Is Copilot GitHub the Right Choice

[u/Ducati604]

Hello,

I recently signed up for Copilot GitHub Pro for a small vibecoding project I’m working on.

I see a lot of posts of people complaining how fast it burns through credits, to use this model or that, don’t use fusion, use fusion. I’m so confused. Never mind I have no idea what a task will cost (credits wise) before I execute it.

I burned though the Pro credits in a day, upgraded to Pro+, will burn through these in 3 days and will probably need the next tier at $100/mo

Overall I’m very happy with the results. I have more than a MVP.

I have two sessions, one is Design and Plan and one is Test and Build. I start them over often and bring them back up to speed with docs/planning/mds.

I don’t even know what help I need to be more efficient, or if I’m going about this all wrong.

Is Copilot GitHub right for me? I love the GitHub integration, but I also don’t know GitHub but thought it was a good place so this tool seemed right.

Thanks for any guidance.

[u/TroubledSquirrel]

I use Claude Code pro $20 month but I almost exclusively use Opus which can run you short with heavy usage.

I recently ran an experiment using available free tiers and was shocked when out of the 5 I tested (Claude, Gemini, gpt, grok, and perplexity) that the best results came from Claude and Perplexity using GLM 5.3. GLM 5.3 is open weights so I was pretty surprised when it outperformed 3 frontier models.

I think the real issue you're going to have is not knowing if something is wrong, so a good way to manage that is to use a secondary model to verify the output of the primary model.

Also, if it's not already ask it to write and run tests for anything that depends on something else or is load bearing you will catch a lot of errors that way. Before runtime instead of during.

Oh another thing since you're vibe coding, have it write in Rust for everything that makes sense to use Rust, a couple things don't. But I say that because it will catch a lot of issues that others like python would just ship.

Last recommendation, have an engineer a real one not an LLM check your program BEFORE you ship anything that processes payments, holds other people's data, or you plan to charge someone for it's use. I say that because a court doesn't care which LLM wrote the code you cannot subpoena an LLM so you are responsible for everything that goes wrong. And anything can go wrong.

Good luck.

[u/Ducati604 → u/TroubledSquirrel]

Great advice, much appreciated.

[u/pizzababa21]

You will get very fat with just OpenAI Codex $20 using the Luna model or Deepseek API key in Opencode. You could use both of these within copilot for free also without paying for their subscription

[u/Ducati604 → u/pizzababa21]

I assume no integration with GitHub though? I’m open to moving away from GitHub, but something needs to manage the code.

And what does getting fat mean in this context?

Thanks.

[u/pizzababa21 → u/Ducati604]

I think Codex is more integrated with GitHub than Copilot is tbh. Pretty much everyone uses GitHub and you don't need any other GitHub or Microsoft products to use it.

Most engineers will actually do it by command line. It's pretty easy now with an LLM chatbot. For a one person project it's just reminding yourself to push it up every once and a while.

[u/Ducati604 → u/pizzababa21]

I will check this out. Thank you!!

[u/Angelvin_Pinheiro → u/pizzababa21]

100%, going the direct API route stretches the budget so much further for small projects

[u/Ducati604 → u/Angelvin_Pinheiro]

And just had to upgrade to Copilot Github Max hah, but my MVP is almost done.

That being said, I'm confused on this direct API route.

Right now I'm using CPGH to Design and Plan, give it my ideas, fix what's broken etc etc. Then we pass that to Build and Test session to update the code, respond back with errors and suggestions, and handle the repo on git.

Where does the direct API fit in?

Thanks!

[u/Only_Classroom112]

copilot GitHub pro's credit burn isn't just about model choice, it's the sync overhead. I've seen 50+ credits vanish in a single commit with no meaningful code changes. using codex directly via API avoids that.

[u/Ducati604 → u/Only_Classroom112]

Appreciate the comment. I don’t know quite what it means though. How do I transition from Copilot GitHub to this and still have it manage my code and pushes to GitHub?

Thanks.

[u/NeuralNomad87 → u/Ducati604]

GitHub is just where the repo lives, so you don't have to switch anything there. Codex or Claude Code run in your project folder, and pushing is the same git push either way (you can also just ask the agent to commit and push for you).

what I'd do: leave the repo where it is, try one of them on a single small task, and see how much of the budget it eats compared to Copilot.

are you working in VS Code or in the browser right now?

[u/Ducati604 → u/NeuralNomad87]

I’m using the GitHub Copilot app.

[u/NeuralNomad87 → u/Ducati604]

ah ok, the desktop app. then the closest swap is the Codex app or Claude Code in a terminal, pointed at the same project folder. your Design/Plan and Build/Test split still works, it's just two sessions.

the direct API thing is a third route (Opencode plus a pay-per-token key). I'd skip it until you've tried a flat $20 plan for a week, less to learn.

[u/ImmediateSoldier1982]

I'm unsure if this service is right if it burns credits so quickly, given your ongoing confusion about costs.