I recently experimented with the new background agent feature from GitHub Copilot and thought I would share my experience. I asked it to create a toggle for day/night themes in the footer of my Next.js application. The results were impressive - it produced clean code and even provided screenshots in the pull request.
However, I was taken aback when I checked my premium request usage afterward. That one session consumed a staggering 34 premium requests! I’m subscribed to the $10 monthly plan, and this quick task nearly exhausted my entire monthly quota in just 10 minutes.
I wanted to alert everyone since this surprised me completely. The documentation does mention this, but it’s something easily overlooked if you dive right into using the feature.
This is exactly why I haven’t turned on the background agent even though I have premium. It makes tons of API calls behind the scenes - analyzing your code, generating suggestions, creating those fancy outputs with screenshots. Each call eats into your premium requests, which is why it burns through credits so fast. I tested it on a React component refactor and watched it devour nearly half my monthly allowance in minutes. The quality was great, but it’s not worth it for everyday coding. Now I only use it for really complex stuff where the deep analysis actually matters. For regular coding, the standard autocomplete does the job without killing my quota.
Ugh, GitHub’s UX is terrible here. They need a real-time counter showing how many credits you’re burning while it runs. I almost made the same mistake but caught it when the spinner kept going after 5 minutes lol
wow, that’s wild! i was thinking about going premium too but man, no warning?!! does it just go full throttle consuming credits? i’m def gonna stick to the basic stuff for now until they sort this out. thanks for the heads up!
Same thing happened to me last month with the background agent on a database migration script. That feature’s crazy thorough - analyzes your whole codebase, spits out multiple solutions, creates detailed docs. But you pay big time for it. What got me was it keeps running even when you think it’s done. Just keeps refining and adding context in the background. Now I watch my usage dashboard like a hawk and only use it for critical stuff where the deep analysis is worth burning premium credits. For regular dev work, standard Copilot suggestions do the job without draining your account.