Important Updates to GitHub Copilot for Students 🎒

[martinwoodward]

At GitHub, we believe the next generation of developers should have access to the latest industry technology. That’s why we provide students with free access to the GitHub Student Developer Pack, run the Campus Experts program to help student leaders build tech communities, and partner with Major League Hacking (MLH) and Hack Club to support student hackathons and youth-led coding communities. It’s also why we offer verified students free access to GitHub Copilot—today, nearly two million students are using it to build, learn, and explore new ideas.

Copilot is evolving quickly, with new capabilities, models, and experiences shipping fast. As Copilot evolves and the student community continues to grow, we need to make some adjustments to ensure we can provide sustainable, long-term GitHub Copilot access to students worldwide.

Our commitment to providing free access to GitHub Copilot for verified students is not changing. What is changing is how Copilot is packaged and managed for students.

What this means for you

Starting today, March 12, 2026, your complimentary Copilot access will be managed under a new GitHub Copilot Student plan, alongside your existing GitHub Education benefits. Your academic verification status will not change, and there is nothing you need to do to continue using Copilot. You will see that you are on the GitHub Copilot Student plan in the UI, and your existing premium request unit (PRU) entitlements will remain unchanged.

As part of this transition, however, some premium models, including GPT-5.4, and Claude Opus and Sonnet models, will no longer be available for self-selection under the GitHub Copilot Student Plan. We know this will be disappointing, but we’re making this change so we can keep Copilot free and accessible for millions of students around the world.

That said, through Auto mode, you'll continue to have access to a powerful set of models from providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. We'll keep adding new models and expanding the intelligence in Auto mode that helps match the right model to your task and workflow. We support a global community of students across thousands of universities and dozens of time zones, so we’re being intentional about how we roll out changes. Over the coming weeks, we will be making additional adjustments to available models or usage limits on certain features — the specifics of which we'll be testing with your feedback.

We want your input

Your experience matters to us, and your feedback will directly shape how this plan evolves. Leave a comment below, what's working for you, what gets in the way, and what you need most. We will also be continuing to host 1:1 conversations with students, educators, and Campus Experts, and using insights from our recent November 2025 student survey to help inform what's next.

GitHub's investment in students is not slowing down. We are committed to ensuring that Copilot remains a powerful, free tool for verified students, and we will continue to improve and expand the student experience over time.

We will share updates as we learn more from testing and your feedback. Thank you for building with us.

Update March 13: We've now added the option so folks can upgrade from your GitHub Copilot Student plan to a paid GitHub Copilot Pro or GitHub Copilot Pro+ plan if you want to, while retaining the rest of your GitHub Student Pack benefits.

[fakhririzha]

disappointed.

[ThatDev13]

Why? I mean it had work over the Github Student Developer Pack? Why they are stealing us AI Models?

[rnzvtwnpxn-coder]

Does the student section show me how to start a new SSH for localhost and pull request reviews

[haris-khattak123]

Not a good sign for students

[lokaplala]

disappointed.

shame of you

[roshan-c]

Gemini and Claude make a great work. OpenAI models are really bad and is inmoral to working with systems that are used to genocide. Please stay in the good side of the history.

All the labs are complicit in the killing of innocent people in one way or another. There is no moral high ground here.

[karthikaf]

Downhill

[KertLynx]

Bro like why 😭😭😭😭 just do it for 1 year more as there is only 1 year left for my education

Because the copilot product owner is also a selfish pr*ck like you!

[Friendspaceship]

Having Sonnet unavailable is not great. Is this just for students or teachers too? Also I hope this is not politics.
Does Github have competitors btw

[muhammadali-ip91]

Bro like why 😭😭😭😭 just do it for 1 year more as there is only 1 year left for my education

same

[supervoidcoder]

Having Sonnet unavailable is not great. Is this just for students or teachers too? Also I hope this is not politics. Does Github have competitors btw

gitlab and codeberg but they both kinda suck so we have to stay in this monopoly.

[reddysolleti]

Having Sonnet unavailable is not great. Is this just for students or teachers too? Also I hope this is not politics. Does Github have competitors btw

why don't we start building one.!

[FatngatirBilek]

no sonnet and opus??? 😭😭😭

[percival-clatterbart]

i am in deep mourning

[ngabo-dev]

How is that possible? Can you please show us how.

[Witawat]

Hi @thaikolja & @umfhero 👋 Apologies for the confusion! Our docs page (https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/reference/ai-models/supported-models#supported-ai-models-per-copilot-plan ) is the source of truth on what models are available in each plan. Opus 4.6 is available in the Pro Plan. But as @TahaLoghmari shared Copilot Pro does not include Opus 4.6 fast mode - that is available in Copilot Pro+

Today 16/03/2026 Pro version not have Opus & Sonnet ??!!

