Microsoft's GitHub made a significant announcement on Wednesday. It introduced a free version of its highly popular Copilot code completion/AI pair programming tool. This free version will now come as a default with Microsoft's renowned VS Code editor. Previously, most developers had to pay a monthly fee starting at $10, with only verified students, teachers, and open source maintainers having free access.
Impressive Growth in Developer Base
GitHub also shared remarkable news. It now has 150 million developers on its platform, an increase from 100 million in early 2023. This growth showcases the platform's increasing popularity and relevance in the developer community.Milestones in GitHub's History
In 2018, the first project at GitHub was free private repositories, which were launched in early 2019. Then, in 2020, there was a version 2 with free private organizations. GitHub also offers free [GitHub] Actions entitlements. At the first Universe conference as CEO, they announced free Codespaces. It felt natural to reach a point where a completely free Copilot was available, not just for students and open source maintainers. 1: The free version of Copilot is designed for occasional users rather than major work on big projects. For example, developers on the free plan get access to 2,000 code completions per month. Each Copilot code suggestion counts against this limit, not just the accepted ones. While GitHub recently added the ability to switch between different foundation models, free plan users are limited to Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet and OpenAI’s GPT-4o. The paid plans include Google’s Gemini 1.5 Pro and OpenAI’s o1-preview and -mini. 2: Regarding Copilot Chat, the number of chat messages is limited to 50. However, otherwise, there are no major limitations to the free service. Developers still have access to all Copilot Extensions and skills. The team looked at Copilot usage data from the last few years to determine the threshold between occasional users and professional developers. The goal is to provide a seamless coding experience for users, allowing them to focus on building software rather than just trying an AI tool.Wider Distribution and Competitive Advantage
Copilot has been a de facto standard for AI coding tools since its launch in 2021. But the market is now more competitive with startups like Tabnine and Qodo (formerly Codium), as well as AWS offering competing services. These competitors also have free plans. GitHub's decision to go freemium with the wide distribution of VS Code makes sense to expand Copilot's reach. 1: The company's mission is to enable a billion users to become developers worldwide. In countries like Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, India, Indonesia, and Pakistan, where the average income is relatively lower, the $10 monthly fee can be a barrier. By offering a free version, GitHub hopes to enable more people with the ambition to become developers or use Copilot to become more productive, efficient, and happy developers. 2: CEO Thomas Dohmke also expects more students to use Copilot. Although the company has offered a free version to students for a long time, they had to go through some verification processes. With Copilot Free, they are returning to their freemium roots and laying the groundwork for a future where AI enables a GitHub with one billion developers. There should be no barrier to entry for experiencing the joy of creating software. Six years after being acquired by Microsoft, GitHub remains true to its essence and is continuing to do what it does best.
