Clarification needed: netAmount breakdown between license-included costs and additional charges across GitHub billing APIs

[pceglie]

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Question

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Body

Subject: Clarification needed: netAmount breakdown between license-included costs and additional charges across GitHub billing APIs

Hello GitHub Support Team,

I am reaching out on behalf of our organization to request clarification on how to correctly interpret the netAmount field returned by the GitHub Copilot billing APIs, specifically to distinguish between costs already covered by our Copilot license and any additional charges that will be billed separately.

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Context

We have built an automated data pipeline that extracts GitHub Copilot usage and billing metrics from the following three API endpoints:

1. Organization Billing Usage
   GET {API_BASE_URL}/organizations/{org}/settings/billing/usage
   Used to retrieve the overall billing usage for the organization, including GitHub Actions, Packages, Storage, and other metered services.

2. AI Credit Usage
   GET {API_BASE_URL}/organizations/{org}/settings/billing/ai_credit/usage
   Used to retrieve AI-related consumption (e.g., Copilot completions, Copilot Chat interactions).

3. Copilot Billing Seats
   GET {API_BASE_URL}/orgs/{org}/copilot/billing/seats
   Used to retrieve the number of assigned Copilot seats and their billing status.

The extracted data is loaded into Azure Blob Storage and visualized through a Power BI report, which we use internally to monitor GitHub Copilot adoption and costs across the organization.

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Issue

All three endpoints return a netAmount field (or equivalent monetary values). However, we are unable to determine with certainty:

• Which portion of netAmount is already included in our GitHub Copilot license (i.e., covered by the per-seat subscription fee and therefore not billed additionally).
• Which portion of netAmount represents actual additional charges that will appear as extra line items on our invoice (e.g., overages, premium model usage, or consumption beyond the license entitlement).

This distinction is critical for us to accurately report:

• The total cost already covered by existing license agreements.
• The incremental/overage costs that need to be tracked and forecasted separately.

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Questions

1. Does the netAmount returned by /organizations/{org}/settings/billing/ai_credit/usage represent only the additional charges beyond the license, or does it include the full consumption value (including the license-covered portion)?

2. Does the netAmount returned by /organizations/{org}/settings/billing/usage already include AI/Copilot usage, or are the two endpoints fully separate in scope?

3. Is there a field or a separate endpoint we should use to isolate license-included costs versus billable overages?

4. How should the netAmount values from all three endpoints be combined or reconciled to obtain the true total cost without double-counting in our Power BI report?

5. Could you point us to any official documentation or billing schema that describes the cost model for GitHub Copilot (Business/Enterprise), specifically around which AI usage is metered beyond the seat license?

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Thank you in advance for your support.

Best regards,
Infrastructure & Data Engineering Team

[addy0328p]

Q1 — Does ai_credit/usage netAmount include license-covered portions or only overages?

It includes both — full consumption, not just overage. Your plan includes base credits (fixed, matches subscription price) + a flex allotment on top. Base credits deplete first, then flex kicks in automatically. The API doesn't split these natively — subtract your known included credit value manually to derive overage.

Q2 — Does /billing/usage already include AI/Copilot usage?

No — fully separate scopes. /billing/usage covers Actions, Packages, Storage. ai_credit/usage is exclusively Copilot AI token consumption. Don't combine them for Copilot cost calculations.

Q3 — Is there a field to isolate license-included vs. billable overages?

No single field exists. Calculate it manually: Included = seats × per-seat credit value (Business: 1,900 credits/user, Enterprise: 3,900/user). Overage = netAmount from ai_credit/usage minus included pool. Once the pool exhausts, additional usage either continues at $0.01/credit or gets blocked — depending on your policy config.

Q4 — How to reconcile all three endpoints without double-counting?

/billing/usage → Actions, Packages, Storage → Non-Copilot costs
/billing/ai_credit/usage → Copilot chat/agent tokens → Copilot AI cost
/copilot/billing/seats → Seat count & assignment → License cost

Total = (seats × plan price) + overage from ai_credit/usage. Never sum /billing/usage + ai_credit/usage for Copilot — independent scopes.

Q5 — Official docs

Usage-based billing for orgs & enterprises: https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/concepts/billing/usage-based-billing-for-organizations-and-enterprises
About billing for Copilot in orgs: https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/concepts/billing/organizations-and-enterprises
Budget controls: https://docs.github.com/en/enterprise-cloud@latest/copilot/how-tos/manage-and-track-spending/manage-request-allowances

Hope it helps😊

[pceglie]

Thanks for your reply. So to figure out how much I'm spending, I have to add the Usage netAmount to the AiUsage netAmount?
Can you explain the values ​​I need to consider in the image I'm attaching?

Best Regards

[addy0328p]

What you actually pay = Billable Licenses + Additional Usage
Or the same thing another way:

Current Metered Usage − Current Included Usage = Your real invoice amount
Breaking down each circled field in your image:

Current metered usage = Total gross usage for June (before any discounts — don't use this alone)
Current included usage = What your plan covers for free (AI credits + license discounts) — subtract this out
Copilot usage = Total gross Copilot spend (licenses + AI credits combined) — useful as a sanity check
Billable licenses = Just your seat costs being billed this cycle
Additional usage = This is your pure overage — the 165,651.03 AI credits consumed beyond your included allowance — this is the extra charge on top of your license