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Unlimited on every paid plan.
⚡ Heavy hitters: Long agent sessions and frontier models consume the most. A quick chat with a lightweight model might cost a fraction of a credit; a multi-file agent run can cost hundreds.
4
The Month-Long Journey
Watch what happens as days go by...
🏁
Day 1
Jar is full! Use freely
😊
Day 15
Still good! Keep going
😟
Day 22
Running low...
😱
Day 25
Empty! Now what?
🍪 Day 1Day 25
💚 Pool: 100% remaining
⏳ Watch credits get used as days go by...
5
When the Jar is Empty...
You start paying for each extra cookie!
Empty! 😢
➡️
$$$
💸 Meter Starts!
💸 Metered Billing Begins!
Now every use costs extra — like buying cookies one-by-one from the store instead of from your jar.
💡 Good news: You can set limits so this doesn't surprise you!
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Meet the Guards! 🛡️
Four controls to keep your spending safe
✍️
Guard #1: User Budget (ULB)
Limits how much ONE person can take from the jar. Set a universal budget for all licensed users — or a per-cost-center user budget that overrides it just for that group. Use the billing API to roll out ULBs across thousands of users at once.
⭐
Guard #2: Individual Budget
Higher limit for power users who need more
🏦
Guard #3: Enterprise Spending Limit
Max extra spend for the whole company
👥
Guard #4: Cost Center Budget
Max extra spend for each team/department. Group users, repos, or orgs into a cost center.
🛡️ Guards 1 & 2: Protect the jar (stop one person from eating all cookies) 🛡️ Guards 3 & 4: Protect your wallet (cap the extra charges)
📌 Cost Center rule: A user (or repo/org) can be directly assigned to only one cost center at a time. Adding them to a new cost center automatically moves them out of the old one — plan your business-unit mapping accordingly.
⚠️ What you can't do (today):
No standalone org-level limits. Outside of cost centers you still can't ringfence the shared pool per organization. New: you can now cap a cost center's share of included credits — see the next scene.
No bulk user budget per org. Guard #1 (User Budget) is set per user. For large user bases, use the billing API to set ULBs at scale.
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Guards, Leveled Up: Smarter Cost Center Budgets 🏷️
Two new ways to control spend per cost center
🍪
Included-Credit Pools (Caps)
Cap how much of the enterprise's monthly included AI credits a cost center can consume. GitHub auto-calculates the cap from that cost center's Copilot Business/Enterprise licenses — nothing to maintain.
✍️
Per-Cost-Center User Budget
One per-user spending limit applied to every member of a cost center (with room for individual exceptions). Precedence: individual → cost center → universal — the most specific wins. It's always a hard stop at the limit.
🍪 When an included cap is reached, admins choose:
Block further included usage for that cost center, or
Continue as paid overage — only if the enterprise has overages enabled.
Why cap? So one cost center can't spend included credits funded by another cost center's licenses — essential for accurate internal chargebacks. Heads-up: the cap only works fully when every licensed user sits in a cost center with the pool enabled — anyone left out still draws from the shared enterprise pool.
✅ Who can set this up: Enterprise owners and billing managers on GitHub Enterprise Cloud, under Billing & licensing → Cost centers.
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The Magic Switch ⚡
This one setting changes everything!
⚠️ RISKY
🔔
Stop Usage = OFF
You get a warning... but charges keep adding up!
✅ SAFE
🛑
Stop Usage = ON
Hard stop at your limit. No surprise bills!
🚨 Always turn on "Stop Usage"!
Otherwise, your "limit" is just a notification — the meter keeps running!
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The Cookie Monster Problem 🍪👹
Why you NEED the guards
👹
Heavy User
Without limits: One person could use ALL the cookies in the jar by day 10... leaving nothing for everyone else!
👩💻
Blocked
👨💼
Blocked
👩🔬
Blocked
🧑🎨
Blocked
✅ Solution: Set a User Budget (Guard #1) so everyone gets a fair share!
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Your Setup Checklist ✅
Seven easy steps to stay safe
1
Set User Budget = $50/person
Fair share for everyone from the jar
2
Find your power users
Give them a higher budget if they really need it. Tip: for large user bases, script ULB rollout (default + per-user overrides) using the billing API instead of clicking through the UI.
3
Set Enterprise Spending Limit
Cap total overage for the whole company. Tip: ask your GitHub account team to baseline your current spend first — they can help you predict a realistic limit instead of guessing.
4
Set Cost Center Spending Limits
Group users (and optionally repos/orgs) into cost centers by business unit, then cap each one. Stops a single department from burning the whole overage budget and enables chargeback-style accountability.
5
Cap included credits per cost center
Set an included-usage cap so each cost center stays within the credits its own licenses fund (GitHub auto-calculates it). Choose Block or continue as paid overage at the cap. Optionally add a per-cost-center user budget too.
6
Turn ON "Stop Usage"
Hard stop — not just a warning!
7
Check monthly
If people get blocked → raise limits. If jar lasts all month → perfect!
This content has been authored by Microsoft Asia Developer GBB and is based on publicly available GitHub Copilot documentation. It has not been validated across all supported configurations. While the team makes continuous efforts to stay aligned with the latest documentation, users are advised to verify details against official GitHub documentation before making any decisions.