GitHub Education Pack Approved but Copilot Still Shows Free Plan – Anyone Else Facing This?

[Chief-myk]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Question

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Benefit Activation/Waiting

Hi everyone,

I recently got approved for the GitHub Student Developer Pack through GitHub Education. My application was successfully verified, and I can see that my student benefits are active.

However, I'm facing an issue with GitHub Copilot. Even after receiving the Student Developer Pack:

• GitHub Copilot on GitHub.com still shows the Free plan.
• In my IDE (VS Code/JetBrains), Copilot also appears to be using the Free version.
• I don't see any indication that the Copilot Pro student benefit has been activated.

Here are the steps I've already tried:

1. Logged out and logged back into GitHub.
2. Reinstalled the GitHub Copilot extension.
3. Verified that my GitHub Education status is active.
4. Waited for some time after approval in case the benefits needed to sync.

Has anyone else experienced this issue after being approved for the GitHub Student Developer Pack?

• Is there any additional step required to claim or enable Copilot Pro for students?
• Are there any settings or account pages I should check?

Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

[henderson-01]

Hi @Chief-myk,

I can give you an answer on this, though it is probably not the news you were hoping for.

There are no additional steps you missed, and nothing is broken with your account. The reason your IDE and settings still show the Free plan is that GitHub has temporarily paused all new activations for the Copilot Student, Pro, and Pro+ tiers.

Here is exactly what is happening behind the scenes:

• The Activation Pause: Even though your GitHub Student Developer Pack was successfully approved, the entitlement for Copilot Student cannot be provisioned right now.
• The Reason: GitHub recently transitioned Copilot to a completely new usage-based billing model. To ensure reliability and performance during this infrastructure shift, they halted new sign-ups across all individual paid and student tiers.
• The Default State: Because the premium activations are frozen, the system automatically defaults newly approved students to the Copilot Free tier in the meantime.

What to do next

Unfortunately, reinstalling your extensions, logging out, or waiting for a sync will not force the upgrade. Your Education verification is fully active and intact, but you are essentially in a holding pattern on GitHub's end.

Once GitHub lifts the pause and resumes sign-ups, your Copilot Student benefits will become available to activate. Until then, you will be limited to the features of Copilot Free. Keep an eye on the official GitHub changelog for updates on when the gates reopen!

[Chief-myk]

Got it, thank you very much for the clear update. @henderson-01

I understand the situation now— it’s just that Copilot Student activations are currently paused on GitHub’s end due to their billing/system changes.

I’ll wait until they reopen the sign-ups and check back then. Appreciate the clarification 👍