[antoineross]

hi @samus-aran I am having the same issue where Pro version does not have Opus 4.6, and GPT-5.4

[jacobfriisstrand]

I am experiencing the same, no Opus 4.6 on the Pro plan.

[carlosedp]

Nothing will change except you cannot use the good models anymore... thanks.

[Azzipp]

@JohnDoeIsBack It was sarcastic

[Manvanth-Gowda-M]

I appreciate keeping Copilot free for students, but losing access to the stronger models is definitely a downgrade. I hope future updates bring back more capable options for students.

[Miguel0888]

Everything is the same, you just have to pay the 10$ for Pro 😛 Ok, it feels ugly, I know. But maybe the best Option to finish an already begun project though.

But since we are all developers, OpenSource might be the cheaper and better alternative in long term:

• Continue for IntelliJ Ultimate
• Continue for VSCode derivates

[KertLynx]

You're a corpo bootlicker. I hope that helps.

Copilot might be able to help you read comments and identify sarcasm

[extremeblank]

Actually they are focusing more on business.....and giving these expensive models to students for free.....is a business and revenue loss for them....I think....

But Yes..It's more disappointing for me also as a student and a developer

almost multi trillionaire company btw

[Emir-Khan]

Double it & give it to the next ai agrent. Thx.

[Manvanth-Gowda-M]

😅 Fair enough. Still hoping future updates improve the student plan and bring back access to more powerful models.

[sameershaikh55]

There may be another solution.

[DarthGigi]

Horrible change

[Aaru1801]

Indeed

[danividalg]

I completely disagree and am deeply disappointed with the decision to remove Claude Opus 4.6, Claude Sonnet 4.6, and GPT-4 from the models available in the Student plan. These are the models I use regularly and the ones that are truly useful.
I hope GitHub can reconsider their decission and keep that important models in the Student Plan. Thanks.

[Calvinkev]

For sure, they would have atleast left sonnet 4.6

[mrehanmajeed]

Disappointed

[danividalg]

I completely disagree and am deeply disappointed with the decision to remove Claude Opus 4.6, Claude Sonnet 4.6, and GPT-4 from the models available in the Student plan. These are the models I use regularly and the ones that are truly useful.
I hope GitHub can reconsider their decission and keep that important models in the Student Plan. Thanks.

[Myoujin]

Why all this corporate nonsense text? Just say you want to cut cost and thus remove the expensive models.

[PRO-2684]

Incisive

[lautaromartinez8964]

When a company starts cutting costs to boost socalled "efficiency" , it is the death knell of its demise; healthy operations only bring more benefits to users.

[p-andhika]

up

[Dev-Luteus]

It's Microsoft. They ruin everything they touch.

[Miguel0888]

It even gets worse since they are divorced, you know what I mean 😇

[gablilli]

GitHub's investment in students is not slowing down. We are committed to ensuring that Copilot remains a powerful, free tool for verified students, and we will continue to improve and expand the student experience over time.

yes it is. atleast sonnet. yup bye bye github

[danividalg]

I completely disagree and am deeply disappointed with the decision to remove Claude Opus 4.6, Claude Sonnet 4.6, and GPT-4 from the models available in the Student plan. These are the models I use regularly and the ones that are truly useful.
I hope GitHub can reconsider their decission and keep that important models in the Student Plan. Thanks.

[yuelinxin]

Trillion dollar company like Microsoft couldn't possibly be so cheap on some college kids right? Cheap ass shareholder's company with zero social responsibility and commitment.

[djouharadgb]

@martinwoodward Please reconsider this change. Many students relied specifically on models like Sonnet and Opus for studying, research, and solving complex programming problems. These models were the reason Copilot was so helpful for us. Without them, Copilot becomes far less useful for academic work. Most students cannot afford paid plans, so this change does not push us to upgrade it only pushes us away from using Copilot. We respectfully ask you to restore at least limited access to these models for students.

[coder-nishu]

Bad system

[nexuhss]

common Microslop L

[JuanLiz]

Keep advanced models, don't be greedy!!

[ghaif]

that's an insane statement, it's a free service brody, you're the one being greedy

[danividalg]

I completely disagree and am deeply disappointed with the decision to remove Claude Opus 4.6, Claude Sonnet 4.6, and GPT-4 from the models available in the Student plan. These are the models I use regularly and the ones that are truly useful.
I hope GitHub can reconsider their decission and keep that important models in the Student Plan. Thanks.

