‘What a joke’: Github Copilot’s new token-based billing spurs consternation among devs

“简直是个笑话”：Github Copilot 新的基于 Token 的计费模式引发开发者不满

The golden age of Microsoft’s Github Copilot appears to be at an end — for the little guy, at least. The company is switching its billing system from a flat subscription rate to a token-usage system that has the potential to bill users at a significantly higher rate. Bigger enterprises may still have the juice for it, but smaller companies and workers could find themselves wondering how they’re supposed to balance the monthly budget.

微软 Github Copilot 的黄金时代似乎已经终结——至少对于普通个人用户而言是这样。该公司正在将其计费系统从固定订阅费率切换为基于 Token 使用量的系统，这可能会导致用户的账单大幅增加。大型企业或许还能负担得起，但小型公司和个人开发者可能不得不开始为如何平衡月度预算而发愁。

The changes, which will take place June 1, mean that users will charged based on how many tokens they burn through as they work instead of a low flat rate based on requests. Some developers with financial whiplash have taken to places like Reddit and X to bemoan what — in many cases — appears to be a drastic escalation in cost.

这些将于 6 月 1 日生效的变更意味着，用户将根据工作时消耗的 Token 数量付费，而不是按照基于请求的低额固定费率付费。一些遭遇“财务冲击”的开发者纷纷在 Reddit 和 X 等平台上抱怨，在许多情况下，这似乎意味着成本的急剧上升。

“What a joke,” one Redditor recently wrote, claiming that, while they currently only pay around $29 per month, the new rate will balloon their costs to nearly $750 a month. “This new usage model is just stupidly expensive. I’m adjusting mine by cancelling. At that cost, it is no longer cost-effective or useful in any practical way.”

“简直是个笑话，”一位 Reddit 用户最近写道。他声称，虽然目前每月只需支付约 29 美元，但新费率将使他们的成本激增至每月近 750 美元。“这种新的使用模式简直贵得离谱。我打算取消订阅来调整。以这个成本来看，它在实际应用中已经不再具有成本效益或实用价值了。”

Another user posted “WOW, didn’t expect new pricing model to be this ridiculous,” sharing a screenshot that appeared to show that their costs had shot up from around $50 to some $3,000.

另一位用户发帖称：“哇，没想到新的定价模式竟然如此荒谬，”并分享了一张截图，显示其成本从约 50 美元飙升至约 3,000 美元。

The increases sound extreme. However, some Copilot users have bitten back at this criticism — noting that, if you know what you’re doing, you really shouldn’t be blowing through quite so many tokens on a regular basis. The people spending this much are vibe-coders with little actual development knowledge, those critics maintain.

这些涨幅听起来确实极端。然而，一些 Copilot 用户反驳了这种批评，指出如果你清楚自己在做什么，通常不应该频繁消耗如此多的 Token。这些批评者认为，那些花费巨大的人是缺乏实际开发知识的“氛围编程者”（vibe-coders）。

“The vast difference between some of us working all day and still barely having overage and then these screenshots. I struggle to believe it’s complexity differences in the workload,” wrote one user. “The only way it gets crazy like that is if you are purely ‘vibe coding’ with a ton of bloated iterations,” they later added. “It’s pretty affordable for even small outfits if used as a tool, on pretty much any provider.”

“我们中有些人整天工作，几乎没有超出额度，而这些截图却显示出巨大的差异。我很难相信这是工作负载复杂性的差异造成的，”一位用户写道。“除非你是在进行大量的冗余迭代进行‘氛围编程’，否则不可能出现那种疯狂的费用，”他们随后补充道。“如果将其作为工具使用，即使对小型团队来说，在几乎任何提供商那里它都是相当实惠的。”

Others have focused on the mind-boggling economics behind the company’s previous model. “Holy fuck how much money was copilot losing,” one Redditor asked in a recent post. It’s a good question. The economics behind Copilot have not always seemed so easy to grasp, and the amount that the company must have spent to subsidize the ongoing vibe-coding escapades of its user base is similarly mysterious and hidden from public view.

其他人则关注该公司先前模式背后令人费解的经济账。“天哪，Copilot 到底亏了多少钱？”一位 Reddit 用户在最近的帖子中问道。这是一个好问题。Copilot 背后的经济逻辑似乎并不总是那么容易理解，而该公司为了补贴用户群持续不断的“氛围编程”行为所投入的资金，同样神秘且未向公众披露。

While some have criticized the changes and others have critiqued those critiques, still other online voices have argued that developers have a perfectly good reason to be upset, given that Microsoft encouraged users to use its chatbot indiscriminately and now appear to be pulling the rug out from under them.

虽然有些人批评了这些变更，另一些人则反驳了这些批评，但还有一些网络声音认为，开发者有充分的理由感到不满，因为微软曾鼓励用户不加节制地使用其聊天机器人，而现在似乎又在釜底抽薪。

“To all the people blaming…the people who actually used the system the way that Microsoft built it (and even encouraged it to be used this way), honestly the only one at fault here is Microsoft. Microsoft provided this billing method and they kept making it easier and easier to burn through massive numbers of tokens on single premium requests that could churn for hours or even days while spawning dozens or even hundreds of sub-agents,” one user wrote.

“对于所有指责那些按照微软构建（甚至鼓励）的方式使用系统的人，老实说，这里唯一有错的是微软。微软提供了这种计费方式，并且不断让用户更容易在单个高级请求上消耗海量 Token，这些请求可能会运行数小时甚至数天，同时生成数十甚至数百个子代理，”一位用户写道。

TechCrunch reached out to Microsoft for comment, but did not hear back by publication time.

TechCrunch 已联系微软寻求置评，但在截稿前未收到回复。