GitHub surpasses 150 million developers, launches new free tier

New Delhi, Dec 19: Copilot powered developer platform GitHub on Thursday said it has surpassed 150 million developers on the platform. The Microsoft owned coding major also announced ‘GitHub Copilot Free’ in VS Code that works seamlessly with a user’s GitHub account, with Copilot Chat directly available from the GitHub dashboard.

“With GitHub Copilot Free in VS Code, India can accelerate the time line forward to becoming the largest developer community in the world. But only if we make it happen,” said GitHub CEO, Thomas Dohmke. Now automatically integrated into VS Code, all GitHub users have access to 2,000 code completions and 50 chat messages per month, simply by signing in with a personal GitHub account, or by creating a new one, the company informed.

Copilot Free gives developers the choice between Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet or OpenAI’s GPT-4o model. According to the company, they can ask a coding question, explain existing code, or have it find a bug. Users can also execute edits across multiple files, and access Copilot’s third-party agents or build their own extension.

“Additionally, Copilot Chat is now directly available from the GitHub dashboard and works with Copilot Free, so all developers can start using it today,” the company added. GitHub has over 17 million developers in India building on the platform, representing an increase of 28 per cent in 2024, and making India the fast-growing developer community in the world.

India is also the second largest developer community contributing to public generative AI projects on GitHub, just behind the US, with a 79 per cent increase from last year. The country saw a 95 per cent year-over-year (YoY) growth in contributions to these projects, placing itself third globally, after the US and Hong Kong.

According to Dohmke, India’s booming developer community is using AI to build AI in record numbers, making it evermore likely that the next great multinational will come from India. The company predicts that India will surpass the US to become the world’s largest developer community by 2028.