Copilot Studio Licensing Guide

Key Takeaways

• Copilot Credits are the currency: Everything in Copilot Studio is measured in credits. Different actions consume different amounts.

• Three ways to pay: Pay-as-you-go ($0.01/credit), capacity packs ($200/month for 25,000 credits), or Pre-Purchase Plan (annual commitment, up to 20% discount).

• M365 Copilot users get included usage: If you have a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, interactive agent usage within M365 apps is included. But there are limits.

• Autonomous agents always cost extra: Every time an agent triggers itself without a user, that’s 25 credits. No exceptions, even with M365 Copilot.

• Costs stack: A single interaction can consume multiple credit types. A generative answer with Graph grounding and two actions is 2 + 10 + 5 + 5 = 22 credits.

• Dataverse is required: Copilot Studio runs on Dataverse. You get 15 GB database capacity by default (increased from 5 GB in December 2025), but heavy usage means add-on purchases.

• Governance matters: Without controls, employees can create agents that rack up PAYG charges before IT knows they exist.

• Cost visibility is poor: There’s no single dashboard showing all Copilot Credit consumption. FinOps teams must combine multiple data sources.

• AI Builder credits are ending: Seeded credits disappear in November 2026. Budget for higher Copilot Credit rates.

1. What is Copilot Studio?

Copilot Studio is Microsoft’s platform for building custom AI agents.

An agent is an AI assistant designed for a specific job. Unlike Microsoft 365 Copilot, which is a general-purpose assistant that works across Word, Excel, Outlook, and Teams, agents built in Copilot Studio are purpose-built. You define what they know, what they can do, and who they serve.

What can agents do?

✅ Answer questions from your data. You connect an agent to a SharePoint site, a knowledge base, or a set of documents. Users ask questions in natural language. The agent finds the answer and responds. Most organisations start here: an HR bot that answers policy questions, an IT helpdesk that troubleshoots common issues, a product support agent that helps customers.

✅ Take actions. Agents can do more than talk. They can update records in Dynamics 365, create tickets in ServiceNow, send emails, trigger Power Automate flows, or call external APIs. When a customer asks to check their order status, the agent doesn’t just answer; it looks up the order and returns the result.

✅ Run autonomously. Autonomous operation is where costs escalate. Agents can trigger themselves based on events: a new order arrives, an email lands in a shared mailbox, a scheduled time is reached. No user needs to invoke them. They just act. Microsoft calls these “autonomous agents” and they have their own billing model (see Section 5).

How do you build agents?

Copilot Studio provides two approaches:

1. Natural language. Describe what you want the agent to do. Copilot Studio generates the configuration. The approach works for simple agents but has limits.

2. Graphical interface. A visual editor where you define topics (things the agent can discuss), actions (things the agent can do), and knowledge sources (where the agent finds information). More control, more complexity.

You can also use both: start with natural language, then refine in the graphical editor.

Where can agents be deployed?

Agents built in Copilot Studio can be published to:

• Microsoft 365 apps: Teams, SharePoint, Copilot Chat

• External channels: Websites, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, custom mobile apps

• Custom applications: Via API

The licensing model differs depending on where you deploy. Agents used within Microsoft 365 by licensed users may be included at no extra cost. Agents deployed externally, or used by unlicensed users, always consume Copilot Credits.

How does Copilot Studio relate to Microsoft 365 Copilot?

They’re connected but separate.

Microsoft 365 Copilot is a product. You buy licences, assign them to users, and those users get an AI assistant in their Office apps. It’s pre-built by Microsoft. For full details on M365 Copilot licensing, see our Microsoft 365 Copilot Licensing Guide.

Copilot Studio is a platform. It’s where you build agents that do things Microsoft didn’t build for you. You might build agents that extend Microsoft 365 Copilot (adding capabilities it doesn’t have out of the box), or you might build agents that have nothing to do with Microsoft 365 at all (a customer-facing support bot on your website, for example).

Key licensing point: If you have Microsoft 365 Copilot licences, you get access to Copilot Studio at no additional cost for building agents that your licensed users run within Microsoft 365. But external deployment, autonomous agents, and serving unlicensed users all require Copilot Credits. See Section 4 for exactly what’s included and what isn’t.

Where did Copilot Studio come from?

