GitHub Copilot Pro+ Unveiled: Access Claude Code and Codex Models for $39/Month

GitHub has officially launched the highly anticipated Copilot Pro+ subscription tier, marking a significant upgrade for developers leveraging AI assistance in their workflows. This new offering, priced at $39 per month, immediately stands out by granting users access to advanced models, notably including Claude Code and Codex.

The Arrival of Advanced Models

For months, the developer community anticipated the integration of more powerful large language models into the GitHub Copilot ecosystem. The introduction of Copilot Pro+ delivers on this promise, making models such as Claude Opus 4.1 and others available directly within the development environment.

Users subscribed to this new tier can activate these capabilities directly within their Copilot settings in GitHub and VS Code. While the exact implementation details of the 'Claude Code' model are subject to further testing, the inclusion suggests a major boost in code understanding, generation, and context awareness for subscribers.

Understanding the New Tiers

The pricing structure clearly positions Copilot Pro+ as the premium offering for power users and teams requiring the best performance from generative AI tools. The core difference lies in model access and request volume:

• Model Access: Subscribers gain access to a broader suite of models, including the latest iterations like Claude Opus 4.1.
• Premium Request Volume: Copilot Pro+ provides five times the number of premium requests compared to the standard Copilot Pro subscription. This buffer ensures heavy users can rely on the most advanced models without quickly hitting rate limits.
• Purchasing More: For users who exhaust their premium allocations, the option to purchase additional requests is available, offering flexibility for intensive coding sprints or specific project needs.

Seamless Integration with Development Environments

A critical aspect of this rollout is the seamless integration. Developers utilizing GitHub Copilot for features like code completion, suggestion generation, and chat functionalities will find these new models accessible within their existing toolchains. This means enhancing the quality and complexity of suggestions directly inside VS Code Integration or through GitHub's web interface.

The availability of superior models like Claude Code suggests improvements in areas that previously challenged earlier models, such as handling complex legacy codebases, generating more abstract reasoning, or adhering to very specific architectural patterns. The inclusion of Codex Models also reaffirms GitHub's commitment to its foundational AI technology.

Impact on Developer Productivity

For many software engineers, AI Coding Assistant tools are becoming indispensable. The move to offer premium, state-of-the-art models under a unified GitHub Copilot subscription structure is expected to significantly elevate productivity benchmarks.

Developers working on challenging algorithms or requiring detailed documentation generation stand to benefit most from the enhanced processing power offered by models like Claude Opus. This move signals Microsoft and GitHub's aggressive strategy in the competitive AI development space, leveraging their partnership strengths to offer compelling value propositions over competing Developer Tools.

How to Activate Copilot Pro+ Features

Enabling the new capabilities is designed to be straightforward for existing Copilot users:

1. Ensure the Subscription Tiers is set to Copilot Pro+.
2. Navigate to the Copilot settings within the relevant application (VS Code, Visual Studio, or GitHub settings).
3. Look for model selection options or model preference toggles.
4. Activate the desired advanced models, such as Claude Code, if presented as an option.

The success of this premium tier will largely depend on whether developers perceive the $39 monthly cost as justified by the tangible improvements in code quality and speed derived from using these advanced models. As the Microsoft AI ecosystem continues to mature, Copilot Pro+ represents a significant step toward making the most powerful generative AI accessible directly at the point of code creation.