GitHub Copilot Has a Free Tier — AI Code Completion for Every Developer

GitHub Copilot Free gives you 2,000 code completions per month and 50 chat messages. AI pair programming in VS Code and JetBrains — no credit card required.

What You Get for Free

Copilot Free tier (since December 2024):

• 2,000 code completions/month
• 50 Copilot Chat messages/month
• Multi-line suggestions
• Works in VS Code, JetBrains, Neovim
• Powered by GPT-4o and Claude 3.5 Sonnet

How it works in practice:

// Type a comment, Copilot writes the code:

// Function to validate email address
function validateEmail(email: string): boolean {
  // Copilot suggests:
  const emailRegex = /^[^\s@]+@[^\s@]+\.[^\s@]+$/;
  return emailRegex.test(email);
}

// Parse CSV string into array of objects
function parseCSV(csv: string): Record<string, string>[] {
  // Copilot writes the entire function
  const lines = csv.trim().split('\n');
  const headers = lines[0].split(',');
  return lines.slice(1).map(line => {
    const values = line.split(',');
    return headers.reduce((obj, h, i) => ({ ...obj, [h]: values[i] }), {});
  });
}

Copilot Chat

Inline in your editor:

• "Explain this function"
• "Write tests for this class"
• "Refactor to use async/await"
• "Fix the bug in this code"
• "Add error handling"

Understanding your codebase context — it reads your open files and project structure.

Quick Start

1. Go to github.com/settings/copilot
2. Enable Copilot Free
3. Install Copilot extension in VS Code
4. Start typing — suggestions appear automatically

Tips for Better Suggestions

• Good comments = good code — descriptive comments guide Copilot
• Open relevant files — Copilot uses open tabs as context
• Name things well — getUserByEmail gets better suggestions than getData
• Accept partially — Tab accepts full suggestion, Ctrl+→ accepts word by word

Paid Tiers

• Copilot Pro ($10/month) — unlimited completions, unlimited chat, GPT-4o/Claude
• Copilot Business ($19/user/month) — admin controls, policy management
• Copilot Enterprise ($39/user/month) — codebase-aware chat, documentation search

If you write code and haven't tried Copilot Free — you're leaving productivity on the table.

---

Need web scraping or data extraction? Check out my tools on Apify — get structured data from any website in minutes.

Custom solution? Email [e-mail] — quote in 2 hours.