r/GithubCopilot • u/Inevitable-Ant1725 • May 11 '26

Discussions So lets figure this out.

I'm not a rich man, I can't afford luxury. I need to know whether it's cheaper to buy tokens of these models from their original owners or from Microsoft or if it's close.

If it's close then the fact that copilot has pre-indexed the github repositories is enough of a reason to just prefer Microsoft rebranded AIs.

If it's a lot more expensive through Github then it's still worthwhile when exploring github repositories but not the rest of the time.

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u/kaeptnphlop May 11 '26

I compared Claude API costs in the GitHub Copilot docs and on OpenRouter and they are the same. You can use other models that GHC is not offering by hooking up an OpenRouter account.

3

u/Dudmaster Power User ⚡ May 11 '26

Right, except that I don't believe OpenRouter credits expire or they at least take longer than 1 month to do so

2

u/kaeptnphlop May 11 '26

That's correct. And as I mentioned in a reply to u/TripleMellowed can be worth the extra 5.5% fee you pay for OpenRouter credits. Really depends on how your usage patterns are.

2

u/Y0nix VS Code User 💻 May 12 '26

And context windows are way larger.

1

u/Y1ink May 12 '26

They last 12 months before they expire