Microsoft-owned GitHub has announced a significant expansion of its popular Copilot code completion and AI pair programming tool, introducing a free version that will now ship by default with Microsoft's popular VS Code editor. This move marks a significant shift in GitHub's strategy, as most developers previously had to pay a monthly fee, starting at $10 per month, with only verified students, teachers, and open source maintainers getting free access.

The free version of Copilot is geared towards occasional users, not major work on big projects, and comes with some limitations. Developers on the free plan will get access to 2,000 code completions per month, and each Copilot code suggestion will count against this limit – not just accepted suggestions. Additionally, users on the free plan are limited to Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet and OpenAI's GPT-4o foundation models, whereas paid plans also include Google's Gemini 1.5 Pro and OpenAI's o1-preview and -mini.

In an exclusive interview, GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke explained that the decision to offer a free version of Copilot was a natural progression of the company's efforts to make its tools more accessible. "My first project [at GitHub] in 2018 was free private repositories, which we launched very early in 2019," Dohmke said. "Then we had kind of a v2 with free private organizations in 2020. We have free [GitHub] Actions entitlements. I think at my first Universe [conference] as CEO, we announced free Codespaces. And so it felt natural, at some point, to get to the point where we also have a completely free Copilot, not just one that is for students and open source maintainers."

The free Copilot SKU will work in a number of editors, including VS Code, Visual Studio, and JetBrains, as well as on GitHub.com. This expanded availability is likely to increase competition in the AI coding tools market, where startups like Tabnine and Qodo, as well as AWS, offer competing services. Many of these competitors already offer a free plan, making it a strategic move for GitHub to follow suit and expand Copilot's reach.

Dohmke emphasized that the ultimate goal of this move is to enable more developers worldwide, particularly in regions where the cost of Copilot was a significant barrier. "Our mission is to get to enable a billion users to become a developer worldwide – and obviously, if you look around the world, whether it's in Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, in India or Indonesia, in Pakistan, their ten dollars are much more relative to the average income, and as such, we are hoping to also enable a lot more people who have the ambition to become a developer or use a Copilot to become a more productive, efficient, happy developer in those countries, all in the spirit of our one-billion-developer aspiration," he said.

GitHub also announced that it has reached a significant milestone, with 150 million developers now on its platform, up from 100 million in early 2023. This growth, combined with the expanded availability of Copilot, is likely to further solidify GitHub's position as a leading platform for developers.

In conclusion, GitHub's decision to offer a free version of Copilot marks a significant shift in its strategy, aiming to expand its reach and enable more developers worldwide. As the AI coding tools market continues to evolve, this move is likely to have a profound impact on the industry, and GitHub's commitment to making its tools more accessible is a promising step towards achieving its ambitious goal of enabling a billion developers worldwide.