GitHub Copilot is an AI coding assistant made by GitHub, which is owned by Microsoft. It first appeared as a technical preview in June 2021. It suggests code as developers type and answers questions about code in a chat panel.
Copilot works in Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, Xcode and other editors, and on the GitHub website. Agent mode can make changes across many files, and the coding agent can take a GitHub issue and open a pull request on its own. Users can choose between models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. Copilot also writes commit messages and pull request summaries.
There is a free tier with monthly limits. Copilot Pro and Pro+ plans give more requests and more models. Copilot Business and Enterprise add policy controls and other features for companies. It is free for verified students, teachers and maintainers of popular open source projects. GitHub is based in San Francisco.