Premium models locked even with active budget — Copilot stuck in legacy “included-only” mode

[CostaTech]

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Bug

Copilot Feature Area

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i everyone, I’m experiencing a persistent issue with Copilot Pro that seems related to backend entitlement configuration. I want to share the full details here in case others are affected, or if a GitHub engineer can take a look.

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Problem Summary

I have an active Copilot Pro subscription purchased directly through GitHub.com.
My included 300 premium requests have been consumed, and I have configured a $10 monthly budget for All Premium Request SKUs with “stop usage” disabled.

However, Copilot completely blocks premium models after the included quota, and always shows:

“You have exceeded your premium request allowance.
We have switched you to GPT-4.1 included with your plan.
Enable additional paid premium requests to continue using premium models.”

Despite:

• A valid Copilot Pro plan
• A valid payment method
• A configured budget for premium requests
• $0 usage on that budget
• Premium requests should be billed as metered usage

Premium models like GPT-4.1 Pro, GPT-5.1, Claude Sonnet, etc. are not usable at all.

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What I Have Already Checked

Billing and Budget

• Copilot Pro is active
• Budget for All Premium Request SKUs = $10
• “Stop usage when budget is reached” = disabled
• Metered usage shows $0 spent, which means no premium request is being billed
• GitHub Models budget is irrelevant (not tied to Copilot)

VS Code troubleshooting

• Reset workspace settings ({})
• Reset user settings
• Reinstalled Copilot extensions
• Re-authenticated GitHub
• Tested from different projects and blank VS Code windows
• Copilot Chat sidebar works but premium models remain blocked
• Logs show failing entitlement calls

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Technical Indicators (from logs and Copilot Chat diagnostics)

From Copilot Chat diagnostics and behavior, my account seems to be stuck in legacy “included-only” quota mode.
Specifically, the backend fields required for metered billing appear missing:

• MeteredBillingEnabled → missing
• PremiumRequestMeteredQuota → not attached
• CostCenter not mapped to premium metered SKU
• Premium budget is visible in UI but not linked to the billing meter
• Migration from included-only to metered billing likely failed

VS Code logs also show:

• “Failed to fetch MCP registry”
• “copilot is not defined”
• Large commandEmbeddings.json persisting from previous provisioning

These are signs that Copilot’s entitlement token does not include premium metered capabilities.

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Expected Behavior

After the 300 included premium requests, Copilot should:

1. Activate metered billing
2. Charge additional premium usage against my configured budget
3. Allow premium models to work normally

This is not happening.

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Actual Behavior

• Copilot blocks premium models entirely
• No metered usage is generated
• The system behaves as if my payment method or budget did not exist

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Suspected Root Cause

This appears to be an entitlement migration failure at the account backend level.

Based on similar cases, the following backend updates are typically required:

• Enable MeteredBillingEnabled for my user
• Attach the PremiumRequestMeteredQuota bucket
• Remap my cost center to the premium request SKU
• Refresh all Copilot entitlements
• Clear any legacy quota cache

This matches every symptom I’m seeing.

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Request

If possible, could this be forwarded to the Copilot Billing Engineering team?
This issue blocks all premium usage even though everything is correctly configured on my side.

If anyone else has experienced this problem or found additional clues, your feedback would be extremely helpful.

Thank you!

[Rakhilpr96]

I have the same problem. Got any solution?

[Rakhilpr96]

I resolved it by enabling models paid usage and updating budget for existing "All Premium Request SKUs". DO NOT CREATE A NEW BUDGET.

[CostaTech]

Thank you very much for pointing out the solution, but I informed Copilot AI support that I had Copilot Pro Trial, and Copilot told me that budgets don't work if I use Copilot Pro Trial, so I deleted the budget. Now I'm waiting for Copilot Pro Trial to expire.

[shubhank008]

Thank you very much for pointing out the solution, but I informed Copilot AI support that I had Copilot Pro Trial, and Copilot told me that budgets don't work if I use Copilot Pro Trial, so I deleted the budget. Now I'm waiting for Copilot Pro Trial to expire.

Just to add if anyone also falls in this situation, the problem happens if you have Copilot Trial active. You cannot use Paid Requests during Trial, but you can end your trial early by going to Subscription, clicking the 3 dots (...) and clicking Start Paid Subscription. Additional Paid Premium Requests will start working then.