I can't cancel GitHub Copilot May 1, 2026 on Drew DeVault's blog

Back when Copilot first came out, I immediately disliked it. But I decided to give it a fair shake and tried to evaulate it in good faith. I wasn’t interested in paying for it, but they had a form for FOSS community members to apply for a free subscription, so I filled it out and gave it a shot. Once approved I spent 15 minutes (successfully) convincing it to write a Python script that printed out the lyrics to “All Star” verbatim, and haven’t touched it since.

Since then, like clockwork I get an email every month informing me that my subscription has been automatically renewed.

Hi there,

Thank you for renewing your free access to GitHub Copilot. Your access to GitHub Copilot will be reviewed on 2026-05-31. GitHub Copilot checks eligibility monthly per our policy. No steps are needed on your end.

We hope you enjoy using GitHub Copilot and participating in the developer community.

I’m not being charged for it and so it’s a matter of principle more than anything, but I ought to be able to turn this off. But I cannot find anything in the GitHub settings which would allow me to cancel this free “subscription”.

A screenshot of GitHub's copilot settings. Everything which can be disabled is disabled, but may features cannot be disabled. There is no obvious way to cancel the subscription.

GitHub support has been less than helpful:

A screenshot of a support ticket opened on March 26th asking for assistance in cancelling my Copilot subscription. I asked for an update on April 21st. There is no response from GitHub.

How do I get rid of this thing!