Given the announcement of the free version of the GitHub Copilot, we take a more detailed look at recent developments.

Of course here at IProgrammer we've covered the initial announcement:

GitHub has launched GitHub Copilot Free, a free version of Copilot that provides limited access to selected features of Copilot and is automatically integrated into VS Code. The free tier is aimed at individual GitHub customers who don't have access to Copilot through an organization or enterprise. The news coincides with GitHub having 150 million developers on GitHub.

What the plan gives is :

• 2000 code completions/month
  
  
• 50 chat requests/month
  
  
• 64k context window for a seamless development experience

Looks enough, before even considering upgrading to the Pro version.

This was followed by this month's Jetbrains announcement that the new free plan for GitHub Copilot has become available for everyone on JetBrains IDEs:

Whether you use IntelliJ IDEA (Ultimate, Community, Educational), PyCharm(Professional, Community, Educational), WebStorm, PhpStorm, Rider, or any other compatible JetBrains IDEs, you can now take advantage of this free plan to assist you in your development.

With this Free Plan, you can enable GitHub Copilot using just your GitHub account—no trials, subscriptions, or credit cards required.

For it to be activated inside your favorite Jetbrains IDE, you should take the following actions :

1. Open your JetBrains IDE, go to the “Plugins” section, search for “GitHub Copilot”, and click “Install.”
   
   
2. Open the Copilot Chat Window
   
   
3. Activate Your Free Plan
   
   
4. After activating your account, return to this welcome guide and click Sign in to GitHub to continue.

Done. Now if you've never used GitHub Copilot before, you'll need to find your bearings. We are here for that too.

Use it like ChatGPT; you can chat with copilot like you do with ChatGPT.

When the context is clear, Copilot provides direct and relevant answers. When it isn’t, Copilot guides you by asking follow-up questions to ensure clarity and precision.

This leads to:

• More Engagement: Developers spend less time figuring out how to phrase their prompts and more time focused on the task at hand.
  
  
• Less Complexity: Copilot’s ability to guide and clarify reduces the need for developers to navigate complex intent systems.
  
  
• Increased Productivity: With less back-and-forth and more focused responses, developers can move faster through their workflows.

Watch the video to understand how it works:

 If the default LLM foundation model doesn't fit your needs then you can change it. You can discover new Models by going through the Github Marketplace, where you can explore them too check their description, capabilities and compatibility.

The model catalog currently includes mainstream models like :

• Phi04
• OpenAI o1
• Llama-3.3.-70B-Instruct
• Ministral 3B

Unfortunately IBM's Granite, which are great for coding, are not in the list, but it is being constaly updated, so maybe they will be included in the future.

Finally, you've installed Copilot in your favorite IDE and picked your Model, what do you do next? Fortunately there's a great tutorial by Microsoft on "Learn how to create a Client-Server Application GitHub Copilot in under 45 Minutes". This will surely solidify understanding. 

More Information

Creating a client-server application with GitHub Copilot, .NET and Visual Studio

Github Marketplace for Models

Introducing a new, more conversational way to chat with GitHub Copilot   

Related Articles

GitHub Announces Free Copilot 

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