Is Claude Sonnet 5.5 actually available in GitHub Copilot?
Yes. GitHub announced Claude Sonnet 5.5 as generally available in GitHub Copilot on September 28, 2026.
GitHub describes the model as intended for well-scoped everyday coding work such as building features and fixing bugs. In GitHub's early testing, Sonnet 5.5 completed coding work with fewer steps, tokens and tool calls than Claude Sonnet 5 while also finishing tasks faster.
GitHub says Sonnet 5.5 is being offered in the model picker across a broad set of Copilot surfaces, including Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, Copilot CLI, the coding agent, the GitHub Copilot app, github.com, GitHub Mobile, JetBrains IDEs, Xcode and Eclipse.
Important
General availability does not mean every account sees it at the same moment
GitHub's launch announcement explicitly says the rollout is gradual and tells users to check back soon if the model is not visible yet. That makes rollout timing the first thing to consider when every other eligibility check looks correct.
Official source: GitHub Changelog: Claude Sonnet 5.5 in GitHub Copilot .
Check these seven things first
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Confirm your plan. You need Copilot Pro, Pro+, Max, Business or Enterprise for GitHub's announced Sonnet 5.5 access.
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Remember that rollout is gradual. A qualified account can still be waiting for the model to reach it.
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Check Copilot Chat on github.com. If Sonnet 5.5 is visible there but missing in your IDE, investigate the client rather than the subscription.
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Update the IDE and Copilot extension or plugin. GitHub recommends current client versions for model support and behavior.
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If this is a work account, ask about model policy. Business and Enterprise administrators can disable individual models.
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If you belong to multiple organizations, check Usage billed to. The organization paying for your Copilot usage can determine which model policies apply.
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Check GitHub Status. A model-provider incident can affect availability even when your account settings are correct.
Check 1: Make sure your Copilot plan includes Sonnet 5.5
GitHub's Sonnet 5.5 launch announcement lists five eligible plan families:
| Copilot plan | Sonnet 5.5 announced? | Important note |
|---|---|---|
| Copilot Pro | Yes | Pro is enough. You do not need Pro+ merely to qualify for Sonnet 5.5. |
| Copilot Pro+ | Yes | Included in GitHub's announced rollout. |
| Copilot Max | Yes | Included in GitHub's announced rollout. |
| Copilot Business | Yes | Organization or enterprise policy can still restrict access. |
| Copilot Enterprise | Yes | Enterprise governance can override organization settings. |
| Copilot Free / Student | Not listed for direct Sonnet 5.5 selection | GitHub's current model-access documentation says Free and Student users use models through Auto model selection rather than direct individual model selection. |
One common misunderstanding is assuming that because Claude Opus models can have higher plan requirements, Sonnet 5.5 must also require Pro+ or above. GitHub's launch announcement specifically includes ordinary Copilot Pro.
Sources: Sonnet 5.5 availability announcement and Configuring access to Copilot AI models .
Check 2: The Sonnet 5.5 rollout may not have reached you yet
This is especially important because Sonnet 5.5 was only announced in GitHub Copilot on September 28.
GitHub does not describe the launch as an instantaneous account-wide switch. Its announcement explicitly says: rollout will be gradual.
That means two users on the same Copilot plan can temporarily see different model lists during the launch window.
If you are on an eligible individual plan, the model is absent on both github.com and your IDE, your account is otherwise working normally and no administrator controls your subscription, rollout timing is a plausible explanation. Reinstalling everything repeatedly will not necessarily make a server-side rollout arrive faster.
It is still worth checking the remaining items in this guide because a policy or client problem can look exactly like a rollout delay.
Check 3: Make sure you are looking in the right model picker
GitHub Copilot has more than one place where a model can be selected.
For Copilot Chat in Visual Studio Code, GitHub documents the model control at the bottom of the chat view. Open Copilot Chat and select the current-model dropdown.
Do not confuse that with the separate inline suggestions completion model control. GitHub documents inline suggestion models separately, and availability in that picker can differ from the Chat model picker.