Copilot Studio evolved from Power Virtual Agents, which was Microsoft’s earlier chatbot platform. In late 2023, Microsoft rebranded and expanded it, adding generative AI capabilities and deeper integration with Microsoft 365 Copilot. If you previously used Power Virtual Agents, Copilot Studio is its successor.

Copilot Studio is part of the Power Platform family, alongside Power Apps, Power Automate, Power Pages, and Power BI. It shares infrastructure with these products, including Dataverse for data storage and the Power Platform Admin Center for governance.

Source: Copilot Studio Overview

2. How Much Does Copilot Studio Cost?

There are three ways to pay for Copilot Studio. All of them ultimately come down to Copilot Credits.

2.1 Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG)

PAYG is the simplest option. You pay for what you use at the end of each month. No upfront commitment, no unused capacity.

The downside: it’s the most expensive per-credit rate. If you have predictable, high-volume usage, prepaying will save money.

To use PAYG, you need to set up a billing plan in the Power Platform Admin Center linked to an Azure subscription.

2.2 Capacity Packs (Subscription Licence)

Capacity packs are purchased as a subscription. You buy the number of packs you expect to need each month. If you exceed your allocation, the overage is charged at PAYG rates (assuming you’ve set up the meter).

Warning: Unused credits expire at the end of each month. If you buy 3 packs (75,000 credits) and use 50,000, you lose 25,000. There’s no rollover.

Recommendation: Always set up the PAYG meter alongside capacity packs. Doing so ensures business continuity if you exceed your allocation. Consumption counts against capacity packs first; PAYG only kicks in once packs are exhausted.

2.3 Pre-Purchase Plan (P3)

The Pre-Purchase Plan is for organisations with high-volume or variable usage across the year. You buy a pool of credits upfront and draw from it over 12 months.

Full P3 tier table:

Purchase: Azure portal > Reservations > Copilot Credit Pre-Purchase Plan

Source: Copilot Credit Pre-Purchase Plan

2.4 Comparison

3. What Are Copilot Credits?

Copilot Credits are the common currency across Copilot Studio. Every interaction with an agent, every action it takes, every query it runs consumes credits. The number of credits depends on what the agent does.

3.1 Credit Consumption Rates

AI Tools (prompts, document processing) have separate rates. See Section 10 for the full breakdown.

Source: Copilot Studio Billing Rates

3.2 Definitions

Classic answer: A predefined response authored manually. The agent returns exactly what you wrote. No AI generation involved. Used when you need precise, controlled responses.

Generative answer: A response generated dynamically by an LLM (like GPT). The agent searches knowledge sources and constructs an answer. More flexible, but costs twice as much as a classic answer.

Agent action: Any step the agent takes beyond answering. Actions include triggers, topic transitions, connector calls, and API invocations. When the agent looks up inventory, updates a CRM record, or sends an email, that’s an action.

Tenant Graph grounding: When the agent queries Microsoft Graph to access organisational data (emails, files, meetings, chats). Graph grounding is optional per agent. Enabling it adds 10 credits to each response that uses it.

Agent flows: Power Automate flows embedded within agents. Billed per 100 flow actions executed. If a flow has 50 actions, that’s 6.5 credits (rounded).

Autonomous trigger: When an agent activates itself based on an event or schedule, without a user explicitly invoking it. New order received? Dashboard threshold crossed? Scheduled time arrived? Each trigger costs 25 credits, regardless of what the agent does next.

3.3 How Consumption Stacks

A single user interaction can trigger multiple billable events. The credits add up.

Stacking explains why autonomous agents can become expensive quickly.

4. What’s Included with Microsoft 365 Copilot?

If your users have Microsoft 365 Copilot licences, they get Copilot Studio capabilities at no additional Copilot Credit cost, within limits.

4.1 What’s Included

For licensed M365 Copilot users, the following are included when used within Microsoft 365 apps (Teams, SharePoint, Copilot Chat):

• Classic answers

• Generative answers

• Tenant Graph grounding

• Agent actions

Conditions: 1. User must have M365 Copilot licence assigned 2. Interaction must occur within M365 surfaces (Teams, SharePoint, Copilot Chat) 3. Agent must be published to Microsoft 365

Note on M365 Copilot Business: As of December 2025, Microsoft offers M365 Copilot Business at $21/user/month for organisations with 300 users or fewer. At launch, Copilot Business provides identical Copilot Studio inclusion rights to M365 Copilot ($30/user/month). The distinction is eligibility and price, not capability.

