Every time a frontier model ships, someone asks how long until it lands in GitHub Copilot. This measures it: the gap between a vendor's public release and the model showing up in Copilot, across 46 launches from September 2024 to August 2026.
- Median lag: 0 days. 70% of launches shipped in Copilot the same day the vendor announced them.
- 80% shipped within a week.
- Frontier models from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google are effectively day-0 — GitHub is a launch partner.
- Lag shows up on sub-variants (Codex-Max, mini tiers) and non-launch-partner vendors.
- One model had negative lag: Grok Code Fast 1 was in Copilot as the stealth model "sonic" two days before xAI announced it.
| File | What |
|---|---|
data.json |
Canonical dataset, one record per launch |
data.csv |
Same data, spreadsheet-friendly |
build.py |
Source of truth. Edit ROWS, re-run, both files regenerate |
Each record carries a vendorUrl and a changelogUrl so every number traces back to a public page.
python3 build.py # regenerates data.json and data.csv
python3 -m http.server # then open http://localhost:8000No build step, no dependencies. The site is a single index.html that fetches data.json.
- Vendor date — the public announcement date from the vendor's own blog or newsroom.
Not an API model-ID snapshot date; strings like
claude-opus-4-5-20251101are training cutoffs, not release dates. - Copilot date — the first GitHub Changelog entry announcing availability. Where a model shipped to public preview first, the preview date is used, since that is when users could actually select it.
- Lag — calendar days between the two. Negative means Copilot was first.
Rows where the vendor date is genuinely ambiguous (experimental vs. GA, partner preview vs. public
launch) carry a note field explaining the choice.
Found a wrong date or a missing model? Open an issue
or send a PR editing ROWS in build.py. Please include the vendor announcement URL and
the changelog URL.
Independent analysis of public data. Not affiliated with or endorsed by GitHub or any model vendor. Not a commitment, roadmap, or service-level agreement, and not a predictor of future releases.
MIT for the code. Data is compiled from public sources.