“Microsoft Copilot Studio Billing Simplifies for M365 Users — But Complexity Remains

Another significant update has arrived to how Microsoft Copilot Studio billing works, and how use of Copilot Studio Agents interacts with Microsoft 365 Copilot licensing. Previously, there were some Copilot Studio features that would still incur credit billing, either through PAYG or credit packs, even when invoked in the context of a Microsoft 365 Copilot licensed chat, but now those charges have disappeared.

The fact is that understanding how much these AI services might cost continues to be a thorn in the side of easy adoption. There are multi-layered implications from billing choices that get made; not least the immediate Dataverse-related PAYG implications that crop up as soon as you enable PAYG for Copilot Studio (you cannot do this without also inviting added Dataverse billing). Understanding how all these different services interact to get you to your end of the month bill is still a little bit of a dark art.

From the perspective of Microsoft 365 Copilot licensed users, this included feature allocation just makes sense. With the license you are paying for unlimited agent use, and whether those agents are running under Microsoft 365 Copilot in the form of declarative agents or Power Platform from Copilot Studio, who cares? It should be transparent.

However, I do think there is another billing approach that would make more sense: Seeded capacity. If Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses worked much like how Power Platform licenses work in relation to services like AI Builder and Dataverse, in my mind this would be more sensible. Each license could allocate a small amount of Dataverse capacity alongside a number of Copilot Credits to be allocated across the environment. This would frame the purchase of Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses more as a hill that helps the whole organization climb to AI success, rather than a cliff that individual users must scale alone.

While I welcome the inclusion of more services for Microsoft 365 Copilot licensed users, there continue to be big opportunities to make the Microsoft AI ecosystem more approachable to many organizations from a licensing perspective. Nearly two years into this Microsoft 365 Copilot journey, the sticker price of the license alongside the complexity of other purchasing scenarios continue to be a blocker for some of the organizations I advise.

First posted on Linkedin in 09/08/2025 -> View Linkedin post here