Optional GitHub account setup

Create a GitHub account and apply for free GitHub Copilot Student/Pro access

Author
Affiliation

Jelmer Poelstra

CFAES Bioinformatics Core, Ohio State University

Published

July 1, 2026

Modified

July 9, 2026

1 Overview

For the purposes of this workshop, a GitHub account will allow you to use the agentic AI tool GitHub Copilot within VS Code.

It’s not required to do the following steps before the workshop, because creating a GitHub account can be done quite seamlessly during the workshop, and because you’ll also have access to an alternative, similar AI tool (Claude Code).

Advantages of GitHub Copilot include its tight integration with VS Code and the the fairly generous free ‘personal’ options for students and especially teachers/faculty1.

2 Create a GitHub account (if you don’t have one yet)

GitHub is a place where you can store your code and share it with others, and find code and software written by others. It can therefore be very useful to have a GitHub account — not just for GitHub Copilot usage.

  1. Go to https://github.com.

  2. Click the “Sign Up” button all the way in the top right corner of the page.

  3. Fill out the form to provide your personal details (only use “Continue with Google” if you’re happy linking this to your Google account rather than your OSU email address — see below):

    • When choosing your username, best to keep it professional and include (parts of) your real name: you may use GitHub to share your code, like when publishing a paper.

    • It’s recommended (but not required) to sign up with your OSU email address, as that will make the educational access verification process smoother.

  4. Check your email and click the link to verify your email address. There may also be some two-factor authentication steps to complete.

3 Apply for additional free GitHub Copilot access

Anyone with a GitHub account will be automatically enrolled in the free GitHub Copilot plan, which has a limit of 2,000 code completions per month and ~50 chat requests. That’s not enough for most people to use GitHub Copilot in a sustained way — but as students and teachers/faculty, we can get additional free access after applying for it. In summary (see also this GitHub page):

Plan Free for whom How to get it Code completions Chat requests
Free Everyone Automatically 2,000 per month ~50
Student Students Apply for education benefits Unlimited 200
Pro Teachers/Faculty Apply for education benefits Unlimited 1,500

To apply for educational benefits, the following link will work for teachers/faculty and students alike — just select the appropriate option in the form:

  1. Go to https://github.com/settings/education/benefits.

  2. Click “Start an application”:

  1. Fill out the form as needed. (You will likely need a document that proves your current status at the university.)

Application approval is often quite fast (sometimes in minutes), but access is only granted 72 hours after approval.

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Footnotes

  1. But it is not OSU-approved for use with with private data, as we’ll discuss during the workshop.↩︎