Announcing 150M developers and a new free tier for GitHub Copilot in VS Code

GitHub has expanded its offerings by introducing GitHub Copilot Free, which provides developers with 2,000 code completions and 50 chat messages per month when integrated into VS Code and accessed via a personal GitHub account. This addition builds on GitHub's tradition of providing free tools, including private repositories and GitHub Actions minutes, and coincides with the platform reaching 150 million developers. Users can choose between Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet or OpenAI’s GPT-4o model for various coding tasks, including debugging, code explanation, and multi-file edits. Copilot Chat is now accessible from the GitHub dashboard, enhancing the user experience. Free access to unlimited Copilot Pro accounts for students, educators, and open source maintainers remains unchanged, ensuring continued support for these communities. Thomas Dohmke, who played a significant role in the development and launch of GitHub's AI tools, has a background in software development and holds a PhD in mechanical engineering.