I cannot connect our GitHub Enterprise instance with our Azure Subscription for metered used (ie. Copilot)

Question

I try to connect our GitHub Enterprise instance with our Azure Subscription for metered used. The GitHub connection correctly identifies our Azure tenant ID and subscription ID, but afterwards says that the subscription type is "unsupported".

Our subscription type / Offer ID is MS-AZR-0003P (I guess; where can I see it?), and it's listed among the unsupport IDs at https://docs.github.com/en/enterprise-cloud@latest/billing/reference/supported-payment-methods

But how can I change the type of subscription? How can I create a new Azure subscription that is supported?

Answer 1

Hello Dirk Möbius,

Greetings! Thanks for raising this question in the Q&A forum.

First, let's confirm the actual Offer ID of your subscription, since "unsupported" almost always comes down to which specific Azure offer type the subscription was created under, not the subscription itself being broken.

Find your exact Offer ID In the Azure portal, go to Subscriptions, select the subscription in question, and look at Overview. The Offer field shows the plan name and its ID directly. Alternatively, run:

az account show --subscription "<subscription-id-or-name>" --query "{name:name, id:id}" -o table

For the underlying quota ID, query the REST API directly, since the CLI doesn't surface it:

GET https://management.azure.com/subscriptions/{subscriptionId}?api-version=2021-01-01

and check subscriptionPolicies.quotaId in the response.

Don't assume MS-AZR-0003P is your offer just because it's listed in GitHub's unsupported table MS-AZR-0003P is actually the standard, web-direct Pay-As-You-Go offer, and it is supported for GitHub's Azure billing connection. What is unsupported is the legacy PayAsYouGo_2014-09-01 quota ID, which maps to offer number MS-AZR-0017G, the CSP-sold Azure Plan offer that partners provision on your behalf. These two offers are easy to confuse because they're both colloquially called "pay as you go," but only one is GitHub-supported. If your subscription was originally set up through a Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partner, MS-AZR-0017G is very likely what you actually have, not MS-AZR-0003P.

Other subscription types to rule out Free Trial, Azure for Students, Dev Essentials/DreamSpark, Azure Pass, and Sponsorship offers are also on GitHub's unsupported list. If your subscription originated from any of these, that's the root cause instead.

How to get a supported subscription connected

• If your current subscription is a CSP-sold Azure Plan (MS-AZR-0017G), you generally cannot convert it in place to MS-AZR-0003P, since CSP and Microsoft Customer Agreement (MCA)/Web-Direct are different commerce channels. You'll need to create a new, separate Web-Direct subscription instead:

  1. Go to `https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/offers/ms-azr-0003p/` and complete the purchase flow with a credit card (or your MCA billing account if you already have one).
  
        1. Once provisioned, confirm its Offer ID using step 1 above to make sure it actually came back as MS-AZR-0003P rather than defaulting to the CSP plan again.
  
              1. In GitHub, go to **Settings > Billing > Payment information > Connect Azure Subscription**, and select the new subscription's ID.
  
                 - If your subscription is billed under an **Enterprise Agreement (EA)**, connecting Azure billing for metered GitHub usage (Copilot, Actions, Codespaces) is expected to work, since EA is not on GitHub's unsupported list, so double check the quota ID isn't actually a CSP-created subscription sitting inside an EA-linked tenant.
  
                    - If you already have an MCA billing account (from a previous Web-Direct subscription or a direct Microsoft agreement), you can create a new subscription under that billing account directly from **Cost Management + Billing > Billing scopes > + Add > Subscription**, which avoids the credit-card signup flow entirely.
  
                    **If you believe your quota ID should be supported but GitHub still rejects it** Open a case with GitHub Support (not Azure Support) referencing the exact quota ID and offer number you retrieved in step 1, since GitHub Support owns the acceptance list and can confirm whether a specific ID is expected to work.
  

If this answer helps you kindly accept the answer which will help others who have similar questions.

Best Regards,

Jerald Felix.