Verified student but Copilot Student not activated (still showing Copilot Free)

[emanuele3305-web]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

Benefit Activation/Waiting

Hi everyone,

Hello,

My GitHub Education application was approved on June 8, 2026.

My account status shows:

• Verified (benefits available)
• Benefits expire on June 8, 2028

I can also see GitHub Pro activated at $0/month, which suggests that my student benefits have been applied.

However, under Settings → Billing & Licensing → Licensing, my active Copilot subscription still shows:

"Copilot Free"

instead of Copilot Student.

I have already:

• Logged out and back into GitHub
• Reconnected GitHub Copilot in VS Code
• Waited more than 72 hours after approval

Is this expected because of the current Copilot Student signup pause, or is there an issue with my account that requires manual intervention?

Thank you.

[github-actions[bot]]

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[VURE-SATHVIK-22]

Hi,

If your GitHub Education benefits are already active and GitHub Pro is showing correctly, then your student verification appears to be successful.

At the moment, GitHub has temporarily paused new GitHub Copilot Student activations in some cases. Because of this, it is possible for your account to remain on "Copilot Free" even after Student Developer Pack approval.

Since you have already waited more than 72 hours and completed the usual troubleshooting steps, I would recommend contacting GitHub Education Support directly to verify whether your account is affected by the current Copilot Student activation delay or if manual intervention is required.

Hopefully a GitHub staff member can confirm your account status and provide an update.

Good luck!

[ChHussain]

Hi there,

Your troubleshooting steps were incredibly thorough, but you can stop trying to reconnect your IDE or re-log—this is expected behavior and your account is completely fine.

What you are experiencing is due to the global GitHub Copilot individual signup pause that went into effect on April 20, 2026.

Why this is happening:
The Global Pause: GitHub has temporarily frozen all new activations for Copilot Student, Copilot Pro, and Copilot Pro+ plans due to high infrastructure demands from agentic workflows.

Your Student Pack is Active: Your GitHub Education application was successfully approved on June 8. This is why you correctly see GitHub Pro at $0/month (which covers your GitHub repository features, extra Actions minutes, and advanced security).

The "Copilot Free" Fallback: Because you were verified after the April 20th pause, the system cannot provision the premium "Copilot Student" tier yet. To ensure new students aren't left entirely without AI features, GitHub automatically provisions the Copilot Free tier as a placeholder.

What you should do next:
Do not open a support ticket or reapply: Your account does not require manual intervention. The configuration you see is exactly how GitHub's system is handling new student approvals during this freeze. Re-applying will not bypass the pause.

Use the Free Tier for now: You can still use Copilot in VS Code under the Free plan. While it has strict monthly limits on chat/agents and model selections compared to the standard student plan, standard code completions remain free.

Wait for the pause to lift: Once GitHub expands capacity and resumes new individual signups, your "Copilot Free" subscription should automatically transition over to the full "Copilot Student" plan with your standard student AI credits.

You can keep an eye on the pinned Official Changes to GitHub Copilot Individual Plans Discussion for real-time updates on when the pause will be lifted!