Copilot Credits: how to estimate and cap the cost of your Microsoft agents

Thu, 08 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

TL;DR

A Copilot Credit costs $0.01 at list price on pay-as-you-go. An annual pre-purchase plan (P3) provides a 5% to 20% discount depending on volume.
Cowork, Copilot Code, advanced Copilot features in SharePoint, Copilot Studio agents, Work IQ APIs and Teams Phone Agent consume these credits.
For eligible internal scenarios, Copilot Studio agents carry no additional charge when the agent runs with the identity of an employee who holds a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, within fair usage limits. Some usage remains billable.
New Copilot Business licenses will have pay-as-you-go enabled by default from October 19, 2026 for direct purchases, and from December 1, 2026 through CSP resellers, with a limit of 4,000 credits per user per month. Several markets, including France and Germany, are initially excluded.
Limits are set in the Microsoft 365 admin center (for all users or by group, with a per-user limit) and, for a single agent, in the Power Platform admin center.

Since Copilot Cowork became generally available in June 2026, some advanced Microsoft 365 experiences combine a user license with consumption-based billing. For IT and procurement teams, the question has moved from “how many licenses?” to “how many credits a month, and who is spending them?”. This guide explains how to estimate that budget before enabling usage-based billing, and how to keep it under control once agents are in production. For the cost and return on investment of Cowork specifically, see our Copilot Cowork pricing guide: this article focuses on estimating, capping and tracking spend, especially for Copilot Studio agents.

Copilot Studio on Witivio

Copilot Credits: how to estimate and cap the cost of your Microsoft agents