Copilot Chat model picker
Used for interactive chat and agent workflows. This is the most relevant place to check when GitHub announces a new selectable Copilot Chat model.
Inline completion model picker
Controls code-completion suggestions and has its own model availability requirements. A model missing here does not prove it is unavailable from Copilot Chat.
In VS Code, GitHub's current instructions for Chat are:
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Open Copilot Chat.
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Look at the model name shown at the bottom of the chat view.
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Open the current-model dropdown.
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Look for Claude Sonnet 5.5.
GitHub instructions: Changing the AI model for GitHub Copilot Chat and Changing the model for inline suggestions .
Check 4: Test github.com before blaming your IDE
GitHub says Sonnet 5.5 is being made available in the model picker on github.com as well as in supported IDEs and other Copilot clients.
That gives you a useful diagnostic test.
| Result | What it suggests |
|---|---|
| Sonnet 5.5 appears on github.com and in IDE | Your account has received access and the client is recognizing it normally. |
| Appears on github.com but not IDE | Look at IDE version, Copilot extension or plugin version, authentication state and client-specific support. |
| Missing from both | Plan, rollout timing, billing organization or model policy becomes more likely. |
| Appears for a colleague but not you | Check whether you have the same billing organization, license assignment, model policy and rollout state. |
This is more useful than repeatedly restarting one IDE because it separates an account-level access issue from a client-level display issue.
Check 5: Update the IDE and Copilot extension or plugin
GitHub maintains client-specific support for Copilot models, and its model documentation notes that model availability depends partly on where Copilot is being used.
Even where GitHub does not publish a specific minimum client version for a newly released model, its documentation recommends current IDE and Copilot extension or plugin versions for the best model support and behavior.
- VS Code
- Update Visual Studio Code and GitHub Copilot, then reopen Copilot Chat and check the model dropdown again.
- Visual Studio
- Install current Visual Studio and Copilot updates, restart the IDE and verify that the same GitHub identity is signed in.
- JetBrains
- Update the GitHub Copilot plugin and restart the IDE before rechecking the model selector.
- Xcode / Eclipse
- Update the Copilot integration and confirm that your client is authenticated with the eligible Copilot account.
- Copilot CLI
- Update the CLI, verify authentication and inspect the available models from a fresh session.
GitHub says Sonnet 5.5 rollout targets Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, Copilot CLI, Copilot coding agent, the Copilot app, github.com, GitHub Mobile, JetBrains, Xcode and Eclipse.
General client model documentation: Supported AI models in GitHub Copilot .
Check 6: Business and Enterprise admins can block Sonnet 5.5
If your Copilot access comes from your employer, plan eligibility is only part of the equation.
GitHub gives Copilot Business and Copilot Enterprise administrators control over which models their users can access.
For an organization, GitHub documents the model controls under:
Organization path
Organization → Settings → Copilot → Models
Organization owners can inspect the model's current state and choose Enabled or Disabled when the enterprise has delegated that decision to the organization.
If an enterprise owner has enforced a particular setting, the organization may not be allowed to override it.
GitHub's organization documentation describes three relevant states:
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Enabled / Disabled and locked | The enterprise owner enforced the state. The organization owner cannot change it. |
| Enabled / Disabled dropdown | The enterprise has allowed the organization to configure the model. |
| Delegate to Default Policy | No explicit model choice has been made at that level; the model inherits the organization's default model policy. |
Admin documentation: Managing model availability in an organization .
Check 7: Look at “Default availability for released models”
GitHub introduced a global default policy so that organizations and enterprises do not necessarily have to manually configure every newly released generally available model.
The policy is called Default availability for released models.
When a new generally available model has not been individually configured, it can inherit that default policy.
Default availability enabled
An unconfigured eligible GA model can become available without an administrator explicitly enabling that individual model.
Default availability disabled
A newly released model can remain unavailable until an administrator explicitly enables it or changes the governing policy.
GitHub's Sonnet 5.5 announcement says that under default model enablement, new models are automatically enabled unless an administrator has turned off the global default or explicitly disabled that model.
