GitHub Copilot: our review

GitHub Copilot completes code line by line, answers in a chat panel, and can now work alone on a repository through its agent mode — opening files, writing, proposing a pull request. It installs as an extension in the editor already in place (VS Code, JetBrains, Visual Studio) or directly on github.com, which explains its wide adoption: no team has to switch tools to try it.

Seven plans, one real question

GitHub sells Copilot in seven tiers: Free, Pro ($10/month), Pro+ ($39/month) and Max ($100/month) for an individual account, Business ($19 per seat per month) and Enterprise ($39 per seat per month) for an organization, plus free access for verified students and teachers. The listed price isn't what matters most for an SME that codes: it's the training policy attached to each plan, and it isn't the same across them.

What changed on 24 April 2026

On that date, GitHub switched individual plans from an opt-in regime to an opt-out one. Since then, interactions on Free, Pro and Pro+ accounts — prompts, outputs, code snippets and their context — are used by default to train and improve GitHub's models, unless voluntarily disabled in the account's privacy settings. GitHub states that users who had already opted out of data use for product improvement keep their choice. But the principle stands: by default, it trains.

What Business and Enterprise guarantee

Business and Enterprise accounts aren't affected by this change. GitHub says so in the announcement itself: its training program uses neither interaction data from Business and Enterprise accounts, nor repositories owned by a company. This guarantee is contractual and collective, not a setting each developer has to find and tick. An administrator can also block Copilot on entire file paths, at the repository, organization or enterprise level, which belongs in any audit and advisory engagement ahead of a broad rollout.

Where it falls short

Two concrete reservations. First: protection follows the plan paid for, not the person. A developer who settles their Pro subscription with their own credit card, for code meant for a client, stays under the default training regime of individual plans — nothing in the editor warns that this code falls outside the protected setting an organization account would provide. Second: we couldn't verify the exact prompt retention period for Business and Enterprise on a readable public page. The page that was supposed to detail this point now redirects to a trust portal that only renders in JavaScript, leaving a business owner without a written, verifiable answer to this specific question.

Our recommendation

An SME with several people coding proprietary software only benefits from Copilot from the Business plan up, where the training exclusion applies to everyone without depending on a forgotten individual setting. See also our selection of code assistants. An independent developer already coding in open source can make do with the free plan, listed among the free AI tools. Rule it out if the team pays for individual licenses for production code, or if a client contract requires a written answer on retention duration that the public documentation doesn't provide today.