Microsoft Copilot Pricing: Licences and Copilot Credits

Navy Solv Systems title card reading 'Copilot Pricing: Licences Plus Credits' with a battery and fuel gauge motif.

In Short: Microsoft Copilot Pricing Now Has Two Parts

On 25 September 2026 Microsoft explained how Microsoft Copilot pricing works from now on. In "Evolution of the Copilot pricing model", Nicole Herskowitz writes that "Copilot pricing is evolving to combine predictable per-user pricing with usage-based pricing". Everyday AI stays on the per-user licence. Advanced, long-running agentic work runs on usage-based billing, measured in Copilot Credits.

On the same day, Jared Spataro introduced "the new Copilot", which adds Home, Code and Autopilot. Code and Autopilot are among the capabilities billed in credits. This post covers what each part of the bill pays for, what Microsoft has and has not said about dates and prices, and how to budget for it without having to explain a surprise invoice later. For the wider picture across every Copilot product, start with our map of Microsoft Copilot licensing in 2026.

What the Per-User Licence Covers

Microsoft calls it the user subscription licence (USL). Herskowitz describes it as "priced per user per month" and says "there are no changes to the value you already have". Spataro lists what it includes: Copilot in Chat and across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams, model selection, and new capabilities and models.

Auto sits at the centre of the licence. On each request it weighs accuracy, speed and cost, then routes to the model and reasoning effort it judges best for the job. Users can still pick a model themselves. Herskowitz writes that "GPT-5.6 and Sonnet 5 are included", and that new models like Opus 5 "will be included with limits".

The licence has always come with fair use, and Microsoft is now setting usage limits that it says "the vast majority of people" will never reach. Heavy users get a warning first. Then they can either switch to Auto at no additional cost or move to credits. Microsoft Learn marks this limit behaviour as "coming soon".

On 1 October 2026, Microsoft's enterprise pricing page listed Microsoft 365 Copilot at $30 per user per month paid yearly, or $31.50 paid monthly on an annual commitment. The business pricing page listed the Microsoft 365 Copilot Business add-on (up to 300 users) at $21, with a promotional $18 for the first year on offers taken up by 31 December 2026.

What Copilot Credits Pay For

Usage-based billing (UBB) covers work you hand off rather than work you do alongside Copilot. Across the two announcements and Microsoft Learn, Microsoft names these consumers of credits:

Cowork, Code and Autopilot, plus what Spataro calls "new long-running agentic capabilities"
New advanced experiences in SharePoint, such as work across very large content sets and building whole sites
Frontier models such as Astra and Fable
Copilot Studio agents and workflows, Work IQ APIs, apps hosted on Copilot Managed Runtime and Teams Phone Agent, according to Microsoft's October 2026 Copilot Credits Guide

Usage-based billing sits on top of the licence rather than replacing it. Herskowitz is explicit: "UBB builds on the USL, which is required to access these capabilities." Her analogy is a plug-in hybrid, where the licence is the battery that covers most driving and credits are the fuel tank for longer trips. She also says some capabilities "will start on UBB and move into the USL as the economics allow".

On price, Microsoft lists the pay-as-you-go meter at $0.01 per Copilot Credit. Copilot Studio capacity packs are $200 per pack per month for 25,000 credits, and unused pack credits do not roll over. A Copilot Credit Pre-Purchase Plan saves "up to 20%" for paying a year up front, and unused credits expire at the end of the term. The number of credits a task uses depends on the model, runtime, context and tools involved, so there is no fixed price per task. Microsoft publishes estimators for both Cowork and Copilot Studio agents.

Copilot Studio: What Changes and What Does Not

Neither announcement says anything about existing Copilot Studio packs. On 1 October 2026, the Copilot Studio pricing page and Microsoft's October 2026 licensing guide still listed capacity packs, pay-as-you-go and the pre-purchase plan. Microsoft Learn also lists "existing Prepaid capacity packs" as one of the ways to fund usage-based billing.

What a licensed user gets included also depends on which Copilot Studio harness built the agent. The Credits Guide says agents built with the Standard and Copilot Chat harnesses run in Microsoft channels within the Copilot licence (fair usage limits apply). Agents built with the GitHub Copilot harness consume credits both while being built and while running. If you are new to the platform, our guide to what Copilot Studio is and what you can build covers the fundamentals.

The October change is about cost management. Microsoft says cost management in Agent 365 already covers Cowork, the Work IQ APIs, Code and Copilot Managed Runtime, and that "beginning in October, will support agents built with Microsoft Copilot Studio". That brings Studio agents into the same Microsoft 365 admin center view as the rest of your credit spend, instead of a separate Power Platform view.

