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GitHub Copilot Max vs Claude Max (2026): $100 vs $100

GitHub Copilot Max and Claude Max 5x both cost $100 a month. AI credits vs 5-hour limits, models, overflow and which heavy coder gets more, dated.

By Engineer Foodie Desk Oct 27, 2026 ✓ Sources checked Oct 27, 2026

8 min read

Copilot per-model rates checked Oct 27, 2026 in GitHub’s models and pricing docs; Copilot plans verified Oct 24, 2026 on GitHub’s plans page. Claude Max checked on claude.com/pricing (verified Oct 26, 2026, seen unchanged Oct 27). Other dates are under Sources. No affiliate links (how we work).

GitHub Copilot Max and Claude Max 5x both cost $100 a month, and they’re the opposite of each other in one useful way: Copilot tells you exactly what you get, Anthropic doesn’t. Copilot Max includes 20,000 AI credits a month, and “1 AI credit = $0.01 USD”, so that’s $200 of model usage at GitHub’s published per-token rates. Claude Max 5x gives you “five times the Pro plan’s per-session usage allowance”, and Anthropic publishes no number for the Pro allowance it’s multiplying.

So: Copilot Max if you want an IDE-first plan with a hard, countable budget and Claude Opus in the model picker. Claude Max 5x if Claude Code in a terminal is your workflow and you’d rather have a session pool than a meter.

Quick answer (Oct 27, 2026)

IDE-first, want to know your budget to the cent: Copilot Max. 20,000 credits, unlimited completions, Claude Opus 5.5 included.
Terminal-agent-first, all-day Claude Code: Claude Max 5x. Claude Code is included and shares one pool with Claude chat.
You hate meters: Claude Max. You’ll hit a limit eventually, but you’re not watching credits tick down per token.
You want a yearly price: neither sells one. Copilot’s annual price isn’t published, and Claude Max is monthly only.

The $100 table

Plan	Price	Usage	Overflow
Copilot Max	$100/mo	20,000 credits	Paid budget
Claude Max 5x	$100/mo	5x Pro per session	Usage credits
Claude Ultra	$200/mo	10x Pro weekly, no 5h limit	Usage credits

USD. Copilot: plans page and plans docs, verified Oct 24, 2026. Claude: Max plan article, web prices, “Mobile pricing may vary”, verified Oct 24, 2026. Ultra (formerly Max 20x) is the next step up, not a $100 option.

What $100 buys on Copilot Max

From GitHub’s plans page and docs (verified Oct 24, 2026):

20,000 AI credits a month: 10,000 base plus 10,000 flex. GitHub warns that “Flex allotments may change over time”, so half of the headline number is the half GitHub can adjust.
“Priority access to premium models.”
Unlimited completions. Code completions and next edit suggestions “don’t use credits. They remain unlimited with every paid plan.”
Agents and tools: cloud agent, third-party agents (public preview), CLI and the Copilot app are all included on Max.
Monthly reset: credits reset “at 00:00:00 UTC on the first day of each calendar month” and don’t carry over (billing docs, verified Oct 23, 2026).

How far do 20,000 credits go? GitHub bills tokens into credits at per-model rates, and there are no premium-request multipliers on monthly plans (models and pricing, verified Oct 27, 2026). Simple arithmetic on those rates: if every credit went to Claude Opus 5.5 output tokens at $20 per million, $200 of credits covers 10 million output tokens. Real sessions mix input, cached input and output, so treat that as a ceiling for one model, not an estimate of your month.

Copilot Max is the Deal or No Deal banker who actually shows you the number: $100 in, $200 of credits on the table. Anthropic’s offer is a closed case marked “5x”.

What $100 buys on Claude Max 5x

From Anthropic’s Max plan article (verified Oct 24, 2026) and pricing page (verified Oct 26, 2026):

5x Pro per session. Sessions reset every five hours, plus a “weekly usage limit that applies across all models” with a fixed reset time assigned to your account. Anthropic “may limit your usage in other ways, such as weekly and monthly caps”.
No message count. “There’s no fixed message count.” Pro is “at least 5x” Free per session, and Max 5x is 5x Pro, so the plan is a multiple of a multiple of an unpublished number.
Claude Code included, sharing limits with the Claude apps; IDE use counts too (Claude Code with Pro or Max, verified Oct 23, 2026).
Every Claude model. Opus, Sonnet and Haiku included; Fable on Max is “50% of weekly limits”, with a separate Fable weekly limit.
Priority access at high traffic times, and context “Up to 1M varies by model”.
$100 a month in API credits “to build on the Claude Platform”. These are for apps you build; they “can’t be used in Claude Code or the Claude apps”.

Honestly, this is the frustrating part. For $100 a month, “5x of an unpublished number” is not a spec. Anthropic could fix this with one published number, and it hasn’t.

Models: which Claude can Copilot Max use?

More than you’d guess. Per GitHub’s supported models docs (verified Oct 24, 2026), Max gets Claude Opus 4.8, Opus 4.8 (fast mode, preview), Opus 5, Opus 5.5, Fable 5 and Fable 5.1, plus Haiku 4.5, Haiku 5.5, Sonnet 5 and Sonnet 5.5. Not Claude Sonnet 4.6, which stays on annual Pro and Pro+ only. “Model availability is subject to change.”

