What is GitHub Copilot?

Learn what GitHub 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, allowing you to focus more energy on problem solving and collaboration.

GitHub Copilot has been proven to increase developer productivity and accelerate the pace of software development. For more information, see Research: quantifying GitHub Copilot’s impact on developer productivity and happiness in the GitHub blog.

Copilot features

GitHub Copilot includes a suite of features. You can use Copilot to:

  • Get code suggestions as you type in your IDE
  • Chat with Copilot to ask for help with your code
  • Ask Copilot for help using the command line
  • Generate a description of the changes in a pull request (Copilot Enterprise only)
  • Create and manage collections of documentation, called knowledge bases, to use as a context for chatting with Copilot (Copilot Enterprise only)

Copilot is available:

  • In your IDE
  • In GitHub Mobile, as a chat interface
  • In Windows Terminal Canary, through the Terminal Chat chat interface
  • On the command line, through the GitHub CLI
  • On the GitHub website

For more information, see GitHub Copilot features.

Getting access to Copilot

As an individual, there are a few different ways you can get access to GitHub Copilot:

  • Set up Copilot Free. Copilot Free enables you to enjoy limited access to some of the features of GitHub Copilot, without needing to sign up for a subscription. See About GitHub Copilot Free.
  • Sign up for a subscription to GitHub Copilot Pro. You can try GitHub Copilot for free with a one-time 30-day trial. After the free trial, you will need a paid subscription for continued use.
  • If you are a member of an organization or enterprise that has a subscription to GitHub Copilot, you can request access to Copilot by going to https://github.com/settings/copilot and requesting access under "Get Copilot from an organization."
  • If you are a verified student, teacher, or maintainer of a popular open source project, GitHub Copilot is free to use. See Getting free access to Copilot Pro as a student, teacher, or maintainer.

As an organization owner, you can purchase a subscription to GitHub Copilot Business for your organization. See Subscribing to 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 by going to https://github.com/settings/copilot and requesting access under "Get Copilot from an organization."

As an enterprise owner, you can purchase a subscription to GitHub Copilot Business or GitHub Copilot Enterprise for your enterprise, and allow organizations to grant access to members. See Subscribing to Copilot for your enterprise.

If you don't need other features, you can request an enterprise account specifically for managing GitHub Copilot Business licenses. You won't pay for GitHub Enterprise seats, and you won't be able to create organizations or repositories. See About enterprise accounts for Copilot Business.

Next steps

Further reading