4.2 What’s NOT Included

Even with an M365 Copilot licence, the following always require Copilot Credits:

The autonomous trigger point is critical. If you build an agent that monitors inboxes, processes orders, or runs on a schedule, you pay per trigger regardless of licensing.

4.3 Fair Usage Limits

Microsoft states that M365 Copilot includes agent usage subject to “fair usage limits.” The exact limits are not published. Microsoft reserves the right to update limits as the product evolves.

In practice: don’t assume unlimited usage. If you’re planning high-volume agent interactions even for licensed users, contact Microsoft or your partner to understand the boundaries.

4.4 Creating vs Using Agents

Anyone with Copilot Chat (the free version included with M365) can create agents. They can build agents grounded in SharePoint files and other work data.

But using those agents requires payment:

• If the user has M365 Copilot: included (within fair usage, within M365 apps)

• If the user doesn’t have M365 Copilot: PAYG credits

The asymmetry creates a governance challenge. Employees can create agents that generate costs without IT approval. See Section 9 for controls.

5. Autonomous Agents: The Cost That Scales

Autonomous agents are the wildcard in Copilot Studio budgeting. Unlike interactive agents (where a user triggers each conversation), autonomous agents trigger themselves based on events or schedules. Microsoft is building a governance layer for autonomous agents called Agent 365, which brings identity management and oversight to agents across the organisation.

Every autonomous trigger costs 25 credits. No exceptions. No inclusion in M365 Copilot. Always billed.

5.1 Why This Matters

Interactive agent costs scale with users. More users, more conversations, more credits. You can estimate this reasonably well.

Autonomous agent costs scale with activity. More orders, more emails, more events, more credits. Activity can spike unpredictably.

5.2 Example Calculations

The first two examples show how quickly costs accumulate. A single order-processing agent can cost as much as licensing M365 Copilot for 250 users.

5.3 Mitigation

• Set spending budgets in the Power Platform Admin Center

• Monitor usage regularly, not just at month end

• Design carefully: does the agent need to trigger on every event, or can it batch?

• Consider hybrid approaches: trigger agent on schedule to process batched events rather than real-time

6. Real-World Cost Examples

The billing rates in Section 3 show what each action costs. But what does an actual agent deployment cost? This section works through three real scenarios with full calculations.

These scenarios are based on Microsoft’s published agent templates and customer case studies. The interaction volumes and usage patterns are illustrative. Your actual costs will depend on your specific implementation.

6.1 IT Helpdesk Agent (Internal, Teams)

Scenario: An agent answers IT policy questions, looks up ticket status, and creates ServiceNow tickets. It is deployed in Teams for 500 employees.

Assumptions:

• Each employee has 3 interactions with the agent per month, totalling 1,500 interactions.

• 60% are simple FAQ questions, 20% are ticket status lookups, and 20% are ticket creation requests.

• The agent uses the ServiceNow connector, which is a premium connector.

• In this first calculation, no employees have M365 Copilot licences, so all usage is billed via PAYG.

Credit calculation per interaction type:

Full total cost of ownership (PAYG only):

Alternative scenario: What if 100 employees have M365 Copilot licences?

When employees have M365 Copilot licences and use the agent within Teams, their interactions are included at no additional credit cost. Unlicensed employees still generate PAYG charges.

• Licensed employees: 100 employees x 3 interactions = 300 interactions, which cost $0 in credits.

• Unlicensed employees: 400 employees x 3 interactions = 1,200 interactions.

  • Applying the same 60/20/20 split: 1,200 x 4 average credits = 4,800 credits = $48 per month.

However, those 100 M365 Copilot licences have their own cost:

*M365 Copilot Business ($21/user/month) is available to organisations with 300 users or fewer on M365 Business plans. At launch, it provides identical capabilities and Copilot Studio inclusion rights.

The insight: Do not buy M365 Copilot licences solely to avoid agent credit charges. The PAYG model costs $720 per year. Adding 100 M365 Copilot licences costs $36,000 per year (or $25,200 with Copilot Business). M365 Copilot only makes financial sense if those employees also need Copilot capabilities in Word, Excel, Outlook, and Teams meetings.

Source for scenario type: IT Helpdesk agent template

6.2 Autonomous Invoice Processor

Scenario: An agent monitors a shared mailbox. When an invoice PDF arrives by email, the agent extracts the data, validates it against a supplier list, stores the record in Dataverse, and sends a confirmation email. No human reviews the invoice unless the agent flags an exception.

