The End of Cheap AI?
Why GitHub Copilot & Claude just killed the "All-You-Can-Eat" dream. 📉
The $20 Lie
AI companies have hit a wall. When a user pays a flat $20/month but runs a coding agent that costs the company more in compute, the math stops working.
Venture capital was covering the difference, but the "burn phase" is over. Anthropic recently admitted their plans weren't built for Agentic AI—tools that run for 6 hours, write 2 million lines of code, and make hundreds of PRs in a single session.
Understanding AI "Enshittification"
Coined by Cory Doctorow, this term describes the predictable decay of platforms:
Capture users with "magic" free/unlimited tools like the original ChatGPT launch.
Introduce subscriptions and quietly remove features (like GPT-4o moving behind paywalls).
Degraded models ("Lazy AI"), tighter rate limits, and aggressive usage-based billing.
GitHub Copilot: The June 2026 Shift
Starting June 1, 2026, GitHub is transitioning from request-based limits to GitHub AI Credits.
- Model Multipliers: Switching models (like Claude 4.6 Opus) will now consume credits 6x faster.
- Usage-Based Billing: Once monthly credits are exhausted, you must buy more to keep using premium features.
- What Stays Free: Standard code completions and next-edit suggestions (the "ghost text") remain included.
- Pooled Usage: Enterprises can now pool credits so power users can leverage unused credits from others.
The New Token Economy
Example pricing for frontier models (per 1M tokens):
| Token Type | Price (per 1M) |
|---|---|
| Input Tokens | $2.00 |
| Output Tokens | $8.00 |
| Cached Input | $0.50 |
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