So if several users in the same organization are asking why the new model is missing, this setting is one of the first things an administrator should inspect.
Official policy explanation: About default availability of Copilot features and models .
Check 8: If you have multiple organization seats, inspect “Usage billed to”
This is an easy problem to miss.
GitHub changed model-access behavior for users who hold Copilot seats in more than one organization. In the affected GitHub Team scenario, model access is now determined by the organization that is actually paying for the user's Copilot usage.
GitHub exposes that organization under Usage billed to on the Copilot features page.
Suppose Organization A enables Sonnet 5.5 but Organization B is the organization currently paying for your Copilot usage. If Organization B does not permit the model, access can still be unavailable even though you belong to another organization that has enabled it.
Before GitHub made this change, a user with multiple organization seats could access a model when any of those organizations enabled it. GitHub says the billing organization now determines model access so billing and governance remain aligned.
GitHub announcement: Copilot model access update for GitHub Team plans .
Check 9: Make sure your IDE is signed into the correct GitHub account
It is possible to have an eligible subscription on one GitHub identity while the IDE is authenticated with another.
This becomes particularly easy to miss if you use separate personal and work GitHub accounts or if you recently changed which organization provides your Copilot seat.
- Compare identities
- Confirm that github.com and the IDE show the same GitHub username when you test model availability.
- Confirm Copilot entitlement
- Verify that the signed-in identity is the one receiving the eligible Copilot plan or organization seat.
- Reauthenticate if necessary
- If the IDE appears stuck on an old account context, sign out of the Copilot integration, restart the client and sign back into the intended GitHub account.
- Open a fresh chat
- Reopen Copilot Chat and inspect the model picker after authentication is refreshed.
This is especially useful when the model appears correctly on github.com under one account but not inside the local editor.
Check 10: Is GitHub Copilot having a model-provider outage?
GitHub tracks Copilot itself and Copilot AI Model Providers as separate status components.
That matters because an upstream provider problem can affect one group of models while GitHub's core repository services continue working normally.
Status at BeeVaults review time: GitHub Status listed both Copilot and Copilot AI Model Providers as operational. That does not guarantee the status is unchanged when you read this article, so check the live status page if the model suddenly disappears or requests begin failing across multiple clients.
A service incident usually looks different from a policy problem. If the model was previously visible and suddenly starts failing for many users at the same time, service status becomes more relevant. If it has never appeared on your account after a new launch, rollout, plan and policy checks are usually more informative.
Live service information: GitHub Status .
Individual subscriber or work-managed seat? The troubleshooting path is different
| Account type | First things to investigate |
|---|---|
| Individual Copilot Pro / Pro+ / Max | Plan eligibility, gradual rollout, signed-in GitHub account, client version and service status. GitHub says individual users do not need to configure organization model policies. |
| Copilot Business | Organization model policy, default model availability, license assignment, billing organization and any enterprise-level restrictions. |
| Copilot Enterprise | Enterprise AI controls first, then delegated organization settings, user licensing and client availability. |
GitHub's access documentation states that individual plan subscribers can use available models directly without administering model policies. Those policy-management controls are relevant to organizations and enterprises.
Admin checklist when an entire team cannot see Sonnet 5.5
If several users in the same company report the same missing model, investigate centrally rather than asking everyone to reinstall Copilot.
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Confirm the organization uses Copilot Business or Enterprise. Then confirm affected users actually have Copilot seats.
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Open Copilot model settings. Go to the organization Settings area, then Copilot and Models.
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Look for Claude Sonnet 5.5. Inspect whether it is Enabled, Disabled or delegated to the default policy.
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Check the global default. Verify the state of Default availability for released models.
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Inspect enterprise enforcement. If the organization control is locked, an enterprise owner may have enforced the model's availability.
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Check team-level model targeting where your enterprise uses it. GitHub also supports more granular enterprise team model policy in its current governance tooling.
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Have one affected user test github.com and one IDE. This separates account policy from local-client issues.
Enterprise owners manage Copilot governance from the enterprise's AI controls area. GitHub allows enterprise policy to establish the baseline and either enforce model availability directly or delegate decisions downstream.
