You can use an enterprise account to manage licenses for GitHub Copilot Business, without adopting GitHub Enterprise.
Note
Access to this feature is currently managed by GitHub's Sales team.
What is an enterprise account for Copilot Business?
To use GitHub Copilot, a user must authenticate to an account on GitHub that has a license for Copilot. Organizations and enterprises on GitHub can manage members' access to Copilot through a Copilot Business subscription.
If you don't already manage users through an organization or enterprise, you can create an enterprise account specifically for allocating Copilot Business licenses.
- You'll only pay for the Copilot licenses you assign. For pricing, see About billing for GitHub Copilot.
- You won't pay for GitHub Enterprise seats.
- You won't be able to create organizations or repositories in the enterprise, or use features that require repositories or organizations, such as GitHub Actions.
When you create the account, you can choose whether your enterprise members will authenticate using their personal GitHub accounts, or using new accounts that you will create and manage from an external identity management system. For a comparison, see Choosing an enterprise type for GitHub Enterprise Cloud.
How will I manage access for users?
How you will add users to your enterprise and manage license assignment depends on whether you choose an enterprise with personal accounts or with Enterprise Managed Users.
Personal accounts
If you request an enterprise with personal accounts:
- You'll add users to the enterprise by sending an invitation to their personal GitHub account.
- You'll create teams in the enterprise to manage which users receive Copilot Business licenses. You can manage membership of the teams on GitHub or with the REST API.
- When users receive a license, they can authenticate to GitHub from their development environment and gain access to Copilot.
- Optionally, you can configure SAML single sign-on (SSO), so that users must authenticate to an external identity system in addition to their personal account.
Enterprise Managed Users
If you request an enterprise with managed users:
- You'll add users to the enterprise by provisioning managed user accounts from an identity provider (IdP), using SCIM.
- You'll create teams in the enterprise to manage which users receive Copilot Business licenses. You can manage membership of the teams from your IdP, on GitHub, or with the REST API.
- When users receive a license, they can use single sign-on to authenticate to their GitHub account from their development environment and gain access to Copilot.
Limitations
- You will not be able to use REST API endpoints that require an organization. In particular, these include:
- Documentation on GitHub Docs may not apply to your enterprise.
- With an enterprise for personal accounts, you cannot use team synchronization to manage membership of enterprise teams.
Getting started
To get started, you will work with GitHub's Sales team to create an enterprise account, then add users to your enterprise and assign Copilot Business licenses.
See the setup guide for your chosen type of enterprise.