What is GitHub Copilot?

Learn what Copilot is and what you can do with it.

In this article

GitHub Copilot is an AI coding assistant that helps you write code faster and with less effort. Then, you can focus more energy on problem solving and collaboration.

Research shows that Copilot increases developer productivity and accelerates software development. See Research: quantifying GitHub Copilot’s impact on developer productivity and happiness in the GitHub blog.

Features

You can use Copilot to:

  • Get code suggestions as you type in your IDE.
  • Chat with Copilot to get help with your code.
  • Ask for help using the command line.
  • Organize and share context with Copilot Spaces to get more relevant answers.
  • Generate descriptions of changes in a pull request.
  • Work on code changes and create a pull request for you to review. Available in Copilot Pro+, Copilot Business, and Copilot Enterprise only.

Use Copilot in the following places:

  • Your IDE
  • GitHub Mobile, as a chat interface
  • Windows Terminal Canary, through the Terminal Chat interface
  • The command line, through the GitHub CLI
  • The GitHub website

See GitHub Copilot features.

Get access

You can start using Copilot in several ways, depending on your role and needs.

Individuals

  • Try Copilot for free. Use Copilot Free to explore core features with no paid plan required.
  • Subscribe to a paid plan. Upgrade to Copilot Pro or Copilot Pro+ for full access to premium features and more generous usage limits.
  • Get free access if you're eligible. Students, teachers, and open source maintainers may qualify for Copilot Pro at no cost. See Getting free access to GitHub Copilot Pro as a student, teacher, or maintainer.
  • Request access from your organization. If your organization or enterprise has a GitHub Copilot plan, you can request access by going to https://github.com/settings/copilot and request access under "Get Copilot from an organization."

See Getting started with a GitHub Copilot plan for more information.

Organizations and enterprises

Organization owners can purchase Copilot Business for their team. See Subscribing to GitHub Copilot for your organization.

If your organization is owned by an enterprise that has a Copilot subscription, you can ask your enterprise owner to enable Copilot for your organization. Go to https://github.com/settings/copilot and request access under "Get Copilot from an organization."

Enterprise owners can purchase Copilot Business or Copilot Enterprise for your enterprise. See Subscribing to GitHub Copilot for your enterprise.

If you don't need other GitHub features, you can create an enterprise account specifically for managing Copilot Business licenses. This gives you enterprise-grade authentication without charges for GitHub Enterprise licenses. See About enterprise accounts for Copilot Business.

Next steps

Further reading