GitHub Copilot
Usage-Based Billing,
explained for TK Elevator

The fastest way to see active users, engaged users, suggestions accepted, IDE breakdown, language breakdown, Chat/PR-summary/agent activity for the last 28 days. Includes auto-resolved model names, Copilot CLI, cloud agent and plan mode.

1. Sign in as org owner or enterprise admin
2. Go to Organization → Copilot → Usage (or Enterprise → Copilot → Usage)
3. Pick a date range (last 28 days max in the UI)
4. Tabs: Overview, Languages, Editors, Chat, Code completions, Pull request
5. Export as CSV from the dashboard if you need to slice further

The authoritative view of what you owe right now. Shows included vs additional AIC, dollar spend, budget consumption with progress bars, and breakdown by product (Copilot, Actions, Packages, Codespaces, GHAS).

1. Enterprise → Settings → Billing & licensing
2. Usage tab → filter by product = GitHub Copilot
3. Group by Cost center, Organization, Repository or SKU
4. Budgets tab → see each budget with consumed % and status
5. Cost centers tab → see spend per cost center
6. Click Get usage report → download CSV (see surface #3)

A row-per-event CSV for finance and chargeback. Every line tells you which user, which day, which product/SKU, how many AI Credits, and how many dollars. Now uses quantity (AIC) and gross_amount (USD) as the standard fields.

1. Go to Billing → Usage → click Get usage report
2. Pick the period (year, month or day)
3. Download the CSV — open in Excel / load into your BI / data warehouse
4. Pivot by user to answer "who used the most?"
5. Pivot by cost_center for chargeback
6. Pivot by sku to see which premium models / features drove spend

Three APIs cover the full visibility story. Combine them for "which user, in which team, in which cost center, burned how many AI Credits this month?"

A cost center is a group of users, repositories or organizations that you want to track and bill together — typically a business unit, brand, product or department. Cost centers are the foundation for chargeback and granular spend control.

1. Click Cost centers → New cost center
2. Name it after the business unit (e.g. Digital Products – MAX, Field Service IT EMEA, Modernization R&D)
3. Add resources — pick users, repositories and/or organizations
4. Save. From now on all UBB usage of those resources is attributed to this cost center
5. (Optional) Attach a budget — see "Cost-center budget" below

Caps how much one user can consume. For AI Credits, this controls total usage — not just overage — so it directly protects the shared pool. Use a universal default + targeted overrides for power users.

1. Click New budget → choose scope User
2. Select All users for the default, or pick specific users / a group for overrides
3. Set the budget amount in USD (e.g. $30 / month for standard devs)
4. Pick the product = GitHub Copilot (or "AI Credits")
5. Turn ON "Stop usage when budget is exceeded" 🚨
6. Configure alert thresholds (e.g. 75% & 90% email to admin)

Caps total additional (overage) spend for everything assigned to a cost center. The only way to ringfence overage spend per business unit and enable chargeback-style accountability.

1. Create the cost center first (see above)
2. Click New budget → scope Cost center → pick it
3. Set USD cap for additional spend (e.g. $2,000 / month per TKE segment)
4. Choose product = Copilot, Actions, Packages, etc. — or "All products"
5. Turn ON "Stop usage when budget exceeded"
6. Add notification thresholds and recipients (cost-center owner + finance)

The master ceiling on total additional spend for the whole enterprise. Now (preview) supports an option to exclude cost-center usage so you can set a "default-everyone-else" cap and let specific cost centers run with their own budgets.

1. Click New budget → scope Enterprise
2. Set the total USD cap
3. NEW: Toggle "Exclude cost-center usage" if you want cost centers managed independently
4. Turn ON "Stop usage when budget exceeded"
5. Notify enterprise billing managers at 75/90/100%

The single most important setting in UBB. OFF = budget is just a notification, charges keep accruing. ON = hard stop, no surprise bills. Always ON unless you have a specific business reason.

Trigger emails at custom % thresholds. Always notify both the budget owner (e.g. team lead) and central billing managers, so nobody is surprised when the hard stop kicks in.

1. Open the budget
2. Add thresholds (recommended: 50%, 75%, 90%, 100%)
3. Add recipients — billing managers + cost-center owner

Manage the entire lifecycle of budgets via API — create, update, delete, change amount, change alerts. Required for any rollout at scale (hundreds of users / dozens of cost centers).

1. Generate a PAT or GitHub App with Manage billing permission
2. POST budgets in bulk from a script driven by your identity provider's group membership (AAD, Okta, Workday, etc.)
3. Use the new Usage summary API to pull consumption by org / repo / cost center / SKU for chargeback
4. Schedule monthly review — adjust ULBs based on actual usage

Since June 1, 2026, CCR consumes GitHub Actions minutes on top of AI Credits. You can now set a default Actions runner at the organization level instead of per repo. Choose your runner type carefully — large runners burn minutes 10× faster.

1. Org → Copilot → Code review → Configure runners
2. Pick a GitHub-hosted standard runner as the org default
3. Override per repo only when needed (e.g. monorepo needing larger runner)

Agentic workflows can now run with GITHUB_TOKEN instead of a PAT, billing AIC directly to the organization. ULBs do not apply in this mode (no user is attributed), so control these via cost-center budgets + per-workflow caps.

1. Enable Copilot policy "Allow use of Copilot CLI billed to the organization"
2. In the workflow frontmatter add permissions: copilot-requests: write
3. Compile and push the updated lockfile
4. Add the workflow's org to a dedicated "Automation" cost center with its own budget
5. Use the agentic-workflows cost-management tools (gh.io/gh-aw-cost) to cap per-run token usage