Billing rates and management

This article describes the rates for the different features and capabilities used in agents that Copilot Studio bills through the pay-as-you-go meter or Copilot Credit packs. These rates apply to all language models that Copilot Studio provides. They exclude bring-your-own-model configurations, including Azure Foundry models, which are billed separately.

Copilot Credits are the unit that measures agent usage. You calculate the total cost based on the sum of the Copilot Credits your organization uses. The number of Copilot Credits an agent consumes depends on the design of the agent, how often customers interact with it, and the features they use.

When you purchase a Copilot Studio license, you get a specific number of billed Copilot Credits. You pool this capacity across the entire tenant.

Copilot Credits billing rates

The following table shows the different billing rates:

¹ Employee-facing usage scenarios (Business to Employee) of Copilot Studio agents and Copilot Studio tools and features that these agents invoke are included in the Microsoft 365 Copilot USL when the user of the agent is licensed with Microsoft 365 Copilot, and the agent operates using the authenticated Microsoft 365 Copilot USL user’s identity. Usage is limited to fair usage limits. Microsoft reserves the right to update the limits as the product evolves, and new usage patterns emerge.

² Agents incur charges for generative answer responses unless the agent is created in Agent Builder in Microsoft 365 and the response doesn't leverage tenant graph grounding.

• Classic answers: These events are predefined responses manually authored by agent makers. They're static and don't change unless manually updated. Use them where you want precise and controlled responses that are the only ones the agent generates.

• Generative answers: These events are dynamically generated using AI models, such as Generative Pretrained Transformers (GPTs). They can adapt and change based on the context and the knowledge sources they're connected to. They're useful for handling a wide range of topics and providing more flexible and natural interactions.

• Tenant graph grounding for Copilot Credits: These events provide higher quality grounding for your agents by using retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) over your tenant-wide Microsoft Graph, including external data synced into Microsoft Graph through connectors. This capability results in more relevant and improved responses and ensures that the grounding information is up-to-date. This capability is optional, and you can turn it on or off for each agent. For more information, see Tenant graph grounding with semantic search.

• Agent actions: Agent actions refer to steps such as triggers, deep reasoning, and topic transitions that appear on the activity map in Copilot Studio when testing an agent. In addition, Computer-Using Agents are also billed at the agent action rate.

• Text and generative AI tools: Prompt tools embedded within an agent enable the creator to direct the underlying model to perform intelligent document and image processing tasks, behave in a task-specific manner, or generate scenario-specific outputs. The three types of tools (basic, standard, and premium) are based on the underlying language model of the prompts. The premium text and generative AI tools item charges for advanced reasoning in agents. For more information, see prompt builder licensing in Microsoft Copilot Studio and Prompt Tokens.

• Agent flow actions: This item charges for agent flows that enhance AI agents with agent flows, which are predefined sequences of flow actions to execute repetitive tasks quickly, without requiring agent reasoning and orchestration at each step. For more information, see Agent flows overview.

Each interaction with an agent might use multiple feature types at the same time. For example, an agent grounded in a tenant graph could use 12 Copilot Credits (10 Copilot Credits for tenant graph grounding, and 2 Copilot Credits for generative answers) to respond to a single complex prompt from a user.

Reasoning model billing rates

When an agent uses a reasoning-capable language model, Copilot Studio bills by using two billing meters: feature rate and text and generative AI tools (premium).

The feature rate covers the core action the agent performs, such as generative answers, executing actions in flows, or performing agent actions. This rate always applies, regardless of the model used.

The text and generative AI tools (premium) rate applies when the agent uses a reasoning model. This premium rate covers the extra computational resources required for deep reasoning, planning, and multistep inference. It's billed as Text and generative AI tools (premium) per 10 responses, at 100 Copilot credits.

The cost calculation for an operation that uses a reasoning model is as follows:

Total cost = feature rate for the operation + text and generative AI tools (premium) for the reasoning model's token usage.

For example, a generative answer that uses a reasoning model is billed as the following formula:

Total cost = feature rate for generative answers + text and generative AI tools (premium) per 10 responses.

