Copilot Credits in practice: which services are billed, what they cost and how to control spend

The services that fall under Copilot Credits cost management in the Microsoft 365 admin center: what the licence covers and what credits pay for, indicative consumption per service, how credits are bought, and recommended spending-policy settings. Based on Microsoft's public documentation and the October 2026 Copilot Credits Guide.

Unofficial summary compiled from the public Microsoft sources listed at the end. This site is not an official Microsoft channel. Czech version: Copilot Credits v praxi.

In the Microsoft 365 admin center, under Copilot > Cost management, admins set spending policies for the services that are not paid for by the user licence but by Copilot Credits. In the Select agents and services step, each policy defines which services its users may consume credits on. This article summarises what each service does, how it is billed, and what to watch out for when setting it up.

The summary is based on Microsoft’s public documentation and the Copilot Credits Guide (October 2026 edition). Prices, dates and the list of services can change; check the current documentation before making purchasing decisions.

Licence or credits?

Microsoft distinguishes two kinds of AI work:

Everyday AI is included in the user subscription license (USL): meeting summaries, document drafts, analysis and other routine tasks in Copilot Chat and the Microsoft 365 apps.
Advanced AI is paid for by consumption (usage-based billing) with Copilot Credits: long-running agentic work, for example in Cowork, Code or Autopilot, and the latest frontier models.

Copilot Credits are the common currency for all of these services and are pooled at tenant level. An organisation’s total cost is the sum of credits consumed across all supported services.

What a credit costs and how to buy credits

Pay-as-you-go: US$0.01 per credit, billed in arrears for actual consumption each month through an Azure subscription.
Copilot Credit P3 (one-year pre-purchase): a volume of credits paid up front at a discount that depends on the tier, from 5% (300,000 credits) up to 20% (300 million credits). Unused credits expire at the end of the annual term. Bought in the Azure portal.
Capacity packs: 25,000 credits per month per pack.

Pre-purchased credits (capacity packs and P3) are used first; pay-as-you-go applies only once they run out. Both pay-as-you-go and P3 count towards a Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC).

On the Azure invoice, Cowork, Copilot Studio and Work IQ API consumption is not shown separately but together under the Microsoft Copilot Studio service. If you need to attribute costs per service, separate them by Azure subscription or resource group, or use service tags once they become available.

The seven services in spending policies

Copilot Cowork (requires a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence)

Cowork carries out multi-step tasks across apps on its own: it prepares documents, writes emails, schedules meetings and assembles briefing material. Credit consumption depends on four components: the model chosen, the runtime for long-running tasks, the context drawn from emails, files and meetings, and the tools Cowork uses along the way.

Indicative consumption according to Microsoft (at the pay-as-you-go rate):

Task type	Example	Credits	Approx.
Light	weekly priorities summary from the calendar	100–300	US$1–3
Medium	customer-meeting briefing from emails, calendar and files	300–700	US$3–7
Heavy	analysis of six months of data and a report for leadership	over 700	over US$7

These are rough planning estimates; actual consumption varies with the work. Cowork users can type /cost to see a task’s approximate consumption and their remaining monthly limit; the command itself uses no credits.

According to Microsoft’s guide, Cowork also requires Anthropic models to be enabled in the tenant, in addition to the licence and usage-based billing. If your organisation has turned them off, that is the first thing to check.

Work IQ API

Work IQ APIs let custom apps and agents work with Microsoft 365 data while respecting permissions. Billing has two parts:

Work IQ Chat and Context API: variable consumption depending on the query (retrieval, grounding and reasoning).
Work IQ Tools API: a fixed 0.1 credit per call to an action or tool.

Copilot Managed Runtime (paid public preview)

Copilot Managed Runtime hosts and runs apps built in Cowork, Copilot Studio or third-party tools, with Microsoft 365 governance and security. Building an app is billed under the policies of the tool in which it is built. Running apps is governed separately through the Copilot Managed Runtime service in spending policies. Users with a Power Apps Premium licence have app runtime included within that licence’s request limits; usage beyond the limits is billed in credits. According to the documentation, people who only use an app don’t need a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence (stated explicitly for apps built in Cowork): Power Apps Premium or a spending policy for Copilot Managed Runtime is enough. With credits, each app launch is charged, plus 0.1 credit per API call.

Teams Phone Agent

Teams Phone Agent answers incoming calls, handles common questions, books appointments and transfers callers with a summary of the conversation. It has been generally available since 30 September 2026. Consumption depends on the models used, the number and complexity of tasks during the call, and the call length.

