Potential AI credit calculation bug when switching Copilot plans

[dcorpStudio]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Bug

💬 Feature/Topic Area

VS Code

Body

I believe there may be a bug in how Copilot usage credits are being calculated when changing plans.

Yesterday I downgraded to Pro+, and my usage page showed approximately 12,000 / 20,000 AI credits remaining.

Today I upgraded back to Max. However, immediately after the upgrade, my account showed 20,000 / 20,000 credits used (100% consumed), despite only making light use of Copilot between the downgrade and the upgrade.

From my perspective, I paid for Max and instantly lost all available usage. The remaining credits that were previously shown appear to have disappeared entirely.

Has anyone else experienced this when switching between Pro+, Max, or other Copilot plans? Is there a documented explanation for this behavior, or does it sound like a usage-tracking issue?

I'm viewing the credit usage here:
https://github.com/settings/copilot/features

VS Code reports the same status: Copilot Max — 100% used.

I've already contacted support, but I'm curious whether others have seen similar behavior.

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[maheerCodes]

hey @dcorpStudio 👋 .
this pattern has come up a few times in the community recently since the june 1 billling system rollout,,, plan-switching and credit balances seem to interact in unexpected ways that dont match what youd intuitively expect .

a couple of things that might explain what happpened :

• plan downgrade doesnt pause the billing cycle,,,when you downgraded to Pro+yesterday,the system may have been tracking usage against Pro+'s 20k limit.then when you upgraded back to Max ,,, if the system recalculated your historical usage for the current billing period against the new plan's limits(rather than just giving you a fresh 20k balance),that could land you at100%immediately if your usage was already near or at the 20k mark when counted diffferently,
• credit resets are tied to the billing cycle start date ,not the plan switch date ,,so if youre mid-cycle ,upgrading doesnt give you a fresh 20k ,,,it gives you whatever the remaining balance is for the current cycle which may be near-zero if usage accrued under the previous plan tier counts.
  this is still genuinely confusing UX even if its technically"working as designed",,,because paying for Max and immediately seeing 0 available credits is a frustrating experience regardless of the technical explanation.
  since you already opened a support ticket,,, thats the right move. when you follow up ,specifically mention:
• the exact timeline(downgrade date,upgrade date).
• that you hadd ~12k credits remaining visible before the upgrade.
• ask explicitly whether plan-switch mid-cycle resets /recalculates the credit counter or just inherits the existing cycle balance.

that framing should get you a clearer answer than just "why are my credits gone",,,,,,,and if this is genuinely a miscalculation they can correct it💙💙💙💙💙.

[dcorpStudio]

I'm seeing another strange behavior related to Copilot usage and I'm wondering if anyone else can reproduce it.

I just changed my Additional Usage Budget from $0 to $20.

Immediately afterward, VS Code showed that I had already used 319 / 2000 credits (15%), even though I hadn't made any Copilot requests since changing the setting.

I would have expected the usage to remain at 0 until new requests were made, so I'm confused about where those 319 credits came from.

Has anyone else seen usage appear instantly after increasing their Additional Usage Budget? Is there a documented explanation for this, or could it be another issue with usage reporting?

Current status shown in VS Code:

Additional Usage Budget: $20
Usage: 319 / 2000 credits (15%)

[GARJE-01]

The fact that you observed two different counters changing immediately after account/budget changes makes me wonder whether what you're seeing is a synchronization or attribution issue rather than actual new consumption.

A possible explanation for the second case:

• While your additional usage budget was set to $0, usage may still have been tracked internally.
• When you increased the budget to $20, the UI may have started displaying previously accumulated billable usage that had already been recorded but wasn't visible under the $0 budget configuration.
• In that scenario, the jump to 319/2000 would not represent new requests being made after the change—it would represent historical usage becoming visible.

That doesn't necessarily explain the earlier "20,000 / 20,000 used immediately after upgrading" behavior, but both symptoms seem consistent with the system recalculating or re-associating existing usage data when billing-related settings change.

A few questions that might help narrow it down:

1. Did the 319 credits remain stable for a while after the budget change, or did they continue increasing without additional usage?
2. Does the usage history page show activity corresponding to roughly 319 credits before you enabled the additional budget?
3. Are the percentages identical between VS Code and the GitHub Copilot usage page, or is one updating before the other?

If support responds, I'd be very interested to know whether Copilot usage is recalculated retroactively when changing plans or budgets within the same billing cycle. That would explain both observations much better than actual credit consumption occurring at the moment the settings were changed.

[dcorpStudio]

• After a prompt which costed ~22 credits, I see it's increased to 342/2000 credits used (in VSCode). So it looks like a consistent report from database, not a sync issue.
• The usage reported from github page only shown 20,000/20,000 before I change the addition budget, nothing looks like 319 credits overused
• The github page is now showing '$0.00 / $20 budget' (under 'Included credits 20,000 / 20,000'), which I think a delayed sync issue.

[GARJE-01]

The new detail that stands out is this:

GitHub now shows "$0.00 / $20 budget" while VS Code shows 342/2000 additional credits used.

That suggests there may actually be two different accounting systems involved:

1. A credit-consumption counter (what VS Code is showing).
2. A monetary budget tracker (what the GitHub billing page is showing).

If that's true, then the fact that VS Code immediately displayed 319 credits after enabling the budget becomes more interesting. It would imply those credits were already recorded somewhere before the budget change, even though they weren't previously visible through the UI.

The sequence:

• Additional budget = $0
• Usage not visible
• Additional budget increased to $20
• 319 credits immediately appear
• Subsequent prompt increases count from 319 → 342

looks less like a synchronization problem and more like a visibility/reclassification problem where historical usage suddenly became eligible to be displayed under the additional-usage bucket.

What I would be curious about is whether the 319 credits roughly correspond to the amount of usage that occurred after hitting the included-credit limit but before enabling the additional budget.

If support confirms that usage is tracked continuously but only surfaced once a spending budget exists, that would explain the second behavior. It still wouldn't explain why upgrading plans appeared to consume all included credits immediately, but it would suggest both issues are occurring in the same area of the billing/usage accounting system.

At this point, I think your support ticket is likely the only place that can definitively answer whether plan changes and additional-budget changes trigger retroactive usage attribution within the same billing cycle.

[dcorpStudio]

Yes, I have already added this new behavor to the support ticket
But it's 4 days since the initial support request sent. No response at all.

[GARJE-01]

Four days without a response from support is definitely frustrating, especially since the behavior now appears reproducible rather than a one-time display glitch.

What makes this particularly interesting is that we now have three distinct states:

1. Included credits reported as fully consumed (20,000 / 20,000).
2. Additional budget initially set to $0.
3. Additional usage immediately showing 319 credits once the budget was increased.

The fact that new prompts increase the counter predictably (319 → 342 after a ~22-credit request) suggests the additional-usage counter itself is functioning correctly. The question is where the initial 319 credits originated.

One possibility is that the system is continuously tracking usage beyond included credits, even when additional spending is disabled, and then exposing that historical usage once an additional budget is configured.

If that turns out to be the intended behavior, I think there is still a UX problem because users would reasonably expect:

• Additional budget = $0 → no billable usage bucket visible.
• Additional budget enabled → usage starts counting from that point forward.

Seeing a non-zero value appear immediately makes it look as though credits were consumed retroactively.

If support eventually confirms whether usage attribution is recalculated when:

• switching plans, or
• enabling additional budgets,

it would be extremely useful information for anyone trying to understand Copilot billing under the new credit system.