When your organization hits GitHub Copilot’s 300 free premium requests limit and you desperately need more AI assistance, there is technically a workaround - but it’s going to cost you significantly more than you might expect. Let me break down what premium requests actually are and show you a clever (but expensive) way to get around organizational limits.

Index

What Are Premium Requests?

Premium requests are interactions with GitHub Copilot that use advanced AI models beyond the included GPT-4o and GPT-4.1. Here’s what counts as premium requests:

  • Copilot Chat: One premium request per user prompt, multiplied by the model’s rate
  • Copilot Coding Agent: One premium request per session (when creating or modifying pull requests)
  • Agent Mode in Copilot Chat: One premium request per user prompt, multiplied by the model’s rate
  • Copilot Code Review: One premium request each time Copilot posts comments to a pull request
  • Copilot Extensions: One premium request per user prompt, multiplied by the model’s rate
  • Copilot Spaces: One premium request per user prompt, multiplied by the model’s rate
  • Spark: Four premium requests per prompt (fixed rate)

Understanding Model Multipliers

GitHub Copilot Business and Enterprise plans include 300 free premium requests per user per month. The key thing to understand is that different AI models have different “multipliers” that affect how many premium requests they consume:

  • GPT-4o and GPT-4.1: 0× multiplier (completely free on paid plans)
  • Gemini 2.0 Flash: 0.25× multiplier (one interaction = 0.25 premium requests)
  • Claude 3.5 Sonnet: 1× multiplier (one interaction = 1 premium request)
  • GPT-4o mini: 1× multiplier (one interaction = 1 premium request)
  • Claude Opus 4: 10× multiplier (one interaction = 10 premium requests)

This means you could theoretically make 1,200 requests using Gemini 2.0 Flash with your 300 free premium request allowance, but only 30 requests using Claude Opus 4.

When Organizations Hit the Limit

Once you hit that 300 request limit, your organization has several options:

  1. Wait until next month (requests reset on the 1st at 00:00:00 UTC)
  2. Set up a budget for additional premium requests at $0.04 USD per request
  3. Disable premium requests entirely (forcing users to stick with GPT-4o/GPT-4.1)
  4. Upgrade to higher allowances (Enterprise plans)

But here’s where it gets interesting - organizations can choose to disable premium requests rather than pay for overages, leaving developers stuck with only the included models.

Creating a personal GitHub organization to bypass premium request
Creating a personal GitHub organization to bypass premium request.

The Personal Organization Workaround

If your corporate organization has disabled premium requests and won’t budge on the budget, here’s the workaround:

Step 1: Create Your Own Business Organization

  1. Create a new GitHub organization using the same GitHub account you use for your corporate work
  2. Purchase GitHub Copilot Business for this personal organization ($19/user/month minimum)
  3. Add yourself as the only member of this organization

Note that you’ll also need a GitHub Team plan for the organization itself ($4/user/month), making the total cost $23/month minimum.

Step 2: Stack Your Allowances

This is where it gets clever: you now have access to premium requests from both organizations:

  • Corporate organization: 300 free premium requests/month
  • Personal organization: 300 free premium requests/month
  • Total: 600 free premium requests/month

You can switch between organizations using the “Usage billed to” dropdown in GitHub Copilot to control which organization gets charged for your premium requests.

Azure Billing Integration

Here’s where the workaround becomes even more sophisticated. You can connect your personal organization to Azure metered billing:

  1. Set up Azure Subscription billing for your personal organization
  2. Configure a budget for additional premium requests beyond the 600 free ones
  3. Use your Microsoft Partner Network (MPN) subscription if you have one for potentially better rates

This means any usage above 600 premium requests gets billed through Azure at $0.04 USD per request, which can be particularly advantageous if you have MPN benefits or Azure credits.

At first, after my second batch of 300 premium requests were gone, I again was blocked. I needed to set this setting to my name before I was allowed to continue. You can find it in the Copilot Features settings.

Choose who pays for your Copilot premium requests usage. Included usage from their license applies.
Choose who pays for your Copilot premium requests usage. Included usage from their license applies..

DISCLAIMER: I’m not entirely convinced yet that Premium Requests >600 are considered metered usage, but I’ll keep an eye out on my billing overview. It does include a tab on Copilot and premium requests, but it’s still at 0 for me. Might just be a bit slow to update.

Cost Analysis

Let’s break down the real costs:

Monthly Costs for the Workaround

Component Cost Notes
GitHub Team Plan $4/month Required for organization
GitHub Copilot Business $19/month Minimum cost for Copilot
600 Free Premium Requests $0 300 from each organization
Additional Requests (via Azure) $0.04/request Only charged for usage above 600
Total minimum cost $23/month Just to get started

Example Scenarios

Light User (400 premium requests/month):

  • Corporate: 300 free requests
  • Personal: 100 requests used
  • Total cost: $23/month

Heavy User (1,000 premium requests/month):

  • Corporate: 300 free requests
  • Personal: 300 free requests
  • Azure billing: 400 × $0.04 = $16
  • Total cost: $23 + $16 = $39/month

Compare this to asking your organization to simply enable a $0 budget and pay $0.04/request for overages:

  • 1,000 requests: 700 overages × $0.04 = $28/month (much cheaper!)

GitHub Copilot Coding Agent Tip

Here’s a valuable tip for maximizing your premium requests: GitHub Copilot Coding Agent uses only 1 premium request per session, regardless of how much work it does.

A “session” begins when you assign Copilot to create a pull request or modify an existing one. You can:

  • Create detailed GitHub issues
  • Assign them to GitHub Copilot Coding Agent
  • Let it create comprehensive pull requests
  • Get extensive code changes, documentation, and tests

This is incredibly efficient - one premium request can generate hundreds of lines of code, complete documentation, and comprehensive tests.

Better Alternatives

Before implementing this workaround, consider these options:

1. Advocate Within Your Organization

  • Show the productivity gains from AI assistance
  • Calculate the ROI of premium requests vs. developer time
  • Propose a pilot program with a small budget

2. Optimize Your Current Usage

  • Use GPT-4o and GPT-4.1 (free) for most interactions
  • Reserve premium models for complex tasks only
  • Leverage the Coding Agent tip above for maximum efficiency

3. Alternative AI Tools

  • Use other AI coding assistants that don’t have request limits
  • Combine multiple tools strategically
  • Use local AI models for some tasks

References

This blog post was written with assistance from GitHub Copilot Chat.