Four Ways to Pay for Copilot Studio Agents: Which to Use?

• Copilot Studio agent pricing is consumption-based in many cases, and it depends on the type of actions agents perform.
• Three upfront (commitment) purchasing options for agents offer discounts over pay-as-you-go billing.
• The best purchasing option depends on quantity, seasonal variability, and predictability of agent usage.

Agents are AI-based processes that perform tasks within focused domains and knowledge sources, such as working with internal line-of-business apps and retrieving data from specific documents and databases. Copilot Studio allows makers to create agents without requiring expensive developer expertise and resources; although Microsoft provides several other options, such as Microsoft Foundry, for building agents.

Certain Copilot Studio agent usage is covered by a Microsoft 365 Copilot per-user license. However, depending on how agents are deployed and the tasks they perform, their usage can be billed via meters that count the consumption of a Microsoft-defined unit called Copilot Credits, which are billed to an Azure subscription on a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) basis or by upfront commitment-based purchasing for a discount.