Copilot Credits: Cost, Limits and the November Change

Copilot Credits are Microsoft's metered unit for agentic AI work in Copilot. On pay-as-you-go, one credit costs $0.01, billed at the end of the month for what was used. How many credits a task burns depends on the model, the runtime, the context it pulls and the tools it calls. Cowork, Code, Autopilot, Copilot Studio agents and Work IQ APIs draw on them, while everyday Copilot Chat and Copilot in Word, Excel and Outlook stay on the per-user licence. From mid-November 2026, new Microsoft 365 Copilot Business purchases come with pay-as-you-go switched on by default and a spending limit of 4,000 credits per user per month.

Short answer

Copilot Credits are what Microsoft charges for agents that do long, multi-step work. The per-seat licence buys the assistant. Credits pay for the work the agents do. A Copilot Credit is $0.01 on pay-as-you-go, and the default policy on new Copilot Business purchases caps each user at 4,000 credits a month. That cap is a ceiling, not an allowance. Admins control the meter with spending policies. If you want agents doing delegated work without a meter running inside your Microsoft 365 tenant, xSquads for Work gives each person a squad on their own files, free via the waitlist.

What Copilot Credits pay for

Microsoft splits Copilot into two ways of paying. Its Microsoft Learn page on USL and UBB calls them "everyday AI" and "advanced AI".

	User subscription licence (USL)	Usage-based billing (UBB)
What it covers	Everyday AI: summarising meetings, drafting documents, analysis, Auto model routing	"Complex, long-running agentic work you hand off", such as Cowork, Code, Autopilot, new agentic SharePoint experiences and newer frontier models
How you pay	Fixed price per user per month	Copilot Credits, consumed per task
Who usually funds it	IT, across the organisation	Microsoft suggests business units that can weigh cost against benefit

Microsoft says UBB experiences "consume Copilot Credits and require a USL for access". So credits sit on top of the licence. They don't replace it. The same currency runs across Copilot Studio, where Microsoft calls Copilot Credits "the common currency across Copilot Studio capabilities". For the always-on agent itself, see Copilot Autopilot.

What a Copilot Credit costs

Microsoft's Copilot Studio licensing guidance lists three ways to buy:

Pay-as-you-go: $0.01 per Copilot Credit, billed in arrears at the end of the billing month.
Capacity packs: $200 per pack per month, billed annually, for 25,000 credits. Unused credits don't roll over to the next month.
Pre-purchase: a Copilot Credit Pre-Purchase Plan for buying credits ahead of use.

How many credits one task uses is the hard part to predict. For Cowork, Microsoft's Cowork launch post says the price of each task comes from four inputs: "model use, context retrieval, tool calls, and runtime." The same post says Cowork requires the Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, is off by default until an admin enables it, and is billed on usage, at $0.01 per Copilot Credit on pay-as-you-go. SoftwareOne's explainer puts it plainly: costs "will vary from task to task."

Taken together, a credit has a fixed price, but a task does not.

What changes in November and December

The date moved twice this month. In its first version, Microsoft's message center post MC1476200 said default-on billing for direct purchases would start on 19 October 2026. The 16 October update (an archived copy of the message) changed the timeline:

When	What happens
Mid-November 2026	Pay-as-you-go UBB is configured by default on eligible new Copilot Business purchases made directly from Microsoft, for tenants that have Microsoft 365 Business Premium
Later, no date yet	Tenants without Business Premium, such as Business Standard or Basic with Copilot
1 December 2026	Eligible new Copilot Business purchases through Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partners

The Partner Center announcement, updated on 14 October, moved the CSP date from 2 November to 1 December. It also set the default spending limit at 4,000 Copilot Credits per user per month, which admins can adjust. Microsoft's own example: "a customer with 100 M365 Copilot Business users could consume up to 400,000 Copilot Credits per month under the default spending limit." CRN reported the delay and noted that, for CSP, new subscriptions, added seats and upgrades all fall under the change.

At the $0.01 pay-as-you-go rate, 4,000 credits is up to $40 per user per month on top of the licence, and Microsoft's 100-user example is a ceiling of $4,000 a month. Charges apply only to actual usage. The change does not start in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Italy, Korea, the Netherlands, Poland or Spain at first.

How admins control the spend

Spending policies are the control. Microsoft's admin guide to managing Copilot Credits lists what they set:

Who and what: policies cover users, groups or the whole tenant, and the specific agents and services allowed to spend.
Limits: a monthly limit for the policy and an optional per-user limit. Microsoft says to set the per-user budget at "at least 2,000 credits per user per month."
Alerts: threshold emails for admins, and separate ones for users nearing their limit.
Model profiles: for Cowork only, the models a policy may use.
Auto-apply new services: on by default, which adds new Copilot services and agents to a policy as they launch. Microsoft says to turn it off "for any policy that shouldn't automatically govern future supported services or agents."

When a user is in more than one policy, the one with the highest per-user limit applies. The Partner Center UBB guide says deleting a policy "stops billing for future usage immediately", and that "deleting the policy is the only way to stop spend entirely."

How people are reacting

The pricing has drawn as much discussion as the agents.

@dhinchcliffe read the September relaunch as "an economic model announcement" that splits AI into "subscription intelligence + metered execution": "Seats buy access. Consumption buys WORK."
@h1kz0r disagreed with the direction: "I still don't think we'll end up buying AI by the token."
WebProNews reported frustrated admins and quoted analysts warning that without strong controls, "agentic workloads risk driving unpredictable bills."
@vasuman, after a day with about 20 CHROs, warned that "if you let 400 people build agents in 400 different places, you're going to have a) tech debt, b) a crazy token bill, and c) 6 agents all trying to do the same thing."
@buckleyplanet and @MichaelGannotti tracked the date changes for admins.

