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GitHub Copilot has switched to usage-based billing, making the cost of AI coding agents visible and signaling the end of the subsidized era for US AI coding tools. This shift may reduce US market share as developers realize they don't need expensive frontier models for most tasks.
This article explains that flat-rate subscription billing breaks for AI agents because inference costs vary by usage and model, and promotes Credyt as a no-code solution that pre-authorizes usage against customer wallets to prevent cost overruns.
The author analyzes GitHub Copilot's shift to usage-based billing as a strategy to build user dependency, and shares their experience transitioning to local AI inference on high-memory hardware to reduce costs and maintain workflow independence.