Execution matters: making AI credit models work in practice

Designing a credit model is only the first leap into new pricing territory. Once the model goes live, billing becomes part of your product, your sales shifts from licenses to consumption, and your finance team learns to forecast a moving revenue target. Our Simon-Kucher experts explain how a credit-based model changes the organization and where usage-based billing succeeds or stalls.

In August 2025, GitHub shipped a feature that has nothing to do with writing code. Copilot administrators in any organization gained so-called “overage policy” controls: the ability to set, cap, and govern how their organizations spend on premium AI requests. A billing control, prioritized on a product roadmap, was announced in the changelog just like any other capability.

In the first article, GitHub illustrated why credit models exist at all: its early Copilot…