The questions are the same everywhere: what a task will cost, and who reviews the work an agent does.

Copilot Credits are not GitHub AI Credits

Microsoft and GitHub use similar names for two different meters, and they are easy to mix up.

GitHub Copilot bills in GitHub AI Credits. GitHub converts the tokens a request uses into credits, at 1 AI credit = $0.01 USD. Each Copilot Business licence includes 1,900 AI credits a month, and each Copilot Enterprise licence includes 3,900, pooled across the organisation. GitHub turns additional paid usage on by default.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Credits are a separate meter in the Microsoft 365 admin center. The Partner Center guide does list "GitHub Copilot Harness" among the services that Copilot Business usage-based billing covers. Check which bill a given agent lands on before you set a budget.

Metered agents vs a squad you review

Copilot Credits meter agents that work inside your Microsoft 365 tenant, across Teams, Outlook and SharePoint. That fits when the work lives there and your company has a spending policy in place.

xSquads for Work is built a different way. It gives each knowledge worker their own squad of specialised agents to delegate to and review, so they become 10x more productive. The squad runs on your computer and works on your own files and folders, on a shared task board from Backlog to To Do to In Progress to Review to Done. Bots propose, you approve, and anything irreversible is escalated to you instead of executed. It is on Mac now, with Windows coming soon, and it is free via the waitlist.

The two can coexist. Use Copilot for drafting inside Office. Hand a squad the research, plans and cleanup that live in your folders. Use cases shows the missions people start with, and AI agent workflow covers how to split work between you and the agents.

Where a software factory fits

Code and GitHub Copilot Harness are on the meter too. When the output is production software that has to ship, that is a different job from a personal agent.

On the xSquad code factory page, a code factory is "an organized production system". Agents open pull requests you can read. Nothing merges without your approval, and a person reviews before code is merged. You add or remove agents as the workload changes. Quality gates are automated tests, code reviews, QA validation and human approval. On services, custom squads usually take the shape of an agent swarm or a code factory, built around one process your team already runs by hand. The site does not publish a price. Current plans go through the contact form. See what a managed AI software factory does.

Which one should you choose?

Copilot Credits fit when your team lives in Microsoft 365 and wants Cowork, Code or Autopilot. Set spending policies and per-user limits before the November and December defaults reach you.
xSquads for Work fits when the work is in files you already have and you want several specialised agents whose output waits for your review. It is free via the waitlist.
An xSquad code factory fits when production software has to ship as pull requests that a person reviews before anything merges.

Where these facts come from

Read on 19 October 2026.

Microsoft Learn: USL and UBB: everyday vs advanced AI, and what consumes Copilot Credits.
Microsoft Copilot Studio licensing guidance: $0.01 pay-as-you-go, the $200 pack of 25,000 credits, no rollover.
Copilot Cowork GA post: the four pricing inputs and the licence requirement.
MC1476200, updated 16 October 2026 (archived copy): mid-November and 1 December, the 4,000-credit limit, excluded markets.
Partner Center October 2026 announcements and the Partner Center UBB guide: CSP dates, the 100-user example, covered services, deleting a policy.
Managing Copilot Credits: spending policies, the 2,000-credit minimum, auto-apply.
GitHub usage-based billing: GitHub AI Credits.
CRN, SoftwareOne, WebProNews.
X: @dhinchcliffe, @h1kz0r, @vasuman, @buckleyplanet, @MichaelGannotti.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are Copilot Credits?

Copilot Credits are Microsoft's usage-based currency for advanced AI work in Copilot, such as Cowork, Code, Autopilot, Copilot Studio agents and Work IQ APIs. They are consumed per task, on top of the Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, which still covers everyday Copilot.

How much do Copilot Credits cost?

On pay-as-you-go, $0.01 per credit, billed at the end of the month for actual use. Copilot Studio capacity packs cost $200 a month, billed annually, for 25,000 credits that don't roll over. What a single task costs depends on the model, context, tool calls and runtime it uses.

How many Copilot Credits do I get per month?

The Microsoft 365 Copilot licence covers everyday Copilot, and Microsoft bills Cowork on usage, by the tasks each person runs. On new Copilot Business purchases, the default spending policy sets a limit of 4,000 credits per user per month. That is a cap your admin can adjust, not a free allowance.

Can I turn off Copilot usage-based billing?

Admins control it through spending policies in the Microsoft 365 admin center, under Copilot > Cost Management. Microsoft's Partner Center guide says deleting a policy stops billing for future usage immediately, and that deleting it is the only way to stop spend entirely. Usage already accrued is still billed.

Are Copilot Credits the same as GitHub Copilot AI credits?

No. GitHub Copilot bills in GitHub AI Credits, at 1 AI credit = $0.01, with 1,900 included per Copilot Business user and 3,900 per Copilot Enterprise user each month. Microsoft 365 Copilot Credits are a separate meter in the Microsoft 365 admin center.

What is the difference between Copilot Credits and tokens?

Tokens are what a model reads and writes. Credits are the billing unit. GitHub converts tokens into AI credits by model. For Microsoft 365, the price of a Cowork task is calculated from model use, context retrieval, tool calls and runtime, so a credit count covers more than tokens.

Copilot Credits: What They Cost and What Changes in November