Where Home, Code, Autopilot and Managed Runtime Stand

Microsoft's status wording, as of 25 September 2026:

Home (Chat and Cowork in one place, plus Office in Copilot) - starts rolling out in the Frontier programme "in the coming weeks"
Code - "rolling out to Frontier at the end of the month, with broad availability in the coming weeks", and in preview for Microsoft 365 Premium and Pro subscribers later this year (one earlier line in the same post says Home and Code roll out to Frontier "in the coming weeks")
Autopilot (previously Scout) - "expanding to private preview at the end of the month"
Copilot Managed Runtime - "now in preview" (a public preview, which the Credits Guide lists as paid), the hosting layer for apps built in Cowork, Code and Copilot Studio

None of these is generally available yet. Budget for them as experiments, not as committed run costs. We set out the Cowork case itself in what Copilot Cowork means for enterprise AI.

Is Microsoft 365 Copilot Now Called Microsoft Copilot?

In part, yes. Microsoft's October 2026 Copilot Credits Guide and Copilot Studio Licensing Guide both list "Microsoft 365 Copilot rebranded as Microsoft Copilot" in their change logs, dated August 2026. Both September posts also say "Microsoft Copilot". However, on 1 October the pricing pages still sold the product as "Microsoft 365 Copilot" under a "Microsoft Copilot pricing" heading. Treat it as one product under two names, and check which name your agreement uses.

How to Budget, Govern and Pilot

Budget in two lines. Treat seats as a predictable IT cost. Treat credits as a variable pool, which Microsoft Learn suggests "may be better funded by business units" that can weigh cost against benefit. Spending policies can charge usage to specific Azure subscriptions or resource groups, so AI spend lands where the rest of a department's spend does. Our breakdown of the real cost of AI agents helps when you model the agent side.

Govern before you enable. Microsoft says usage-based services stay off for enterprise customers "until an admin creates a spending policy", and that nothing is billed before then. Policies set tenant and group budgets, user caps inside groups, alerts at thresholds, and which model families each group can use (rolling out for Cowork first). One default needs checking: Learn says the "Auto-apply new services" setting is on by default, so a policy can cover future services you have not reviewed. Turn it off where you want to review each new service first.

Agent creation is a separate control. Microsoft's Copilot Studio licensing guide requires a free ($0) Copilot Studio user licence for each maker on the standalone Copilot Studio licence, and the Power Platform admin center can cap monthly credit use per agent. Decide who builds, and where, before credits start flowing. Data access needs the same care. If Copilot can reach your Power BI models, read our guide to controlling what Microsoft 365 Copilot can see in Power BI.

Pilot with a cap. Pick one or two groups with a clear agentic use case. Give them a capped spending policy for 60 to 90 days and track consumption against outcomes. Microsoft's new Cowork consumption insights are built for that comparison. Then expand the groups that show value and leave everyone else on the licence and Auto.

Where Solv Systems Comes In

We help organisations turn this into a working plan: licence coverage by role, a credit pool sized from estimators and pilot data, spending policies and agent governance set up before anything bills, and agents built where they make sense. Read more about our AI automation and agent services.

Sources and Further Reading

Frequently asked

Microsoft has not announced a change to the per-user price. Nicole Herskowitz's post says everyday AI stays on the per-user subscription licence and that there are no changes to the value customers already have. On 1 October 2026 Microsoft's enterprise pricing page listed Microsoft 365 Copilot at 30 dollars per user per month paid yearly, or 31.50 dollars paid monthly on an annual commitment.

Copilot Credits are Microsoft's common usage-based currency for AI work. Microsoft says Cowork, Code, Autopilot, new agentic experiences in SharePoint and frontier models such as Astra and Fable run on usage-based billing, which consumes Copilot Credits and requires a Copilot user licence. Copilot Studio agents, Work IQ APIs, Copilot Managed Runtime and Teams Phone Agent also consume credits.

Microsoft lists the Copilot Studio pay-as-you-go meter at 0.01 dollars per Copilot Credit. Copilot Studio capacity packs are 200 dollars per pack per month for 25,000 credits, and the Copilot Credit Pre-Purchase Plan offers up-front discounts that Microsoft describes as up to 20%. How many credits a task uses varies with the model, context, tools and runtime involved.

Microsoft says that for enterprise customers, usage-based services stay off until an admin creates a spending policy in the Microsoft 365 admin center, and nothing is billed before that. Note that new spending policies automatically apply to future supported services by default, which admins can switch off.

Neither announcement says anything about changing them. As of 1 October 2026, Microsoft's Copilot Studio pricing page and its October 2026 licensing guide still list capacity packs, and Microsoft Learn lists existing prepaid capacity packs as one of the ways to fund usage-based billing.

Microsoft's October 2026 Copilot Credits Guide and Copilot Studio Licensing Guide both record 'Microsoft 365 Copilot rebranded as Microsoft Copilot' in their change logs, dated August 2026, and the September announcements say Microsoft Copilot. Microsoft's pricing pages still listed the product as Microsoft 365 Copilot on 1 October 2026, so check the name on your own agreement.