On 28 August 2026 GitHub published three upcoming Copilot policy and billing changes. They share a changelog. They do not share a decision. If you already pay for GitHub Copilot, read them as three separate admin tickets.
Two days earlier, GitHub also started enforcing a global model policy for generally available models on Business and Enterprise, rolling through 1 September 2026. Unconfigured models inherit the default policy. Open-weight models and models GitHub says are outside its data-retention agreement stay off by default. GitHub named DeepSeek, Kimi K2, and Fable 5 as examples of those exclusions.
Card-paid Business and Enterprise seats get an upfront charge
GitHub said it would start reenabling Copilot Business and Copilot Enterprise sign-ups for customers who pay by credit card or PayPal on 1 September 2026, with tighter account vetting. A 3 September follow-up said that reopening is gradual over a couple of weeks. Invoice customers are not the audience of this billing rewrite.
- New Business or Enterprise seat assignments require payment before the user gets Copilot access.
- At the start of the next billing cycle, assigned seats incur an upfront charge. For existing card or PayPal customers, GitHub says that starts 1 October 2026.
- If you exceed included usage, GitHub says more payment may be required for you and your users to keep using Copilot.
- Included usage may be prorated across the month to match seat-cost proration.
- List prices are not changing. Revoking a seat does not produce a prorated refund. Mid-cycle adds stay prorated. Spend controls and extra AI credits remain.
GitHub also warns that fully canceling Copilot and coming back later may trigger the newer vetting and billing behavior. If finance still models Copilot as “assign a seat, settle later,” that model is wrong for card-paid tenants after October.
github.com chat, Mobile chat, and cloud agent become one policy
No earlier than 28 September 2026, GitHub will relaunch Copilot Chat on github.com, Copilot Chat in GitHub Mobile, and Copilot cloud agent as one experience. Separate policies go away. The unified product is enabled by default after launch.
- GitHub says Copilot on github.com moves fully to the agent-sessions experience that cloud agent already used.
- Chat data on github.com will be retained for the life of the account instead of 28 days, matching cloud agent.
- GitHub says cloud agent will use Sandbox for a faster cloud run. That is a vendor claim, not a security rating.
- If you opt out of the unified experience, GitHub says you lose Copilot on github.com and GitHub Mobile after launch. Doing nothing keeps access.
Business and Enterprise admins should open Copilot settings before 28 September 2026, find the Copilot cloud agent policy (GitHub labeled it “coming soon” on 28 August), and confirm it matches how you want access managed. A 28-day chat-retention assumption does not survive this merge.
Code review Default becomes Balanced on the same September date
After GitHub shipped review effort levels, the Default value for Copilot code review changes from Lite to Balanced on 28 September 2026. Organization defaults cover repos that have not set their own level. Repository defaults cover automatically requested reviews. Manual requests can still pick an effort in the pull-request Reviewers bar.
- If you want Lite to remain the default, stop using Default and select Lite explicitly in organization or repository settings before 28 September 2026. GitHub says it will honor that choice.
- Budget for a louder default. Balanced reviews cost more usage than Lite. Pair this with the card-paid usage rule above.
- Decide whether Copilot may later approve the same pull requests. That is a 1 September preview and a separate toggle.
- Re-open the September coding-agent shortlist if Copilot is on the same row as Claude Code or Cursor. The bill and the review gate just moved.