Copilot is getting cheaper to use — and that changes everything

GitHub Copilot is making a change that sounds small but hits hard: they're cutting how many tokens your code uses per session.

Here's what that means. Every time you type a prompt, Copilot reads context, generates suggestions, and bills you for it. Tokens are the unit of that bill. Fewer tokens per session means less cost per session. That's it.

The change is part of a broader push to make Copilot cheaper to use. GitHub isn't advertising this as a feature. They're calling it "token efficiency." The effect is the same: your bill goes down.

Why would they do this? Because right now, token cost is the bottleneck. Not the AI. Not the model. The tokens. If you're a team, that means every session adds up. If you're a solo dev, it means you stop using Copilot when the bill gets uncomfortable. That's the real cost.

This is the kind of thing that gets buried in a changelog and forgotten. But it matters. If you're building on GitHub, you're probably already paying for Copilot. Or you're about to. And if you're not, you should be watching. This is how AI tools become affordable enough that your team actually uses them.

The bigger story: AI tools are competing on cost, not just capability. The model that's 2% better won the race. The model that's 20% cheaper is winning now. And token efficiency is the cheapest way to get there.

Why this matters for us: Copilot is getting cheaper, which means more of us can afford it — and that changes what gets built, who builds it, and who gets left out when the bill spikes.