github / github/copilot-cli

Feature Request: Support OpenAI Flex Tier in Copilot CLI

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Description

Describe the feature or problem you'd like to solve

Add support for selecting OpenAI's Flex tier (service_tier: flex) in the Copilot CLI model selector and configuration, allowing users to cut token usage costs by 50% for non-time-critical tasks.

Proposed solution

Motivation

OpenAI Flex tier costs 50% less than Standard tier and according to monitoring data from OpenRouter has roughly 30% higher E2E latency (e.g. 9.02s vs 11.56s for gpt-5.6-sol):

Model Output Price (Standard) Output Price (Flex) E2E Latency (Standard) E2E Latency (Flex)
gpt-6-astra $50 $25 10.95s 11.34s
gpt-5.6-sol $20 $10 9.02s 11.56s

For many agentic tasks small increases of latency do not significantly impact user experience.

Additionally, E2E latency for many agentic tasks depends more on tool call durations than on LLM response times (e.g. large C++ or Gradle builds, running extensive test suits, etc). Using Flex tier for these kinds of tasks would reduce cost without significantly impacting task completion time.

Therefore, offering Flex tier would allow some developers to perform roughly twice as many agentic tasks withing a given AI budget.

Proposed Solution

  1. Interactive Model Picker: When selecting an OpenAI model, present a tier selection prompt (Standard vs. Flex) alongside the reasoning effort selection.
  2. CLI Flags: Add --tier <standard|flex> (or --service-tier <standard|flex>) for scripted runs and aliases.
Example prompts or workflows

No response

Additional context

No response

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

No files, tests, or entry points are named. Start by locating the Copilot CLI model picker, configuration handling, and OpenAI request construction. Trace how model and reasoning-effort selections reach the request, then verify that interactive selection and a scripted tier flag both produce the requested Standard or Flex service tier.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
shell
Domain
api, cli
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Active
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
45/100

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