Assumptions:

• The organisation receives 800 invoices per month.

• Each invoice is approximately 2 pages.

• The process is fully autonomous with no human in the loop for standard invoices.

What happens for each invoice (step by step):

Monthly calculation: 800 invoices x 58 credits = 46,400 credits ➤ At $0.01 per credit, this costs $464 per month.

Full total cost of ownership:

Cost warning: The autonomous trigger is the expensive component. At 25 credits per trigger, it accounts for 43% of the per-invoice cost. If invoice volume doubles to 1,600 per month, the credit cost doubles to $928 per month. Budget for volume growth.

What if volume grows to 3,000 invoices per month?

At higher volumes, capacity packs become more economical than PAYG.

• PAYG calculation: 3,000 invoices x 58 credits = 174,000 credits = $1,740 per month.

• Capacity pack calculation: 174,000 credits / 25,000 credits per pack = 6.96 packs, rounded up to 7 packs = $1,400 per month.

• Savings from using capacity packs: $340 per month, or $4,080 per year.

At 3,000 invoices per month, buying 7 capacity packs saves 20% compared to PAYG.

Source for scenario type: Document Processing Agent architecture

6.3 Customer Website Agent (External)

Scenario: An agent is embedded on the company’s public website. It answers product questions and checks order status for customers. All users are external visitors with no Microsoft 365 licences, so every interaction is billed via PAYG.

Assumptions:

• The website receives 5,000 agent conversations per month.

• 70% of conversations are simple product FAQ questions.

• 30% of conversations involve order status lookups, which require an API call to the order management system.

• The average conversation has 2 turns (the customer asks something, the agent responds, the customer asks a follow-up, the agent responds again).

Credit calculation for a FAQ conversation (2 turns):

Credit calculation for an order lookup conversation (2 turns):

Monthly calculation: FAQ conversations: 5,000 x 70% x 4 credits = 14,000 credits + Order lookup conversations: 5,000 x 30% x 9 credits = 13,500 credits ➤ Total: 27,500 credits, which costs $275 per month

Full total cost of ownership:

Optimising costs with a hybrid approach:

At 27,500 credits per month, the organisation is just over the 25,000-credit threshold of one capacity pack. There are three options:

The hybrid approach (one capacity pack plus PAYG for the overage) saves $50 per month compared to pure PAYG, which is $600 per year.

Source for scenario type: Holland America Line case study

7. Dataverse for Copilot Studio

Copilot Studio runs on Microsoft Dataverse. Every agent you build stores data in Dataverse: table definitions, conversation logs, configuration. You cannot opt out of Dataverse.

7.1 What is Dataverse?

Dataverse is Microsoft’s secure, cloud-based data platform. It underlies Power Platform (Power Apps, Power Automate, Power Pages, Copilot Studio) and parts of Dynamics 365.

There are three capacity types:

7.2 Default Capacity

Every tenant with a Copilot Studio licence receives default capacity.

December 2025 update: Microsoft increased baseline Dataverse capacity effective 4 December 2025. The table below shows both old and new values.

Important: The default is a one-time allocation per tenant. The first Copilot Studio, Power Apps, Power Automate, Power Pages, or qualifying Dynamics 365 subscription provides this capacity. Additional subscriptions do not add to it.

Sources: Power Platform Blog: Dataverse Capacity (December 2025) | Jukka Niiranen: December 2025 Dataverse Default Capacity Changes

7.3 Add-On Pricing

If you exceed default capacity, you need add-ons:

7.4 PAYG Alternative

With a pay-as-you-go enabled environment, you can use Dataverse capacity meters instead of subscription add-ons:

PAYG rates are higher than subscription add-ons, but provide flexibility for variable usage.

Source: Power Platform Licensing Guide

8. Managed Environments

Managed Environments is a Power Platform governance feature that provides additional controls for production workloads. It’s included with Copilot Studio, but has licensing implications.

8.1 What It Does

Managed Environments enables: Solution checker enforcement | Sharing limits for agents | Data policies | Usage analytics | Maker welcome content

8.2 What’s Included

Managed Environments is included with:

• Copilot Studio tenant licence (capacity packs)

• Copilot Studio pay-as-you-go meter

• Microsoft 365 Copilot (for Copilot Studio features only)

• Power Apps and Power Automate standalone USLs

• Dynamics 365 Premium, Enterprise, and Team Members licences

8.3 The Catch

Once you enable Managed Environments on an environment, all active usage in that environment requires a standalone licence or PAYG meter. You cannot mix Managed Environments with the limited Power Platform use rights included in some Microsoft 365 or Dynamics 365 licences.

