Freebuff vs GitHub Copilot: free all day vs credits that run out mid-month
Since June, Copilot bills agent work by the token in credits that expire monthly, and one request can eat hundreds of them. Freebuff is free, every day.
In short
- Our verdict: Freebuff. We make Freebuff, so weigh that, but every claim below links to a source you can check.
- Copilot’s agent is now metered by the token. Since June 1, 2026, chat and agent work spend "GitHub AI Credits" at model prices. Pro’s $10 a month buys about $15 of them, and they do not carry over.
- Users burn through them fast. GitHub’s own announcement thread has 958 downvotes against 24 upvotes, with reports of "822 credits gone in a single request".
- Copilot Free is capped. 2,000 completions a month and an unpublished amount of chat and agent use.
- Freebuff is free for a full day of work, every day. Unlimited messages in every hour-long session, a daily allowance with no monthly cap, and models that never touch the allowance at all.
Copilot is everywhere: in almost every editor, in GitHub itself and in the terminal. But in 2026 GitHub moved its agent from a request count to token billing, and the people paying for it noticed. If you want an agent you can run all day without counting credits, Freebuff is the better choice.
At a glance
| Feature | Freebuff | GitHub Copilot |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | A full day of work, every day | 2,000 completions a month, limited chat and agent use |
| How agent use is counted | Hour-long sessions with unlimited messages | AI Credits at per-token model prices |
| Allowance resets | Every day | Monthly; unused credits expire |
| When you run out | Unmetered models keep working | Upgrade, pay for more, or wait for next month |
| Unmetered models | Yes: Solar Mini 4, Solar Pro 4, and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash Fast for new accounts in top-tier countries | Completions only, on paid plans |
| Specialized subagents | 9, including file-picker, code-reviewer and browser-use | Agent mode and a cloud agent |
| Where it runs | CLI, Mac/Windows/Linux desktop, browser, iOS and Android | Most editors, CLI, github.com, mobile |
How Copilot bills now
GitHub announced in April that Copilot would move to usage-based billing. Since June 1, chat and agent requests spend GitHub AI Credits (1 credit = $0.01) at each model’s per-token price. Per GitHub’s plans page, Pro ($10 a month) includes 1,500 credits, Pro+ ($39) 7,000 and Max ($100) 20,000. Unused credits do not carry over.
Big models drain that fast. GitHub’s price list charges $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output tokens for Claude Opus 5.5, and an agent re-reads your code on every step. Copilot Free includes 2,000 completions a month and "limited" chat and agent use, with no number published.
What Freebuff gives you for free
- Unlimited messages in every session. A session lasts an hour, and the agent can read your whole repo, edit, test and retry as often as it needs. Big context does not cost more.
- A big daily allowance with no monthly cap. Up to 30 hours a day in the US, and 21 in countries such as Canada, the UK and Germany. That is 10 hours a day of DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, refilled every day, so a heavy Monday never eats your month.
- Unmetered models. Solar Mini 4 and Solar Pro 4 never use your allowance. New accounts in the US and other top-tier countries also get DeepSeek V4.1 Flash Fast without touching it.
- Every surface, free. The CLI runs next to any editor, plus the desktop app for Mac, Windows and Linux, the web workspace, and apps for iOS and Android.
What Copilot users are saying
- The announcement went badly. GitHub’s billing announcement discussion has 958 downvotes against 24 upvotes and over 500 comments. On June 1 a user reported "822 credits gone in a single request".
- Nobody can predict the bill. The billing FAQ discussion, with 631 downvotes, is full of users worried about "not knowing what a few everyday prompts are going to cost". A Pro+ user reported 15% of a month gone in two or three hours.
- "Bait and switch". On Hacker News (767 points), annual subscribers said the terms changed after they had paid.
- Users threatened to leave. The Register reported one change costing over $6 and a user burning 8% of a Pro+ month in two hours.
- Locked out while paying. Before the switch, Pro+ users were locked out for hours by weekly limits (150 upvotes): "GitHub basically trolling us".
What Freebuff users are saying
I’ve fixed more bugs in one day than my other tools fixed in two weeks!
Freebuff has genuinely saved me on multiple projects
More in what developers say after switching to Freebuff.
Where Copilot is strong
Copilot lives inside GitHub, works in almost every editor, and its paid plans include unlimited code completions. Students and popular open-source maintainers can get it free. If inline completion is all you want, it is hard to beat. For an agent that does the work, though, the meter is the problem.
Our verdict
Pick Freebuff for agent work. Copilot now charges its agent by the token from a monthly pot that empties in hours for many users. Freebuff costs nothing, gives you unlimited messages in every session and an allowance that refills every day, and runs in the terminal, on every desktop, in the browser and on your phone.
Try Freebuff for free
No card, no API key. `npm install -g freebuff`