[PruthvirajKoban]

that's an insane statement, it's a free service brody, you're the one being greedy

sybau

[gaurav21r]

@ghaif You have to understand there are verified educators here who are saying this. the fre eplan runs out the moment you graduate so I think its justified, plus there are so many more solutions like more rate limiting or day wise limiting or making the requests 10x instead of 1 x or 3x but gatekeeping the models, that just shows no cinsideration.

We have to also remember that Microsoft & Github ensure that these same students who eventually join / start ocmpanies will take the familiarity of these tools with them.

[supervoidcoder]

that's an insane statement, it's a free service brody, you're the one being greedy

it's not being greedy, it's about betraying us with no notice. Look at the recent changes made to Scratch. They changed their ToS to something very anti-user friendly and terrible. Scratch is completely free though, so we shouldn't be mad about something that's free, right? Is that what you're saying?

Your family didn't have to raise you. They didn't have to feed you or care for you. So if your family stopped helping you ever at all without any notice, would you be sad?

[jimena-olr]

This is just greedy.

[ghaif]

I completely disagree and am deeply disappointed with the decision to remove Claude Opus 4.6, Claude Sonnet 4.6, and GPT-4 from the models available in the Student plan. These are the models I use regularly and the ones that are truly useful. I hope GitHub can reconsider their decission and keep that important models in the Student Plan. Thanks.

brody you're a grown ass man with a job, stop begging for free services

[6uu1]

I completely disagree and am deeply disappointed with the decision to remove Claude Opus 4.6, Claude Sonnet 4.6, and GPT-4 from the models available in the Student plan. These are the models I use regularly and the ones that are truly useful. I hope GitHub can reconsider their decission and keep that important models in the Student Plan. Thanks.

brody you're a grown ass man with a job, stop begging for free services

What? What's going on, why can he still use the student plan even though he has a job? Isn't this supposed to help us students???
Is it that too many of these scammers are causing genuine students to be unable to use truly cutting‑edge models?@martinwoodward

[Jerit-Baiju]

I completely disagree and am deeply disappointed with the decision to remove Claude Opus 4.6, Claude Sonnet 4.6, and GPT-4 from the models available in the Student plan. These are the models I use regularly and the ones that are truly useful. I hope GitHub can reconsider their decission and keep that important models in the Student Plan. Thanks.

bro putting same replies for every comment @danividalg

[mukulyadav23]

I completely disagree and am deeply disappointed with the decision to remove Claude Opus 4.6, Claude Sonnet 4.6, and GPT-4 from the models available in the Student plan. These are the models I use regularly and the ones that are truly useful. I hope GitHub can reconsider their decission and keep that important models in the Student Plan. Thanks.

brody you're a grown ass man with a job, stop begging for free services

bro he might be a teacher. Educational plan if for both students and teachers

[martinwoodward]

Also, please do not make assumptions about people based on their age or how they look. Folks can be life long learners and go back to school at any time.

[Sayrix]

Is there still a chance that Sonnet and Opus gets selected by Auto?

[CrankyVase]

you can use sonnet on other ides like open code through github student

[DhiaDjobbi]

@CrankyVase can you elaborate on that please?

[CrankyVase]

@DhiaDjobbi yea no problem. So basically if you use somthing like open code app and connect it to copilot you can still chose sonnet and stuff.

[hckeer]

how much usuage with opencode

[Sploder-Saptarshi]

Please shut the hell up and do your own research... Don't go and blurt this out.

[mateusseiboth]

disappointed

[danividalg]

I completely disagree and am deeply disappointed with the decision to remove Claude Opus 4.6, Claude Sonnet 4.6, and GPT-4 from the models available in the Student plan. These are the models I use regularly and the ones that are truly useful.
I hope GitHub can reconsider their decission and keep that important models in the Student Plan. Thanks.

[fozogt-jpg]

Yes

[lifucheng666]

This update made Claude completely useless.

[MatteoGioia]

yeah let's make an even bigger gap between huge research orgs and public ! yay!

[WizardofTryout]

I’m profoundly moved by the visionary decision to swap world-class AI for these digital fossils; clearly, Microsoft believes the best way to prepare us for a cutting-edge future is to ensure we enter the global arena trying to lead the digital revolution using a steam engine and a very long piece of string.

[fozogt-jpg]

Microslop is back

[sharmamayankwins-create]

I don't know how can they can take this step as they know these are the only models that people use and make best of their project very much disappointed

[arownz]

now we back to the era of time consume

[sameershaikh55]

To be honest, we're going backwards with this.

