What It Is
GitHub Copilot is an AI coding assistant integrated into GitHub and popular IDEs. Launched in 2021 as the first mainstream AI pair programmer, it has grown from simple code completions into a full AI coding platform with chat, code review, autonomous agents, and multi model support.
Capabilities
- Code completions: Real time, multi line code suggestions as you type in VS Code, JetBrains, Neovim, and other editors
- Copilot Chat: Conversational AI for explaining code, debugging, generating tests, and answering questions about your codebase
- Code review: AI powered pull request review that identifies bugs, suggests improvements, and checks for security issues
- Coding Agent: Autonomous agent that can implement features, fix bugs, and deliver working pull requests from issue descriptions
- Multi model: Choose from GPT, Claude, Gemini, and other models depending on your plan
Pricing
- Free: 50 chat requests and 2,000 completions per month, limited models
- Pro ($10/month): Unlimited completions, unlimited chat, 300 premium requests, coding agent, code review
- Pro+ ($39/month): Everything in Pro plus Claude and Codex agents, Claude Opus 4.6, 1,500 premium requests
- Business ($19/user/month): Pro features plus org management, policy controls, IP indemnity
- Enterprise ($39/user/month): Business plus codebase indexing, knowledge bases, fine tuned models, SAML SSO
How It Relates to GitHub
Copilot is deeply integrated with GitHub's platform. The coding agent opens pull requests directly, code review happens on GitHub PRs, and Copilot Chat can reference your repository context. With the MCP server, Copilot's capabilities extend even further, allowing AI agents to manage the full GitHub workflow programmatically.