Effective Tokens replaced by AI Credits

Jun 8, 2026

In the latest gh-aw build, Effective Tokens (ET) have been replaced by AI Credits (AIC) as the primary spend metric.

This change reflects GitHub Copilot billing and models.dev pricing. It makes spend tracking directly aligned to monetary cost instead of a normalized token proxy.

What this means in practice

gh aw audit and gh aw logs report AI Credits as the primary spend metric.
Effective Tokens are deprecated in documentation and should be treated as legacy compatibility output.
Cost reporting and budget discussions should use AIC values.

For repositories that need automatic workflow updates, run:

gh aw fix --write

Metric reference

AI Credits (AIC): primary spend metric (1 AIC = $0.01 USD)
Effective Tokens (ET): deprecated legacy metric

Where to read more

Cost Management
Auditing Workflows
AI Credits Specification
Effective Tokens Specification