Translation: if you enable Managed Environments for governance, make sure all users and workloads in that environment are properly licensed.

Source: Managed Environments Overview

9. Governance and Cost Control

Copilot Studio’s flexibility is also its risk. Anyone with Copilot Chat can create agents. Those agents can consume credits. Without controls, costs can accumulate before IT is aware.

9.1 Viewing Usage

Administrators can view tenant-level usage in the Power Platform Admin Center:

• Navigate to Billing > Licenses > Copilot Studio > Summary

• View credit consumption by environment

• Track usage trends over time

9.2 Spending Budgets

Set spending limits for PAYG consumption:

• Configure in the Power Platform Admin Center

• Set alerts before limits are reached

• Review monthly to adjust based on actual usage

9.3 Controlling Agent Sharing

Limit who can share agents and with whom: Apply Editor and Viewer permissions to control Copilot Studio access | Configure sharing limits in Managed Environments | Restrict sharing to specific security groups

9.4 Agent Approval

Require approval before agents are deployed: Approve or block agents in the admin center before they go live | Prevents unexpected PAYG charges from unapproved agents | Monitor agent inventory across the tenant

9.5 Disabling Agent Publishing

If you need to prevent generative AI agents entirely:

• Power Platform Admin Center > Settings > Tenant Settings

• Disable “Publish bots with AI features”

• Prevents all generative AI agent publishing for the tenant

9.6 Data Loss Prevention

Copilot Studio supports DLP policies: Define which connectors agents can use | Block sensitive data flows | Integrate with Power Platform DLP policies

10. AI Tools and Extensibility

Copilot Studio agents can be extended with AI Tools: capabilities that go beyond basic Q&A. These tools have their own billing rates, separate from the core event types.

10.1 AI Tools Billing Rates

For context, that means:

• Basic (text recognition, sentiment analysis, language detection, key phrase extraction, prediction): 0.1 credits per response, or $0.001

• Standard (text translation, entity extraction, category classification): 1.5 credits per response, or $0.015

• Premium (advanced LLM prompts, deep reasoning): 10 credits per response, or $0.10

10.2 What Falls Into Each Tier

Basic: Text recognition ・ Sentiment analysis ・ Language detection ・ Key phrase extraction ・ Prediction (scheduled and real-time)

Standard: Text translation ・ Entity extraction (prebuilt and custom) ・ Category classification (custom)

Premium: Advanced LLM prompts ・ Deep reasoning ・ Code Interpreter

10.3 Processing Tools

Document processing capabilities, available only in agent flows:

• Custom document processing models

• Invoice processing

• Receipt processing

• Identity document reader

• Business card reader

• Object detection

At 8 credits per page, a 10-page document costs 80 credits ($0.80). Processing invoices or contracts at scale can add up.

10.4 Code Interpreter

Code Interpreter allows agents to execute Python code for analytics and data visualisation. Users can prompt agents in natural language; the agent generates and runs Python code.

Code Interpreter is classified as Premium tier: 100 credits per 10 responses. It is not part of the base Copilot Studio entitlement.

10.5 Preview Features

The following are in paid public preview as of November 2025:

Multi-Agent Orchestration: Allows agents built in Copilot Studio, Azure Agent Service, and Microsoft 365 Agents SDK to work together, distributing tasks across multiple agents.

Bring Your Own Model (BYOM): Access 1,900+ models from Azure AI Foundry within Copilot Studio. Use preferred models for specific tasks rather than the default GPT models.

Source: Billing rates and management

11. Related Costs

Copilot Studio doesn’t exist in isolation. Several related products and services can generate additional costs. This section covers the main ones.

11.1 Power Platform Connectors

Agents often connect to external systems via Power Platform connectors.

11.2 Power Automate

Agent flows (embedded automations within agents) are billed at 13 Copilot Credits per 100 actions. But if your agents trigger standalone Power Automate cloud flows, you may also need Power Automate licensing.

Power Automate Pricing:

Power Platform Request Limits:

Every flow action consumes Power Platform Requests (PPR). Limits are enforced per user or per flow over a rolling 24-hour period.

