5.3. Copilot for Individuals, Business, and Enterprise
Like GitHub accounts themselves, Copilot scales through tiers — and the exam tests which tier unlocks which kind of control.
💡 First Principle: Copilot's plans add administrative and policy control as you move from an individual subscriber to a whole company, not just more AI capability. The plans for individuals — Copilot Free, Student, Pro, Pro+ and Max — are personal subscriptions with no organizational management. Copilot Business adds organization-wide seat management and policy control — an admin decides who gets access. Copilot Enterprise includes everything in Business, with the same seat and policy management, plus a larger monthly pool of AI credits (included per seat and pooled across the enterprise), additional enterprise-grade capabilities and often earlier access to new features and models; it requires GitHub Enterprise Cloud. Shared organizational context is not an Enterprise-only feature: Copilot knowledge bases were retired on November 1, 2025 in favor of Copilot Spaces, which anyone with a Copilot license, including Copilot Free, can create and use.
| Individual plans | Business | Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Subscriber | One person | An organization | A whole enterprise |
| Admin-managed seats? | No | Yes | Yes |
| Org-wide policy control? | No | Yes | Yes (same as Business) |
| Included monthly AI credits? | Varies by plan | Per seat, pooled | More per seat, pooled |
⚠️ Exam Trap: Only Business and Enterprise tiers give an organization admin control over who has Copilot access and how it's governed — the individual plans (Free, Student, Pro, Pro+, Max) are personal subscriptions with no org-level policy layer at all.
Reflection Question: A company wants IT to control which employees get Copilot access and enforce a company-wide usage policy. Which tier is the minimum that supports that requirement?
