GitHub just shipped BYOK (Bring Your Own Key) support for the GitHub Copilot app , the standalone desktop client for running agentic coding sessions. You can now connect your own model providers, use locally running models, or stick with GitHub-hosted models, all from the same model picker. The feature is available now in public preview for all paid Copilot plans.
What problem does this solve?
Until now, the Copilot app was locked to GitHub-hosted models. That's fine for most tasks, but it created friction for teams with real constraints: existing enterprise agreements with Anthropic or Azure OpenAI, data residency requirements that prohibit sending code to GitHub's infrastructure, or a preference for running open-weight models on their own GPUs. BYOK removes that lock-in.
Many teams already work with specific LLM providers and maintain custom models tailored to their needs. Copilot had long provided high-quality GitHub-hosted models by default, but teams could not connect their own organization's preferred models directly. That changes with this release.
What's supported
The GitHub Copilot app now supports BYOK, so you can run agent sessions against your own model providers, including OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Microsoft Foundry, Anthropic, LM Studio, Ollama, and any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. That last one is the wildcard , it means anything serving the OpenAI Chat Completions API format works, including vLLM, llama.cpp servers, or custom gateways.
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