Copilot Credits power AI experiences across the Microsoft ecosystem. This guidance provides an overview of how Copilot Credits are consumed and managed. It outlines where credits are required, how usage is measured, and key considerations that help organizations plan and govern AI workloads effectively.

For help determining the right technology solution for any given organization, including the license requirements for a specific product or scenario, consult with your Microsoft account team or a Microsoft Certified Partner.

All pricing is in USD and subject to change.

As AI workloads become more advanced, particularly with multi-step, agent-driven scenarios, the amount of work required to complete a task can vary significantly. This variability is best served by a usage-based model that aligns cost to the work performed, complementing subscription-based services with flexible consumption. Copilot Credits serve as the common currency in this usage-based model. They are used across Microsoft AI experiences including Microsoft 365 Copilot experiences such as Copilot Cowork, Microsoft Copilot Studio, Dynamics 365 agents, Power Platform workloads, and Work IQ APIs.

The number of Copilot Credits consumed for each response, action, or operation depends on the complexity of the task performed. Copilot Credits are pooled at the tenant level. An organization’s total cost is based on the sum of Copilot Credits consumed across all supported experiences. This shared model enables organizations to centrally manage consumption and allocate usage across scenarios.

Copilot Credits are offered through the Copilot Credit pay-as-you-go meter and the Copilot Credit Pre-Purchase Plan.

There are two options for purchasing Copilot Credits: 1) Pay-as-you-go and 2) Pre-Purchase Plan (P3)

The Copilot Credit pay-as-you-go meter enables organizations to post-pay based on the actual number of Copilot Credits consumed by agents in a billing month. No up-front commitment is required, allowing organizations to scale usage and ensure business continuity for critical business processes with flexibility, scalability, seasonality, and no interruptions due to overages.

• Pricing: $0.01/Copilot Credit

• Meter Definition: The Copilot Credit pay-as-you-go meter counts the total number of Copilot Credits consumed by agents. This usage is billed in arrears at the end of the billing month.

Copilot Credt Pay-As-You-Go Meter Offer Summary

The Copilot Credit pay-as-you-go meter can be provisioned in the Power Platform admin center.

Copilot Credit P3 is a one-year pay-upfront purchase option for Copilot Credits. Customers purchase a pool of Copilot Credits, which automatically deduct the Copilot Credit P3 balance. If usage exceeds the available number of credits, customers can purchase additional Copilot Credits or be billed on a pay-as-you-go basis. Unused credits expire at the end of the annual term.

Copilot Credit Pre-Purchase Plan (P3) Pricing Tiers

Copilot Credit P3 Offer Summary

The Copilot Credit Pre-Purchase (P3) can be provisioned in the Azure admin portal.

Both the Copilot Credit Pay-As-You-Go and Pre-Purchase Plan (P3) purchasing constructs will decrement the Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC).

Please refer to the Microsoft Copilot Studio licensing guidance for more information on other purchasing constructs (e.g., Microsoft Agent Pre-Purchase Plan (P3). 

Copilot Credit usage is centrally managed through the Microsoft 365 admin center (MAC), giving administrators the capabilities to govern AI consumption across workloads, services, and agents. Administrators can monitor spend and usage, configure spend policies, define usage thresholds, and manage Copilot Credits allocation across the organization. MAC provides the FinOps controls to help organizations scale AI adoption while maintaining visibility into consumption and cost management. To learn more, refer to the Understand Usage-based Billing and Cost Management for Copilot Credits article on Microsoft Learn.

The sections below detail usage-based billing through Copilot Credits across Copilot Cowork, Work IQ APIs, Microsoft Copilot Studio, and Business Applications.

Copilot Cowork is an agentic system that plans, executes, and delivers real work. Describe the outcome you want, and Cowork does the work, sending emails, scheduling meetings, creating documents, posting in Teams, and managing files, while you stay in control. Grounded in Work IQ and operating within Microsoft 365's security and governance boundaries, Cowork runs multi-step work autonomously at enterprise scale. Learn more about Copilot Cowork.

Users rely on Cowork for complex, multi-step work across apps that runs autonomously. Credit usage scales with task complexity, driven by intermittent steps and capabilities involved.

Copilot Credit usage for a given task varies based on the mix of four cost buckets:

• Models — AI models chosen for each task, which can vary depending on the level of quality, speed, and cost that the task demands.

• Runtime — A managed cloud orchestration that runs agents and keeps them working across tasks, including long-running work.

• Context —Understanding of the people, roles, and collaboration patterns behind the work, drawn from emails, files, meetings, and past interactions.

• Tools —Actions the system takes to get work done including sending emails, scheduling meetings, updating documents, and more.

Here is an illustrative view of how Cowork uses Copilot Credits:

Given that cost scales with usage and intensity, pricing is easiest to explain using representative scenarios. The ranges below are illustrative and will vary with the complexity of the task:

*These figures are rough planning estimates. Actual pricing will vary based on workflows and usage patterns.

To help organizations translate this model into practical planning, the simplest way to estimate Cowork usage is by first sizing the number of users, then modeling usage intensity across light, medium, heavy profiles and finally applying an estimated pricing per prompt. This approach provides a way to forecast usage based on expected behavior.

