GitHub Models now supports pay-as-you-go billing through your GitHub account and bring your own key (BYOK), giving you two flexible paths to scale beyond the free tier. Whether your team standardizes on GitHub billing or prefers to manage its own provider keys, these new options streamline access to production-grade AI models, making it easier than ever to build with AI across your development workflow.

What’s new

GitHub Models now has Billing for Model Inference:

  • Production-ready inference: Access higher-capacity, enterprise-grade model usage beyond free rate limits for models from DeepSeek, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI.
  • Seamless billing: Pay using payment methods such as credit card, PayPal, or invoice.
  • Get started for free before you scale: There’s no complex setup, and no extra infrastructure. Model access is free to start within our rate limits, so you can experiment before you commit and easily transition from the free tier to paid usage as your needs grow.
  • Enterprise-ready governance: Everything runs on GitHub and Azure infrastructure, so your data stays secure and is never leveraged for training. Org-level model controls let you choose which models are available to your team. You can manage access by group, giving you flexibility without sacrificing control.

Here are some details about the new bring your own key (BYOK) feature:

  • Provider flexibility: Connect your own keys from OpenAI or Azure AI and run inference directly—usage is billed and tracked against your own provider account.
  • Fully integrated: Use your own models just like any GitHub-provided model across prompts, evaluations, the Playground, and GitHub Actions. All the building blocks you need to build with AI, seamlessly within your existing workflow.
  • Secure access: Democratize model usage across your team without sharing sensitive API keys. Your keys are stored securely, and team members can use models without ever seeing or handling the key.

For details on setup and usage, see our Billing documentation and BYOK documentation.

To learn more about GitHub Models, visit the GitHub Models documentation and join the community discussions to share feedback and connect with other developers.