[daylighttg]

Please bring back the sonnet and opus🥲

[ARTURO-JSON]

This is truly painful cause Claude opus models was the absolute best.... Github please bring it back at least just Claude opus 4.5🙏🏼🙏🏼😭

[syedhassan0709]

I am suubscribed to github copilot pro version the 1 month free trial yet i cant see my cloude sonnet 4.6 in the vs code can any one help me how may i get that.

[bogoudengap]

me too

[GCPCE1]

me too

[ieongsaiio]

same here

[jacobfriisstrand]

Same

[modamate]

Same here!, It just disappeared and says "contact admin"

[shoryasethia]

This should be illegal.

[blck04]

why not introduce a paid student plan for those who want premium model access

[EliasIoannou]

I'm not even a student I have Copilot Pro and I can no longer use the latest models... what is this..

[hotrungnhan]

i plan to upgrade to pro as well guy. Please update whenever they fix this broke.

[EliasIoannou]

My free pro trial ends in 3 days but im not sure if its because its a trial and when i pay i will get them back or something. We will see. One thing I noticed is you can still get them through Auto still. I hope they fix this if its a bug but paying to not get latest models is crazy.

[ChadwickCheng]

我的免费专业版试用期还有三天就结束了，但我不太确定是因为试用期的关系，还是付费后就能恢复原状。到时候看看吧。我注意到的一点是，现在仍然可以通过自动获取。如果这是个bug，我希望他们能尽快修复，但付费却无法获得最新型号实在太不合理了。

To be honest, Copilot right now is mostly using small or outdated models. I plan to end the trial and pay for the full Pro plan tomorrow. I’m not sure if there’s a rule now that student packs and Pro trials can’t access the latest models.

[ieongsaiio]

Has this problem been resolved now?

[ZzzzRyan]

Has this problem been resolved now?

no! the model list is like:

[getNameDev]

Straight Up Corruption

[Thibaultgrd08]

Hi,
Personally, Claude Opus, Claude Sonnet, and Codex 5.3 are languages ​​I use every day and are incredibly useful to me as a student. I think it's a shame to remove them completely. I would have preferred they removed Google or other models that I don't consider very good at coding, rather than these, which must be used by a very large portion of users.

And frankly, I'd prefer that others be removed and that Opus and Sonnet return, even in earlier versions (4.5) with a higher credit cost.

What do you think? Wouldn't that be a solution?

[Muraya-Pat]

So disappointing.
Allow us to atleast pay for a small amount to access these models.

[Shalin-Shah-2002]

I know Opus and sonnet were the reason we used Gihub Copilot but 5.3 codex is not so bad atleast for me it is good and just buy claude code 20$ plan and then use it like a secondary copilot priimary shoudl be codex at least we are getting codex tho

still im gonna hate github for doing this

[sameershaikh55]

Bro, Codex sucks! I don't know what you got out of it. I used Auto and it always picks the Codex.

[Martin-programmer]

I'm on a paid GitHub Copilot Pro plan (not a student) and I'm experiencing the same issue - Claude Sonnet, Claude Opus, and GPT-5.4 are no longer available in my model picker as of today, March 16. Nothing has changed on my end. This is a paid subscription and I expect access to the models I'm paying for. Please investigate and fix this as soon as possible.

[remfootovision]

me too !!!!

[sameershaikh55]

Really bad!!!! Disappointed 👎 :(

[remfootovision]

Even when we update from student to pro we don't have opus and sonnet ! please fix that

even not possible to choose our plan (student or pro) on the github setting? why?

[amir-sec]

Have same issue, who is responsible.

[eternallyproud]

I've encountered the same thing! Copilot is really digging its own grave.

[sameershaikh55]

I've encountered the same thing! Copilot is really digging its own grave.

so true

[vl4di99]

This was the cherry 🍒 on the cake top to make me leave Copilot. Even if I was OK to have failures in Agent mode, deleting files automatically without my approval and bad responses without proper context awareness (even though files were tagged when describing the requests), the decision to QUIT using Copilot is now easier than ever.
Thanks for clearing this path! ❤️
P.S: Keep rocking like this, you will be soon better than your competitors! ⭐
P.S.2: I will also gradually leave Microsoft products, else I will wake up in the morning and will find out that other junk was added, additional payments are required for something, my data was somewhere leaked, my data was obtained "ghostly" etc 😊

[sameershaikh55]

The worst part: It always uses GPT on Auto (I didn't see Claude Sonnet/Opus)