Verified decision guide
GitHub Copilot Budget Controls: Stop Paid Usage
Separate included AI Credits from paid continuation, user budgets, and organization spending controls. Worked admin scenarios and explicit account scope.
Direct answer
Block paid continuation, not the included pool
For Business/Enterprise on usage-based billing, disable the paid AI credit usage policy to stop credit-consuming features when the included pool runs out. This does not add credits. A user-level budget also constrains included usage: setting it to zero blocks that user's credit-consuming work immediately.
These organization controls are not personal-plan settings. For an individual usage-based subscription, use the additional-usage budget in billing settings; leave paid continuation disabled if you want included usage only. Annual request-based contracts need the billing migration check first.
Organization control hierarchy
| Control | What it constrains |
|---|---|
| User budget | Included plus metered usage; always a hard stop. Individual override wins over cost-center per-user default, then universal default. |
| Shared included pool | Seat-funded allowance. A cost center's optional included-usage cap is a separate control; its metered budget is not its included allocation. |
| Paid policy | Whether metered continuation is permitted after included usage. |
| Cost center / organization / enterprise metered budgets | Additional spend. Enable “Stop usage when budget limit is reached” for enforcement; alerts alone do not stop spending. Applicable budgets constrain each other; an enabled cost-center exclusion can bypass the enterprise cap. |
Enterprise owners/billing managers manage these controls; organization owners manage organization budgets. A lower-level budget cannot generally override a higher-level spending restriction. See GitHub's complete hierarchy before configuring exclusions.
Worked admin decisions
- Keep included usage, prevent extra AI-credit spend: disable paid usage; check that user budgets and cost-center included caps are not already exhausted. When the shared pool empties, credit-consuming features stop.
- A developer stops while the organization has credits: inspect the effective user budget and cost-center included cap. Increasing an applicable user cap changes access, not the pool's size.
- A high user cap still cannot spend: with paid continuation enabled, an exhausted applicable organization or enterprise enforced budget can block the user first.
Paid-plan code completions and next-edit suggestions remain available when AI-credit features are blocked. Do not promise all functionality survives: there is no automatic fallback to a cheaper model. License charges and separate GitHub Actions charges are outside this promise.
Unknowns and account checks
Unknown — account_dependent Your active contract, policy inheritance, cost-center exclusions, remaining balances, and administrator permissions require account inspection. This guide does not infer them from a budget label. Included pool size and attribution remain on organization credit pooling.
Sources and freshness
- Copilot usage-based budget hierarchy
- Copilot individual usage billing
- Copilot organization and enterprise usage billing
Review weekly and before administrative reliance; recheck policy, user-budget precedence, pool caps, or legacy billing changes.
For current plans and allowances, see the product guide.