Estimating Copilot Credits for Cowork:

1. Determine number of Cowork users (grouped by persona)

2. Estimate number of prompts per persona (across light, medium, and heavy prompts)

3. Apply an average price per prompt (across light, medium, and heavy prompts)

Result: Estimated monthly Copilot Credit spend for Cowork

Organizations can use this same methodology to build their own estimates, adjusting user counts, intensity assumptions, and cost inputs to reflect their environment, using this simple, transparent model.

Copilot Cowork requires the Microsoft 365 Copilot license as a prerequisite. Cowork is billed based on usage, in proportion to the work it performs. No Cowork entitlements are included with the Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription. Learn more about Cowork.  

Work IQ is a workplace intelligence layer that delivers semantic understanding of everything happening across your business. Built on four core components: chat, context, tools, and workspaces, it continuously transforms signals from Microsoft 365 and business systems into agent-ready intelligence for grounding, reasoning, and permission awareness. The result is a platform purpose-built for agentic intelligence, speed, and efficiency at enterprise scale enabling higher utilization, with security and governance by design – now accessible via APIs. By shifting more AI processing into the Work IQ runtime, tokens needed for context retrieval and tool use are cut by up to 80%, thereby reducing Copilot Credit consumption in agentic solutions.

Usage is billed in two parts: 1) A variable charge for query-style consumption (grounding, retrieval, and reasoning) and 2) a static component for actions and tools. Learn more about Work IQ.

Given cost scales with usage and intensity, pricing is easiest to reason through representative scenarios. The ranges below are illustrative and will vary with the complexity of the query:

*These figures are rough planning estimates. Actual price will vary based on your team's workflows and usage patterns.

Work IQ APIs can be invoked in agents and AI solutions on behalf of any Microsoft 365 user. These agents can be built on a variety of agent building platforms such as Microsoft Copilot Studio, Azure Foundry etc. Use of Work IQ APIs is charged using Copilot Credits. There are no included entitlements of Work IQ APIs in the M365 Copilot license.

Also important to note is that Microsoft 365 Copilot is natively built on Work IQ and does not need to leverage Work IQ APIs. There are of course no incremental charges for Work IQ accessed in Microsoft 365 Copilot experiences such as chats, AI experiences in apps such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or agents natively included in Microsoft 365 Copilot such as Researcher, Facilitator and Analyst. The usage charges described above only apply to access to Work IQ using the Work IQ APIs.

Note that there are no changes to the licensing for older APIs such as Retrieval API and Chat API. Users licensed with Microsoft 365 Copilot were not charged for use of these APIs. This licensing model will continue for now.

Copilot Studio is a comprehensive conversational AI platform that empowers users to build, customize and deploy agents using natural language or a graphical interface.

Copilot Studio agents use Copilot Credits when users interact with them or when they perform tasks on a user's behalf. Copilot Credits measure the time and effort an agent spends retrieving information, responding to prompts, and taking actions, including running workflows and invoking AI Tools and custom skills that extend its capabilities. Voice agents are billed by total call length, calculated to the nearest second, and the configured voice orchestration. For pricing and licensing details, see the Microsoft Copilot Studio licensing guidance.

Across Business Applications, Copilot Credits power AI and agentic capabilities in Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform, with the key difference being what each license already includes.

Copilot Credits are consumed in both prebuilt and custom Dynamics 365 agents. These credits pool at the tenant level, so they should be allocated to environments to manage usage across workloads. For pricing and licensing details, see the Dynamics 365 licensing guidance.

For Power Platform workloads, Power Apps and Power Automate, Copilot Credits apply only when AI or agentic functionality is invoked, such as:

• Interacting with Copilot Studio agents embedded in apps or workflows.

• Using AI tools, prompts, or generative AI capabilities (summarization, data exploration, or document processing).

• Running AI Tools or Copilot-assisted features when usage exceeds included entitlements or is backed by Copilot Credits.

The Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription continues to provide a comprehensive, enterprise-ready experience designed to support everyday productivity and broad organizational adoption.
The per-user subscription currently includes capabilities such as:

• Copilot Chat in Microsoft 365, the primary interface to ask, create, analyze and complete tasks through natural language.

• Copilot experiences across Microsoft 365 applications including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, and Teams.

• Microsoft built agents and experiences such as Researcher, Analyst, and Facilitator.

• Work IQ grounding across emails, calendar, files, people, and organizational context.

• Access to multiple models that power Copilot experiences, applied to match each task.

Microsoft remains committed to continued innovation across the Microsoft 365 Copilot experience, with ongoing investments in the per user offering.

Microsoft provides multiple purchasing channels for Copilot Credits to accommodate different business requirements. Customers can engage a Microsoft partner for end‑to-end solutions or work with Microsoft Sales for pricing guidance.

1. Microsoft Partners
   Customers can purchase Copilot Credits from Partners via the Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program in which partners manage provisioning, billing, and provide direct support to customers to manage the full lifecycle of Microsoft cloud services. Connect with a partner.

2. Microsoft Sales Online
   For customers who want to learn more about Copilot Credits, explore use cases or receive pricing guidance, Microsoft Sales Online can provide direct assistance​. Contact Microsoft Sales Online.

3. Microsoft Online
   Customers can purchase Copilot Credits directly through Microsoft Online by selecting from the following licensing options.​

• Copilot Credit Pre-Purchase Plan

• Pay-as-you-go meter

Learn more about how to buy from Microsoft.