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Billing for GitHub#

Currently, only GHEC customers with GitHub Copilot enabled need a cost center for metered billing.

OIT pays for GitHub Enterprise Cloud for use by administrators. On top of the cost of licensing for GitHub Enterprise Cloud, there are many upgradable features that can be used a la carte for extra cost, including Copilot. For teams that want to use GitHub Copilot, GitHub usage will be invoiced and metered through a cost center associated with their unit's GHEC organization. These cost centers are billed in Azure through a team-provided Azure subscription.

View Billing and Costs#

Cost centers can meter usage for one or more organizations, repositories, or users.

These bills can include usage from GitHub Copilot, GitHub Actions (which should not incur cost unless your team utilizes the umn-hosted-vpn GHA runner or another "large" runner), LFS, and Packages. Bills are paid by the associated department to the EFS budget string used for their Azure subscription.

Azure Cost Management (for Azure Administrators)#

  1. Log in to the Azure Portal and navigate to the Subscription attached to your organization's cost center
    • Click on this link or in the Search bar on the top of the portal, type "Subscription" to find the subscription page.
  2. In the Menu bar on the left, navigate to the "Cost Management" section and select "Cost Analysis"
    • This should open a Graph showing all billing for the subscription
  3. Click on "Add a filter", select "Service Name", check the box for "GitHub", then click the small checkmark button to create the filter
    • This will show you the total GitHub Spend. To drill down a little further:
      • On the bottom are three Circular graphs, pick one of them and click on the title and select "Meter Subcategory"
      • This will show you the breakdown of Actions vs Copilot vs any other charges
      • Other useful settings:
        • Set "Group by" to also be "Meter Subcategory"
        • Change "Area graph" to "Line"
        • If you have a budget set it defines the y-axis of the graph and skews the graph, so set it to "none" and it should clean up

GitHub Billing and Licensing (for GHEC Organization Owners)#

  1. Log in to github.com and navigate to the UMN Enterprise billing and licensing page
  2. Select the feature you would like to view spend for under Metered usage

View Copilot premium requests for users in your organizations#

Currently, each licensed user receives 300 premium requests per month included with the Copilot Business Plan.

  1. Select Copilot under Metered usage
  2. Next to Copilot premium requests, click View details
  3. Type user:username in the search box near the top of the page content, replacing username with the username of the person whose usage you are trying to view
    • Note: you need to know the person's github.com username for this to work; there is currently no way to view premium request usage for every user in a team or organization
    • Note: you can also search by cost_center, org, or model

Budgets#

Setting up budgets for GitHub AI credit usage helps prevent overspending and ensures responsible AI usage across your organization. GitHub allows you to configure both spending limits (hard caps) and notification thresholds.

Setting Up a GitHub AI Credits Budget#

To set up a budget for GitHub AI credits (including Copilot and other AI features):

  1. Navigate to the UMN Enterprise billing page
  2. In the navigation bar on the left, choose Budgets and alerts
  3. In the upper right corner, click the + New Budget button.
  4. Under Budget type, select the AI credits budget option. AI credits budgets cover GitHub Copilot and other GitHub AI features. You can also use the product or sku level budgets, but the options are limited for budget scoping and hard limits.
  5. Under Budget scope, select the Organization option and then select the organization for the budget to apply to. Another option is to set a budget per user. While this option may provide additional granularity, it only enforces hard limits and does require more maintenance.
  6. Under Budget, set a Budget amount. You can choose to either stop usage when the limit is reached, or simply receive alerts. See recommended options for a few recommended budget patterns.
  7. Under Alerts select to Receive budget threshold alerts
  8. When setting up organizational budgets, by default account owners and billing managers will receive these alerts. Additional individuals can be selected if needed.

Hard Limit#

We recommend setting a high spending limit with the Stop usage when budget limit is reached option enforced as a hard limit to prevent runaway usage. This can be set at either the organization (preferred) or user (more granular) level. Setting a hard limit will prevent unexpected runaway costs.

  • Initial spending limit: Set a high water mark that would indicate unusual or problematic usage.
  • Purpose: This acts as a safety net to stop usage if costs spiral out of control due to misconfiguration or abuse.

When the spending limit is reached, GitHub AI usage will be disabled for the user or organization until the next billing cycle, or until you increase the limit.

Notification Limit#

In addition to the hard spending limit, you should set up email notifications to alert you before you hit the spending cap. You can achieve this by enabling Receive budget threshold alerts on a hard limit budget, or by creating a second notification-only budget with Stop usage when budget limit is reached disabled.

  • Initial spending alert: Sets a threshold to understand real time AI usage cost.
  • Purpose: This acts as a good check in to understand the GitHub AI costs for your organization.

Monitoring Your Budget#

Regularly review your GitHub AI spending:

  • Check the GitHub billing page to view current month usage
  • Review notification emails promptly when thresholds are crossed
  • Investigate any unexpected spikes in premium request usage
  • Adjust spending limits and thresholds as your team's usage patterns become clear

More Information#