Track GitHub Copilot Usage from Your Mac Menu Bar
Copilot Free caps you at 2,000 completions and 50 chat messages per month — and goes silent when you hit it. AIUsageBar surfaces those numbers in your menu bar so you're never caught off guard.
How GitHub Copilot limits work
- Copilot Free: 2,000 code completions and 50 chat messages per calendar month.
- Copilot Pro ($10/mo): unlimited completions and chat, access to Claude Sonnet and GPT-4o.
- Free tier resets on the 1st of every calendar month — not your account anniversary date.
What AIUsageBar shows you
- Monthly completion count vs. 2,000 free tier limit
- Chat message count vs. 50 free tier limit
- Days until calendar month reset
- Upgrade alert when approaching the cap
What is GitHub Copilot?
GitHub Copilot is Microsoft and GitHub's AI coding assistant. It integrates directly into VS Code, JetBrains IDEs (IntelliJ, PyCharm, WebStorm), Neovim, Visual Studio, and GitHub.com itself. Copilot provides inline code completions (suggestions that appear as you type) and a chat panel for asking questions, explaining code, and generating functions on demand. The underlying models include OpenAI's GPT-4o and Anthropic's Claude Sonnet, depending on the feature and tier.
GitHub Copilot has one of the most granular tiering structures of any AI coding tool, with a genuinely useful free tier that's easy to exhaust — which is exactly the kind of limit that benefits from ambient tracking.
GitHub Copilot Limits: A Full Breakdown
Free (included with all GitHub accounts)
- 2,000 code completions per calendar month
- 50 chat messages per calendar month
- Access to Claude 3.5 Sonnet and GPT-4o (with per-model limits)
Pro ($10/month)
- Unlimited code completions
- Unlimited chat messages
- Access to Claude Sonnet 4.5, GPT-4o, and o3-mini
Pro+ ($19/month)
Adds access to premium models including GPT-4.5 and Claude Opus for higher-complexity tasks.
Business ($19/user/month)
Everything in Pro plus organization-level policy controls, audit logs, and IP indemnification.
Enterprise ($39/user/month)
Adds fine-tuned models on your codebase, Copilot Workspace, and enterprise security features.
The free tier resets on the first of each calendar month — not on an account anniversary date. If you exhaust your 2,000 completions on the 15th, you wait until the 1st.
Why Tracking Copilot Usage Matters
2,000 completions sounds generous until you consider that each file opening can trigger multiple inline suggestions, each of which counts. An active 8-hour coding day can consume 200–400 completions, meaning the free tier can run out in 5–10 working days. The 50 chat message limit is even easier to exhaust.
GitHub doesn't send a notification when you're approaching the limit. The first sign is usually Copilot silently stopping inline suggestions — which many developers initially assume is a network issue or a VS Code bug before realizing they've hit their monthly cap.
For free tier users deciding whether to upgrade to Pro, seeing exactly how quickly you hit the ceiling is the most actionable data you can have. If you're consistently exhausting your quota by the 12th of the month, the $10 upgrade pays for itself in recovered productivity.
How AIUsageBar Tracks GitHub Copilot
AIUsageBar shows your monthly completion count and chat message count versus the free tier limits, with a countdown to the first-of-month reset. You can see at a glance whether you're on pace to exhaust the free tier before the reset, which gives you the information you need to either pace your usage or decide whether upgrading is worth it this month.
Frequently Asked Questions
How quickly can 2,000 Copilot completions run out?
Faster than most developers expect. Each file you open that triggers inline suggestions counts, and each accepted or dismissed suggestion registers individually. An active 8-hour coding day comfortably uses 200–400 completions. At that pace, the free tier lasts roughly 5–10 working days.
What's the difference between completions and chat messages?
Completions are the ghost-text inline suggestions that appear as you type code. Chat messages are turns in the Copilot Chat panel — asking questions, generating functions on demand, or explaining existing code. They're tracked and limited separately.
When does the free tier reset?
On the first of each calendar month. Unlike Cursor (which resets on your billing anniversary), Copilot free tier limits reset for everyone on the same date — January 1, February 1, etc.
Is Copilot Pro worth upgrading to from the free tier?
For any developer who codes more than a few hours a week, yes. At $10/month, Pro removes all completion and chat limits. If you're consistently exhausting the free tier's 2,000 completions in the first two weeks of the month, the upgrade cost is negligible compared to the productivity cost of having Copilot silently stop working mid-project.