Admin references: Managing model availability in an enterprise and Managing Copilot enterprise policies .
Do not confuse Sonnet 5.5 eligibility with Opus 5.5 eligibility
GitHub Copilot can expose several Claude model tiers, and their plan requirements are not necessarily identical.
For Sonnet 5.5, GitHub's announcement explicitly includes Copilot Pro. So if you are a Pro subscriber and Sonnet 5.5 is missing, do not immediately assume that upgrading to Pro+ is the required fix.
First investigate rollout timing, client state and any applicable account policy.
The models are also designed for different kinds of work. Sonnet 5.5 is positioned around fast, well-scoped everyday coding tasks, while Opus 5.5 targets harder work requiring more sustained judgment.
BeeVaults has a separate comparison explaining that distinction: Claude Sonnet 5.5 vs Opus 5.5 .
What should you do if every setting looks correct?
If you have confirmed an eligible plan, the correct signed-in account, current client software and no organization policy restriction, but Sonnet 5.5 is still absent everywhere, the remaining explanation may simply be the gradual rollout.
In that case:
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Test github.com once more under the intended Copilot account.
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Confirm that GitHub Status does not show a relevant Copilot or model-provider incident.
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Avoid repeatedly changing unrelated IDE settings if the model is absent on every surface.
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Recheck the model picker as GitHub's rollout progresses.
GitHub itself tells users who cannot see the model yet to check back soon.
Frequently asked questions
Is Claude Sonnet 5.5 available in GitHub Copilot?
Yes. GitHub announced Sonnet 5.5 as generally available in Copilot on September 28, 2026. GitHub also says the rollout is gradual.
Which GitHub Copilot plans get Sonnet 5.5?
GitHub lists Copilot Pro, Pro+, Max, Business and Enterprise in the Sonnet 5.5 availability announcement.
Do I need Copilot Pro+ for Sonnet 5.5?
No. GitHub explicitly includes ordinary Copilot Pro in the announced Sonnet 5.5 rollout.
Why does my coworker have Sonnet 5.5 but I do not?
Possible causes include gradual rollout timing, different Copilot plans, different billing organizations, enterprise or organization model policies, different signed-in accounts or client-specific availability.
Can my company disable Claude Sonnet 5.5?
Yes. GitHub Copilot Business and Enterprise administrators can control access to models. Enterprise-level enforcement can also prevent an organization owner from overriding the setting.
What does Delegate to Default Policy mean?
It means the model has not been explicitly configured at that level and inherits the organization's or enterprise's Default availability for released models setting.
Why does Sonnet 5.5 appear on github.com but not in VS Code?
That result suggests your account has model access, so check the VS Code version, GitHub Copilot extension, authentication state and the specific model picker you are using.
Is the Copilot Chat model picker the same as the inline completion picker?
No. GitHub documents Chat model selection and inline suggestion model selection separately. A model can therefore be relevant to Copilot Chat even when it is not selectable as an inline completion model.
What is “Usage billed to”?
For users with qualifying seats in multiple organizations, GitHub can use the organization paying for Copilot usage to determine model access and governance. GitHub exposes that organization under Usage billed to.
Should I reinstall Copilot if Sonnet 5.5 is missing?
Updating the client is sensible, but a complete reinstall is not the first step when the model is also missing on github.com. In that situation, check plan, rollout and policy before assuming a local installation problem.
The fastest way to identify the cause
Start with the account rather than the IDE.
Confirm that you have Copilot Pro, Pro+, Max, Business or Enterprise, then open Copilot on github.com and check whether Claude Sonnet 5.5 appears there.
If it appears on the website but not locally, investigate the IDE, Copilot extension or plugin and authentication state.
If it is absent everywhere and your Copilot is supplied by a company, inspect the model policy, Default availability for released models and the organization responsible for your usage.
If all of those checks are correct, GitHub's own launch announcement provides the final important clue: Sonnet 5.5 is being rolled out gradually. An eligible account may therefore receive the model after another user on the same plan.