Illustrative examples from Microsoft’s guide:

Call	Example	Credits	Approx.
Light	one simple question, under a minute	5–15	US$0.05–0.15
Medium	two questions and a transfer with a summary, 1–2 minutes	15–40	US$0.15–0.40
Complex	six or more tasks including booking an appointment, over 2 minutes	over 40	over US$0.40

According to the licensing requirements, the organisation needs at least one Teams Phone licence, each resource account needs a free Microsoft Teams Phone Resource Account licence, plus Copilot Credits with a spending policy, and outside callers need a phone number (service, Operator Connect or Direct Routing). For outbound calls and transfers to the public phone network, the resource account also needs a funded pay-as-you-go calling licence or Communications credits. Resource accounts are added to a specific spending policy through security groups. If Teams Phone Agent hands a call to a custom voice agent built in Copilot Studio, that part is billed separately under Copilot Studio rules.

Advanced work in SharePoint (requires a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence)

Everyday work with Copilot in SharePoint is included in the licence: questions and search, creating HTML, Word, Excel and PowerPoint files, editing pages, libraries and lists, simple rules and approvals, managing skills, and metadata that fills in over time (Autofill).

Credits pay for work at scale:

working across large content sets, such as reviewing thousands of documents,
creating entire sites and solutions,
bulk edits to files, pages, libraries and lists,
multi-step, scheduled automations involving skills,
Advanced Autofill in near real time,
generating and editing images in libraries and on pages,
analytics on how sites and content are used.

As a rule of thumb: a question about one contract is included in the licence; summarising termination terms across a folder of a thousand contracts requires credits. For real-time Advanced Autofill, usage-based billing must also be enabled for the specific SharePoint site.

Advanced work in OneDrive (requires a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence)

According to MC1479277, Copilot in OneDrive is generally available and follows the same licensing structure as SharePoint: everyday features are included in the Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, while new agentic capabilities and work at greater scale are billed in credits. Microsoft has not yet published a task list specific to OneDrive.

Sales Development Agent

The agent automates outreach to prospective customers and the work that follows; it is set up and run in Microsoft Teams. It appears in the list of services in spending policies, but it is not on the official list of credit-billed services, and the public documentation does not yet give a price or describe how it is billed. Nor is it mentioned in the billing documentation for the other Dynamics 365 sales agents. Policies with Auto-apply new services turned on include it automatically; if you don’t want it in a policy, clear its selection.

What is publicly known:

It is a preview, available only through Targeted release, and requires the Frontier program to be enabled.
It requires Microsoft 365, Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Teams licences, the Agent 365 public preview turned on, and the free Agent 365 SKU with licences for 25 agent instances (the “Microsoft 365 Frontier for Autopilots” plan).
Each instance works under its own Microsoft Entra ID identity.
Data is processed in the selected region, but may be processed outside it when in-region capacity is unavailable. According to Microsoft, EU Data Boundary commitments are not affected.
Scaling the agent to further territories is currently supported only for English-speaking countries and the US.
According to MC1464732, from 30 September 2026 the agent also prepares quotes on its own for low-complexity deals in Dynamics 365 Sales.

For Dynamics 365 customers there is a related change: since 30 September 2026, new Sales Close Agent instances can’t be created, and existing ones will be removed on 30 October 2026. Microsoft recommends the Sales Development Agent as the replacement.

And one more: Copilot Code

Copilot Code, the new tab in the Copilot app for building apps and dashboards, is also billed in credits, even though it does not yet appear in the services list described above. Roughly 25–60 credits for a simple app and over 200 for a demanding one; details in Copilot Code: what it does, what it costs and how admins turn it on.

How spending policies behave

A policy is also an access control. Anyone covered by a policy that selects Cowork can use Cowork regardless of the limit; even a one-credit limit grants access. To keep someone out of Cowork, leave them out of every policy that selects it.
New services are added automatically. The Auto-apply new services setting (shown in the UI as “Allow new Agents and services as they become available”) is on by default for all policies, according to MC1470425. Every newly released credit-billed service therefore starts consuming credits without any admin action.
Users in several policies: the policy with the highest per-user limit applies; if tied, the one with the largest overall limit; if still tied, the most recently created.
Policy scope: by default a policy applies to all users. Specific users and resource accounts can only be targeted through security groups.
Roles: Global administrators and Billing administrators create policies and set billing methods. AI administrators and License administrators can edit policies, limits and alerts, but not create them. AI Reader and Global Reader have read-only access.
Credit requests: users can request first-time access or a higher limit; admins handle requests in Cost management.
The consumption overview in the admin center refreshes every four hours.
The old visibility setting AI experiences enabled by usage-based billing (discovery) is deprecated and will be replaced by a setting that controls who may request access.

Recommendations for admins

Review Auto-apply new services in every policy and decide whether new services should start consuming credits automatically.
Target policies at security groups, especially for Cowork, where a policy means access.
Set limits and alerts before the services come into regular use.
Estimate consumption with the Copilot Credit Estimator and, for larger volumes, compare pay-as-you-go with P3 pre-purchase.
Assign read-only roles to people who need to follow costs but not change settings.
Plan cost attribution in Azure if you need to split costs by service or department.