GitHub Copilot student discount: a free plan with $2 of AI credits a month

Is GitHub Copilot free for students?

Yes, verified students get GitHub Copilot free on the Copilot Student plan. GitHub's Copilot plans page says: "Verified students have access to the GitHub Copilot Student plan." It isn't Copilot Pro with a student label, though. The plan's real limit is its AI credits, and GitHub doesn't print the number on its plans page or in its docs. GitHub staff did: Martin Woodward, GitHub's VP of Developer Relations, wrote in the Copilot Student plan post that from 1 June 2026, Student gets "200 monthly included usage AI Credits." The plans page says "1 AI credit = $0.01 USD." So here's what each plan includes each month:

Copilot Free sits below all three of these. Its credit cell on the plans page just reads "Limited chat and agent usage," and it doesn't give a dollar figure. It also caps your code completions at 2,000 a month, while Student doesn't cap them at all.

What does Copilot Student include?

Copilot Student includes most of Pro's features and $2 of its $15 in usage. We read each row from GitHub's plans docs, its billing docs and its plans page on 9 November 2026:

The $2 goes a long way on a cheap model and not very far on a strong one. GitHub's model price list charges $2 for a million input tokens on Claude Sonnet 5.5, and $10 for a million output tokens. That means your $2 buys you a million tokens of input, or 200,000 tokens of output. On Claude Haiku 5.5, which costs $0.10 and $0.50 for prompts under 100,000 tokens, the same $2 does 20 times as much work. But you don't get to choose between them. Auto does that.

Auto can still reach all three of the big labs. The staff post says students keep models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google through Auto, and adds: "We'll keep adding new models and expanding the intelligence in Auto mode." Completions never touch the credits at all. GitHub's price list says "Code completions and next edit suggestions are not billed in AI credits." GitHub's billing docs don't say whether a student is able to buy more credits once the 200 are gone. The only path that GitHub names is to upgrade to a paid plan.

How do you get GitHub Copilot as a student?

You have to get verified by GitHub Education first, and then you switch Copilot Student on yourself. Being approved doesn't turn it on. GitHub's student setup guide and its GitHub Education docs give these steps, read 9 November 2026:

1. Check you qualify. GitHub wants students who "Are at least 13 years old" and are enrolled in a degree or diploma program, "such as a high school, college, university, or homeschool."
2. Add and verify your school email in GitHub, if your school issues one.
3. Go to github.com/settings/education/benefits, click Start an application and submit it with proof. GitHub accepts a school ID showing a current enrollment date, a class schedule, a transcript or an enrollment letter.
4. Once you're approved, find "Free GitHub developer resources for students and teachers", select Learn more and follow the prompts to activate Copilot Student.
5. If Copilot only shows paid plans, don't buy one. GitHub says the benefit "can take several days to finish applying after verification."

Then keep studying. GitHub's guide says "GitHub reevaluates your eligibility every month," so the plan lasts as long as GitHub still sees you as a student.

What changed for Copilot students in 2026?

GitHub moved students off free Copilot Pro and onto a plan of their own on 12 March 2026. Guides written before then describe Pro for free with your choice of Claude, and that's no longer what you get. GitHub's 13 March changelog says students "are now on the new GitHub Copilot Student plan." Six changes landed in four months:

The March post by GitHub staff said the Claude Opus and Sonnet models, among others, "will no longer be available for self-selection under the GitHub Copilot Student Plan." Then on 20 April, GitHub's changelog said "we will be pausing new signups for our Student, Pro, and Pro+ plans." That hit new students hard. If you were verified in that window, you could be approved by GitHub Education and still find that there was no plan for you to switch on, with no date for when there would be one. A GitHub community admin wrote on 23 April that "all new activations of Copilot Student, Pro, and Pro Plus are paused." GitHub's 17 June changelog reopened Student, Pro, Pro+ and Max sign-ups "gradually over the next couple of weeks."

Is there a Copilot Pro student discount or free trial?

No, Copilot Pro has no student price and no free trial open as of 9 November 2026. A student who wants Pro pays the full $10 a month. GitHub staff added that option on 13 March: students can upgrade from Copilot Student to Pro or Pro+ and keep their other GitHub Student Developer Pack benefits.

The 30-day Pro trial that older guides mention is shut. GitHub's 10 April changelog paused new trials because it had seen "a significant rise in abuse of our free trial system." Three days later it paused the trials that were already running as well, and the plans page still listed no trial when we read it in November. So don't wait for one. Copilot Pro has no yearly price either. GitHub's usage billing changelog says annual Pro and Pro+ plans move to Copilot Free when they expire.

Teachers do better than students here. GitHub's plans docs say verified teachers and maintainers of popular open source projects "may be eligible for free access to Copilot Pro," the plan that includes $15 of credits. If you teach a class as a graduate student, check that route too.

When should a student pay for Copilot?

Pay for Copilot Pro once $2 of credits a month stops covering your chat and agent work, or once you need to pick Claude for yourself. Until that happens, Student costs you nothing and your completions are unlimited. This is what a nine-month school year costs on each of the plans, at the prices GitHub showed on 9 November 2026:

Pro's 1,500 credits are 1,000 base credits plus 500 "flex" ones, and GitHub's plans page warns "Flex allotments may change over time." Treat the extra $5 as a bonus. It may not last. If you also code with Claude or Cursor, Cursor vs Copilot prices the same models in both editors, and Cursor's student discount explains why Cursor's free student year is gone.

When you graduate, the monthly check stops passing and your Student plan ends. At that point you drop to Copilot Free with 2,000 completions a month, or you pay $10 a month for Pro. Plan for it. That's $120 a year on a first-job budget.

What does Copilot cost next to a student's other AI bills?

A verified student can code with AI for $0 on Copilot Student, but if you want a chat app as well, that's a bill of its own. ChatGPT Plus costs $20 a month on OpenAI's pricing page, read 9 November 2026, so a school year of it is $180. The best AI for coding ranks the models Auto might pick for you.

Whizi, which publishes this page, has no student price, no coding agent, no editor plugin and no API, so keep Copilot Student for the code. Whizi is a chat app. Its free tier gives 10 messages a day on Whizi AI, Auto and Claude Haiku 5.5. Whizi Pro at $29.99 a month lets you pick Claude, GPT or Gemini yourself in one chat, which Copilot Student no longer does. That's worth it only if you'd otherwise pay for two chat plans. The cheapest way to use Claude and GPT and one subscription for every AI model show where one plan beats two.