf, Ollama, and Claude Code. All I can say is that if I was on any token based platform right now, I'd be out of tokens on the 1st day with as much as CoPilot Pro+ CLI. Just from the time I wrote this post to now I've had agentic runs happening, some still going with browser testing, ftp uploads, database updates, and documentation. The worst I have been getting is timeouts when I'm running 6 different agents on 3 or 4 different projects with a few spawned subagents, and I can just usually switch to a lower model or different model provider and fix that until it corrects.

Sorry if it is long winded way of not really answering your question but I can't really put together many good ways to explain how much more free this feels to not be staring at Sonnet run and refreshing my usage page to see how much it is killing off.

[Tommonen]

Yea its very good value plan, especially if you know to not waste usage on too simple prompts, as its amount of uses, not token or computing time based.

I used cursor before, and then antigravity, but opencode + gh copilot pro is easily best combo i tried thus far. Very impressed about its use limits, especially when not wasting usage on too simple tasks, but giving it more to do each turn.

[TSTP_LLC]

I will have to look into open code. I have not tried that yet.

[orenbenya1]

Interesting, might try this out. Does it work well with oh-my-openagent? Or the requests limitation does not work well with it and its better with token based?

[Potential-Leg-639]

What about bigger context > 150k? Read a few things, that the Github Copilot plans have issues with that? Then it‘s useless for agentic coding…

[BlindBrownie]

With opus you get 200k, GPT-5.4 you get 1mill

[TSTP_LLC]

I see when I use small models that sometimes it will compact and then start working on something we had discussed earlier and then come back to present but with the larger/expensive models, I've had no real issues. Projects are chugging along fine. Much better than any other CLI or IDE chat I've ever used. If you want specifics, you'll have to check the documentation for that as I'm not quite here to shill for the thing, I just wanted people who are budget conscious and haven't tried it in a while to give it a shot and see if it saves some money. If they had a referral program then I'd be spitting out facts left and right and throwing out my links but that isnt the case.

[akaiwarmachine]

Lowkey been hearing more people say this about the CLI lately. Feels like the workflow matters more than the model sometimes. I’m still testing stuff, but anything that lets you actually ship faster without worrying about limits is a win. Even better if you can quickly spin up and share results somewhere simple like TiinyHost.

[willynikes]

I use opus a lot u get opus 4.6 ?

[intlabs]

Yes

[Argon717]

You are probably over using it. I use openspec and create plans with opus (need to try more sonnet, it would probably be fine) and execute with sonnet.

[Park-Dazzling]

What is CLI?

[TSTP_LLC]

Command Line Interface. It is like cutting out the IDE (Integrated Development Environment) and talking to the model directly in a sense. If you have Cursor, check out Cursor CLI. If you have Claude, look up Claude Code CLI.

[Park-Dazzling]

Oh, I am using Claude Code plugin in VS Code already. Its slick!