If you exceed your limit, flows slow down (they don’t stop immediately). Microsoft is still in a “transition period” with higher temporary limits, but enforcement is coming.

Overage options:

Source: Request limits and allocations | Power Automate Pricing | Power Automate PAYG Pricing

11.3 Azure OpenAI (BYOM Scenarios)

If you use Bring Your Own Model (BYOM) with Azure-hosted models, you pay both Copilot Credits (for the Copilot Studio interaction) and Azure OpenAI consumption (for the model inference).

Azure OpenAI pricing is per 1,000 tokens (roughly 750 words). Rates vary by model, deployment type, and region.

Selected Azure OpenAI rates (Global deployment, per 1M tokens):

Prices vary by deployment type (Global, Data Zone, Regional). Check Azure OpenAI Pricing for current rates. Prices as of December 2025.

Cost stacking example:

An agent using BYOM with GPT-5 might consume:

• 2 Copilot Credits for the generative answer ($0.02)

• 5 Copilot Credits for an action ($0.05)

• 1,000 input tokens ($0.00125) + 500 output tokens ($0.005) in Azure OpenAI

Total: $0.07625 per interaction. Scale that to 10,000 daily interactions and you’re at $762.50/day or ~$23,000/month.

Provisioned Throughput Units (PTUs):

For predictable, high-volume workloads, Azure OpenAI offers Provisioned pricing. You reserve capacity (minimum 15-50 PTUs depending on model) and pay hourly regardless of usage. Provisioned pricing provides guaranteed throughput but requires commitment.

11.4 Dynamics 365 Integration

Agents connecting to Dynamics 365 data have licensing implications beyond Copilot Credits.

Data access:

To access Dynamics 365 data, users (or the service account running the agent) typically need an appropriate D365 licence. The specific licence depends on which D365 application you’re accessing.

Restricted Dataverse tables:

Some Dataverse tables are “restricted”: they require a specific Dynamics 365 licence to access, even if you have a Power Platform licence. Examples include: Case (Customer Service) ・ Lead, Opportunity, Account (Sales) ・Work Order (Field Service) ・ Knowledge Article

If your agent needs to read or write to these tables, users accessing the agent may need D365 licences.

Source: Restricted tables requiring Dynamics 365 licenses

First-party Dynamics 365 agents:

Microsoft provides pre-built agents within Dynamics 365 applications (e.g., agents in Customer Service, Contact Center). These use Copilot Credits for their consumption, drawn from the same pool as Copilot Studio agents.

Agent sessions in Dynamics 365 Customer Service or Contact Center are counted when an agent is invoked during a conversation. Multiple agent invocations in the same conversation count as one session.

Source: Agent sessions and licensing

11.5 Cost Stacking Summary

A single agent interaction can trigger costs across multiple systems:

Without consolidated reporting, tracking these costs across products requires manual effort. See Section 12 for more on the visibility problem.

11.6 M365 Copilot Licence Costs

When calculating whether M365 Copilot licences make sense for agent users, remember the two price points:

At launch, both provide identical Copilot Studio inclusion rights. The $9/user/month difference can be significant at scale: 100 users saves $900/month ($10,800/year) with Copilot Business.

12. The Cost Visibility Problem

One of the most practical challenges facing FinOps teams is simply seeing what they’re spending.

Copilot Credits are consumed across multiple products: Copilot Studio agents, Dynamics 365 first-party agents, Copilot Chat for unlicensed users, AI Tools, and more. But there’s no single dashboard that shows all consumption in one place.

As Jukka Niiranen, a Power Platform licensing specialist, observed in a SAMexpert conversation: partners working on customer analytics “need to combine multiple data sources just to see what their organisation has consumed today. The telemetry and the reporting layer on top of these different pockets of consumption doesn’t give even the transparency right now.”

What this means for procurement:

• You can’t forecast next year’s costs if you can’t measure this year’s consumption accurately

• Different consumption types (Copilot Credits, Azure OpenAI tokens, Power Platform requests) appear in different admin centres

• Autonomous agents make this worse because they generate consumption without user activity to track

Mitigation:

• Set up spending alerts in both the Power Platform Admin Center and Azure Cost Management

• Review consumption weekly, not monthly

• Designate someone to own cross-product visibility

13. AI Builder Credit Deprecation

If your organisation uses AI Builder features in Power Apps or Power Automate, the licensing model is changing.

