Copilot Not Working? 9 Fixes for GitHub Copilot Errors in 2026

If GitHub Copilot isn't working, the cause is almost always one of five things: an expired sign-in token, an outdated extension, a GitHub-side outage, a hit rate limit on your plan, or a network/proxy block. Developers on free and individual plans hit this most often, since Copilot Free caps completions and chat requests per month and silently stops suggesting code once you're over the limit. Start by checking githubstatus.com, then update the extension, then re-authenticate — in that order.

Why is Copilot not working?

Copilot usually stops working for one of five reasons: your GitHub authentication token expired, the Copilot extension is out of date, GitHub Copilot is experiencing a service incident, you've hit your plan's monthly completion or chat limit, or a corporate firewall/proxy is blocking Copilot's API calls. Each has a distinct symptom and fix.

• Auth expired — the Copilot icon in your editor shows a slash or warning triangle
• Outdated extension — suggestions stopped after an editor update
• Outage — multiple people on your team report the same issue at once
• Rate limited — suggestions worked earlier today, then stopped (common on Copilot Free, capped at 2,000 completions and 50 chat messages/month per GitHub's Copilot Free documentation)
• Network block — works on home Wi-Fi, fails on a corporate VPN

Is GitHub Copilot down right now?

Check githubstatus.com first — it reports real-time incident status for Copilot, Actions, and other GitHub services, with a public history of past outages. If Copilot shows "degraded performance" or "partial outage," the fix is to wait; nothing on your end will resolve it faster.

GitHub also posts incident retrospectives in its Copilot documentation hub, which is useful if you need to confirm an outage happened for a bug report or support ticket.

How do you fix Copilot not working?

Work through these in order; most Copilot failures resolve in the first three steps without needing a full reinstall.

Step	Action	Fixes
1	Check GitHub Status	Service-wide outages
2	Sign out and back into GitHub in the editor	Expired/invalid auth tokens
3	Update the Copilot extension to latest	Compatibility breaks after editor updates
4	Confirm your Copilot subscription is active in GitHub billing settings	Lapsed trials, canceled seats, org license removed
5	Check monthly completion/chat usage (Free tier)	Quota exhaustion
6	Disable VPN/proxy or allowlist copilot-proxy.githubusercontent.com	Corporate network blocks
7	Disable conflicting extensions (other AI autocomplete tools)	Suggestion conflicts
8	Reload/restart the editor window	Stuck language server process
9	Uninstall and reinstall the extension	Corrupted local extension state

Why isn't Copilot working in VS Code specifically?

In VS Code, Copilot failures are usually tied to the extension version lagging behind an editor update, or a second AI extension (Cursor, Codeium, another Copilot-like tool) claiming the same inline-suggestion UI slot. Open the Output panel, select "GitHub Copilot" from the dropdown, and check for 401/403 errors — those point to auth, while 429 errors point to rate limiting.

VS Code's own Copilot setup guide covers the extension's expected permissions and sign-in flow, which is useful for diagnosing whether the issue is Copilot-specific or an editor-level permissions problem.

Could Copilot's rate limits be causing this?

Yes — Copilot Free is capped at 2,000 code completions and 50 premium chat requests per month, and paid individual/business plans have their own premium-request allowances for advanced models before falling back to a base model (per GitHub's documentation). If completions stop mid-month with no error message, check your usage under GitHub Settings → Copilot before assuming it's broken.

This is the same pattern Claude Code and Cursor users run into with 5-hour and weekly usage windows — the tool doesn't crash, it just quietly throttles. If you're evaluating alternatives because of limits rather than bugs, Claude Code vs. Copilot for coding and Cursor's pricing and rate limits break down how each tool's caps compare.

Key takeaways

• Check githubstatus.com before touching any settings — a chunk of "not working" reports are just outages.
• Re-authenticating and updating the extension fixes the majority of individual cases.
• Copilot Free's hard caps (2,000 completions, 50 chat requests/month) are a common silent cause of "it stopped working."
• Corporate VPNs and proxies block Copilot's API endpoints more often than people expect.
• If limits (not bugs) are the real issue, compare caps across tools before switching — see Claude Code vs. Cursor pricing for how usage limits differ across the ecosystem.

Sources

• GitHub Status
• GitHub Copilot Documentation
• GitHub Copilot Free: Managing Your Subscription
• VS Code: Getting Started with GitHub Copilot