Billing examples

The following billing examples show how an agent might incur billing, based on its configuration.

Customer support agent

You have a customer support agent on your website that answers questions based on customer return policies and product manuals that you provided to the agent as a knowledge source.

An average run includes four classic answers for return-related questions and two generative answers for troubleshooting questions. The average is 900 customers per day. The estimated cost per day is based on the following calculation: [(4x1)+(2x2)] x 900 customers = 7200 Copilot Credits.

Sales performance agent

You have a tenant graph grounded agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat. This agent answers employee questions based on sales data connected to Microsoft Graph using Graph data connectors.

An average run comprises four generative answers and four tenant graph grounded Copilot Credits. The average is 50 Microsoft 365 Copilot licensed users and 100 unlicensed users. The estimated cost per day is based on the following calculation: [(4x2)+(4x10)] x 100 users = 4,800 Copilot Credits.

Order processing agent

An internal-facing agent is autonomously triggered anytime a new order is received by the organization. The agent uses a single knowledge source to get product details about items ordered, and triggers 4 action calls to confirm product availability, view shipping timelines, approve the order, and send an email to the customer with all details. Actions and topics are agent actions in generative orchestration mode. The estimated cost per day is based on the following calculation: [(4x5)] = 20 Copilot Credits.

Overage enforcement

When consumption exceeds available capacity, the environment is in overage. Microsoft allows some level of overage consumption, similar to a grace period, to avoid blocking business processes.

If your environment has no more capacity, you have the following options:

• Reallocate existing capacity from the organization (tenant) or environment level.

• Purchase more capacity and make it available to your environment.

• Set up a consumptive meter or pay-as-you-go meter to handle the overage.

Enforcement policy

Applies to all tenants operating under the Copilot Studio prepaid capacity model for custom agent usage (conversational and autonomously triggered).

Usage threshold

Enforcement is triggered when a tenant reaches 125% of their prepaid capacity.

Action on overage (125%)

Custom agents are disabled. Disabling an agent doesn't interrupt an ongoing conversation. All subsequent attempts to invoke the agent are rejected until capacity is increased or reset.

Notification mechanism

An email notification is sent to the tenant's designated administrator and the notification is also posted in the Power Platform admin center.

Agent behavior post-enforcement

After enforcement is triggered and the current conversation concludes, the agent is disabled. When end users attempt to interact with the agent after enforcement, they receive one of the following responses:

• "There is a billing issue."
• "This agent is currently unavailable. It has reached its usage limit."

Enforcement example

If the customer allocates or reserves capacity in an environment, the system honors the capacity. Consider the following example of a customer having four different environments, and how their Copilot Credit capacity is enforced.

A customer has 25,000 Copilot Credits, and uses the following allocation structure:

• Environment A has 10,000 Copilot Credits allocated.
• Environment B has no allocation.
• Environment C has no allocation.
• Environment D has an allocation of 500 Copilot Credits and uses pay-as-you-go.

The remaining tenant allocation is 14,500 Copilot Credits. Environment B and Environment C draw and consume against the remaining 14,500 Copilot Credits. If the consumption of Copilot Credits from Environment B and Environment C exceeds 125% of the 14,500 Copilot Credits, the overage enforcement is invoked.

If Environment A draws or consumes Copilot Credits against its allocation of 10,000 Copilot Credits, the following scenario applies. When the 10,000 Copilot Credits are consumed, Environment A can consume from the tenant.

If Environment A consumes from the tenant, it joins Environment B and Environment C in consuming from the tenant capacity. If the tenant reaches 125% Copilot Credit consumption, enforcement is invoked.

If the tenant is already at 125% of Copilot Credit consumption because of Environment B and Environment C, enforcement isn't placed on the agents in Environment A, as long as Environment A has remaining capacity from its allocation of 10,000 Copilot Credits.

For Environment D, when the tenant is in overage, this environment isn't impacted. Because once Environment D reaches its 500 Copilot Credit limit, the pay-as-you-go meter is invoked.

View Copilot Credit consumption

You can view Copilot Credit consumption reporting in the Power Platform admin center.