13.1 Timeline

After November 2026, AI Builder capabilities will be billed through Copilot Credits.

Source: End of AI Builder credits

13.2 Price Impact

Microsoft publishes a rate comparison table showing both AI Builder credit rates and Copilot Credit rates for the same capabilities.

Selected examples (using annual prepaid pricing):

Some rates go up, some go down. The impact depends on what capabilities you use.

Source: AI Builder Capability Rate table

13.3 Action Required

1. Count how many AI Builder credits you currently receive as part of your premium licences

2. Measure how many you actually use (Power Platform Admin Center > Resources > Capacity)

3. Calculate what that usage will cost under Copilot Credits pricing

4. Budget accordingly for November 2026

14. Points to Watch

1. Credits don’t roll over (capacity packs): Unused monthly capacity expires. Don’t over-buy.

2. Autonomous triggers are never included: Even M365 Copilot licensed users pay 25 credits per autonomous trigger.

3. Creating agents is free, using them costs: Anyone can create; usage requires payment or M365 Copilot licence.

4. Graph grounding adds up: 10 credits per query. High-volume agents accessing organisational data get expensive.

5. Dataverse is not optional: You get 15 GB database by default (increased from 5 GB in December 2025). After that, you pay.

6. Fair usage limits are undefined: M365 Copilot inclusion has limits, but Microsoft hasn’t published them.

7. P3 purchases are final: No cancellations, no exchanges. Forecast carefully.

8. Managed Environments changes licensing requirements: Once enabled, all usage requires standalone licences.

9. External deployment always costs: Publishing to websites, custom apps, or third-party channels requires PAYG or capacity packs.

10. Activity spikes blow budgets: Autonomous agents scale with business activity, not headcount. A busy month can cost multiples of a quiet month.

11. Cost estimation is genuinely difficult: Even with Microsoft’s estimator tool, predicting what agents will actually cost is hard. You can design an agent, but you can’t control how many API calls the LLM makes to complete a task. Build in contingency.

15. Frequently Asked Questions

How much does Copilot Studio cost?

It depends on how you buy and how much you use. PAYG is $0.01 per credit with no commitment. Capacity packs are $200/month for 25,000 credits (20% cheaper). The Pre-Purchase Plan offers 5-20% discounts for annual upfront commitment starting at $2,850.

Is Copilot Studio included with Microsoft 365 Copilot?

Partially. M365 Copilot users can create and use agents within M365 apps (Teams, SharePoint, Copilot Chat) at no extra credit cost, subject to fair usage limits. But autonomous agents, external deployments, and usage by unlicensed users always require Copilot Credits. M365 Copilot Business ($21 for SMBs <=300 users) provides identical inclusion rights.

What’s a Copilot Credit?

The billing unit for Copilot Studio. Different actions consume different amounts: a simple answer is 1-2 credits, an action is 5, Graph grounding adds 10, and autonomous triggers are 25.

Do unused credits roll over?

With capacity packs: no, they expire monthly. With the Pre-Purchase Plan: they last the full year, but expire at the end of the term.

Can anyone create agents?

Yes. Anyone with Copilot Chat (free with M365) can create agents in Copilot Studio. But using those agents requires either an M365 Copilot licence or Copilot Credits.

What’s the difference between PAYG and capacity packs?

PAYG is pay-after-use at $0.01/credit with no commitment. Capacity packs are prepaid at $0.008/credit with annual commitment and monthly allocation. PAYG is simpler; capacity packs are cheaper if you can forecast usage.

Do I need Dataverse?

Yes. Copilot Studio runs on Dataverse. As of December 2025, you get 15 GB database, 40 GB file, and 2 GB log capacity by default (previously 5 GB database and 20 GB file). If you exceed that, you need add-ons.

What happens to my AI Builder credits?

If you currently receive seeded AI Builder credits with premium Power Platform licences, those will be removed in November 2026. AI Builder capabilities will then be billed through Copilot Credits at higher rates. Plan accordingly.

Need Help?

Copilot Studio’s consumption-based model is harder to budget than traditional per-user licensing. If you’re trying to forecast costs, negotiate a Microsoft agreement, or make sense of how Copilot Credits interact with your existing Power Platform and Dynamics 365 licences, get in touch.

We don’t sell Microsoft licences, so our advice is unbiased. We help organisations understand what they’re actually paying for.