What is GitHub Copilot?

Learn what GitHub Copilot is and what you can do with it.

In this article

GitHub Copilot is an AI coding assistant that helps you write code faster and with less effort, allowing you to focus more energy on problem solving and collaboration.

GitHub Copilot has been proven to increase developer productivity and accelerate the pace of software development. For more information, see "Research: quantifying GitHub Copilot’s impact on developer productivity and happiness" in the GitHub blog.

Copilot features

GitHub Copilot includes a suite of features. You can use Copilot to:

  • Get code suggestions as you type in your IDE
  • Chat with Copilot to ask for help with your code
  • Ask Copilot for help using the command line
  • Generate a description of the changes in a pull request (Copilot Enterprise only)
  • Create and manage collections of documentation, called knowledge bases, to use as a context for chatting with Copilot (Copilot Enterprise only)

Copilot is available:

  • In your IDE
  • In GitHub Mobile, as a chat interface
  • On the command line, through the GitHub CLI
  • On GitHub.com, with a subscription to Copilot Enterprise

For more information, see "GitHub Copilot features."

Getting access to Copilot

As an individual, there are a few different ways you can get access to GitHub Copilot:

  • Sign up for a subscription to GitHub Copilot Individual. You can try GitHub Copilot for free with a one-time 30-day trial. After the free trial, you will need a paid subscription for continued use.
  • If you are a member of an organization or enterprise that has a subscription to GitHub Copilot, you can request access to Copilot by going to https://github.com/settings/copilot and requesting access under "Get Copilot from an organization."
  • If you are a verified student, teacher, or maintainer of a popular open source project, GitHub Copilot is free to use. See "About billing for GitHub Copilot."

As an organization owner or enterprise admin, you can purchase a subscription to GitHub Copilot Business or GitHub Copilot Enterprise for your organization or enterprise, and allow organizations to grant access to members. For more information, see "About GitHub Copilot"

Next steps

Further reading