Rates per million tokens, input / output (models and pricing, verified Oct 27, 2026):

Model	Input	Output
Claude Opus 5.5	$4	$20
Claude Sonnet 5.5	$2	$10
Claude Haiku 5.5	$0.10	$0.50
Claude Fable 5.1	$10	$50

Haiku 5.5 rate is for requests up to 100K tokens ($0.50 / $2.50 above). Cached input is cheaper: $0.20 per million on Opus 5.5.

These match the API list prices Cursor shows for the same models (Cursor models and pricing, verified Oct 27, 2026). So Copilot Max is effectively $200 of Claude-at-list-price for $100, with other models on the same meter.

At the cap

Copilot Max: wait for the next cycle, switch to a cheaper model, or set a dollar budget: “a $10 budget covers 1,000 credits”, with alerts at 75%, 90% and 100%. Extra usage is “billed in GitHub AI Credits at the per-token rates”. One catch: buying extra credits “is not available if you subscribe, or have subscribed, … through GitHub Mobile on iOS or Android” (verified Oct 27, 2026).

Claude Max 5x: move up to Ultra (charged “on a prorated basis for the remainder of your billing cycle”), turn on usage credits billed “at standard API pricing rates”, switch to a Console account, or wait. Max also gets a small “wrapping up” allowance “each time you reach a five-hour session limit, within your weekly limit”.

The Copilot promo, dated. GitHub’s billing docs (verified Oct 23, 2026) list a discount on model costs when you use auto model selection: 10% on paid plans, and 30% on Max “through October 28, 2026”. After Oct 28, the 30% Max figure has ended by GitHub’s own date. This isn’t a Rachel-at-the-gate, “get off the plane” moment: the discount only applies to auto model selection, so pick the plan for the plan, not the promo.

Billing: monthly vs annual

Copilot Max: $100 a month; annual price not published on the plans page or docs (verified Oct 24, 2026).
Claude Max: “available as a monthly subscription only” (verified Oct 24, 2026). Anthropic says “We don’t offer standard discounted pricing for individual plans (Pro and Max)”.

Which to pick

You live in VS Code or JetBrains and want Opus in the picker: Copilot Max. Budgets are in dollars, and you can see them run down.
You run Claude Code agents for hours in a terminal: Claude Max 5x. Session limits beat a token meter for long agent runs where you can’t predict token use.
You want non-Claude models too: Copilot Max includes GPT, Gemini and others on the same credits.
Max 5x keeps running out: Claude Max vs Ultra covers the $200 step.
$100 is too much: Copilot Pro vs Pro+ covers the $10 and $39 tiers, and GitHub Copilot cost has every plan.

The broad comparison is GitHub Copilot vs Claude Code, OpenAI’s version of this fight is Codex Pro vs Claude Code Max, and the full field is on AI coding tools compared.

Here’s what I’d do

We haven’t run either plan for a month; this is a read of the vendor pages. If my day is an editor with Opus doing edits and reviews, I’d take Copilot Max, because a published $200-of-credits budget is something I can plan around. If my day is Claude Code running long agent loops, I’d take Claude Max 5x and check /status before big jobs.

Not sure you need Copilot Max? Copilot Pro+ vs Claude Max compares the $39 plan against Claude’s $100 one.

FAQ

Is Copilot Max worth $100? If you use premium models heavily in an IDE, yes: it includes 20,000 AI credits, worth $200 at GitHub’s per-token rates.

Can Copilot Max use Claude Opus? Yes, Max includes Claude Opus 4.8, Opus 5 and Opus 5.5, billed from your AI credits at per-token rates.

Copilot Max or Claude Max for heavy coding? Copilot Max for IDE work with a countable budget; Claude Max 5x for long Claude Code agent sessions.

Does Claude Max include Claude Code? Yes, Claude Code is included and shares the same usage limits as the Claude apps.

Sources

GitHub, Copilot plans page (Max $100, 20,000 credits, flex wording, credit FAQ, budgets, alerts): https://github.com/features/copilot/plans (verified 2026-10-24)
GitHub Docs, Copilot plans (10,000 + 10,000 credits, priority access, features, no annual price): https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/get-started/plans (verified 2026-10-24)
GitHub Docs, Supported models (Claude models on Max): https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/reference/ai-models/supported-models (verified 2026-10-24)
GitHub Docs, Models and pricing (per-token rates, AI credit conversion, no multipliers on monthly plans, overage billing, mobile purchase limit): https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/reference/copilot-billing/models-and-pricing (verified 2026-10-27)
GitHub Docs, Billing for individuals (monthly reset, auto model promo through Oct 28, 2026): https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/concepts/billing-and-usage/individuals/billing (verified 2026-10-23)
Anthropic, What is the Max plan? (price, 5x multiple, weekly limit, monthly only, no standard discounts, proration): https://support.claude.com/en/articles/11049741-what-is-the-max-plan (verified 2026-10-24)
Anthropic, Claude pricing (Max features, Fable share, priority access, API credits, usage FAQ): https://claude.com/pricing (verified 2026-10-26; seen unchanged 2026-10-27)
Anthropic, Use Claude Code with your Pro or Max plan (shared limits, Fable limit, options at limit, wrap-up, API credits not for Claude Code): https://support.claude.com/en/articles/11145838-use-claude-code-with-your-pro-or-max-plan (verified 2026-10-23)
Anthropic, Usage credits for paid Claude plans: https://support.claude.com/en/articles/12429409-extra-usage-for-paid-claude-plans (verified 2026-10-21)
Cursor, Models & Pricing (Claude API list prices, for comparison): https://cursor.com/docs/models-and-pricing (verified 2026-10-27)