GitHub announces Copilot Business and Enterprise signups will reopen with upfront seat payment

On August 28, 2026, GitHub announced that Copilot Business and Enterprise signups would reopen from September 1 for card and PayPal customers, with account vetting and upfront per-seat payment. GitHub said prices were not changing.

Archive entry: this covers an event from August 28, 2026, and we published it on November 8, 2026. The details come from sources dated at the time and may have changed since.

On August 28, 2026, GitHub announced that Copilot Business and Enterprise signups would reopen from September 1 for credit card and PayPal customers, with account vetting. The announcement came in a GitHub changelog post on Copilot policies and billing and also covered billing, chat and code review changes.

What changed

Per-seat payment was required before access, with upfront charges. GitHub said prices were not changing.
Existing credit card and PayPal customers were to move to the revised billing from October 1, 2026.
Copilot cloud agent, Copilot Chat on github.com and GitHub Mobile chat were to be unified no earlier than September 28, 2026, enabled by default.
Chat data was to be retained for the life of the account instead of 28 days.
The default Copilot code review mode was to change from Lite to Balanced starting September 28.

What it means for people building with AI

Teams that bought Copilot by card had to pay upfront per seat before getting access, and chat history retention was set to change by default, from 28 days to the life of the account. Teams using Copilot code review were also due to get Balanced instead of Lite as the default mode starting September 28.

Follow-up on September 3

On September 3, 2026, GitHub published a changelog post on reopening Copilot Business and Enterprise signups confirming that signups were reopening gradually, with the billing changes applying from October 1.

Sources

Upcoming changes to GitHub Copilot policies and billing (GitHub, August 28, 2026, official)
Reopening Copilot Business and Enterprise signups (GitHub, September 3, 2026, official)

Written with AI assistance, strictly from the sources listed above. Before it went live, automated checks verified its dates, sources and every language edition.