How much will Copilot actually cost you?

If you've been asked "what's this going to cost us?" since Copilot's latest update, here's the answer in two lines.

Copilot Chat is covered by your Copilot licence. Cowork is billed separately, by use, in Copilot Credits.

Your licence covers everyday AI work. Anything you hand to Cowork is billed as you use it. Here's what that means and how to keep it under control.

What's included and what costs extra

Scheduled prompts run in Chat and come with your Copilot licence. Cowork and the other services in the right-hand column are billed by use, on top of the licence.

That's where the first easy saving is. Say you want a summary of your inbox every morning. Set it up as a scheduled prompt in Chat and there's nothing extra to pay. Set up the same thing as a Cowork Automation and it uses credits every day it runs.

Neither option is wrong. Cowork can act for you, sending emails, booking meetings and building documents, while Chat helps you think and draft. Just pick Cowork because you need it to act, not out of habit.

What a credit really costs

Pay-as-you-go is $0.01 per credit, according to Microsoft's Copilot Credits Guide. The prepaid plan (P3) cuts that by 5% to 20%, depending on how many credits you commit to for the year. Prices are in US dollars and can change.

Four things decide how many credits a task uses:

• The model. More capable models cost more.
• Context. The more emails, files and meetings it reads, the more it costs.
• Tools. Every action, like sending an email or updating a document, adds to the total.
• Runtime. Long, multi-step tasks cost more than quick ones.

For scale, one heavy task using Astra cost about 4,500 credits in our own testing. That's our example, not a Microsoft rate. But it shows how fast a big task adds up.

Track what you've used: /cost

Type /cost in Cowork to see roughly how many credits a task has used, how many you've used this month and how many are left. Checking is free. It only shows what a task has already used, though. You can't check a cost before you run something.

The figure is an estimate, not your bill. Limits reset at the start of each month (midnight UTC), and unused credits don't carry over.

How admins keep it under control

Today, Cowork stays off until an admin sets up billing and a spending policy covers the user. So nothing gets charged by accident.

That changes on 1 December 2026 for some licences. New Microsoft 365 Copilot Business licences bought through a Microsoft partner (CSP) will come with usage-based billing switched on. The default limit is 4,000 credits per user per month, and admins can change it. Existing licences you don't touch aren't affected. Enterprise licences aren't included, and at first it doesn't apply in some countries, including France, Germany and the Netherlands. If you're buying new Business seats, set your limits first.

After that, cost is controlled in the Microsoft 365 admin centre under Copilot > Cost Management:

1. Choose the services. Cowork, Code, Advanced work in OneDrive and SharePoint, Work IQ API and Teams Phone Agent.
2. Choose who's covered. All users, or specific Entra security groups.
3. Set the limits. A monthly limit for the policy, a per-user limit, and email alerts.
4. Choose how to pay. Pay-as-you-go through an Azure subscription, prepaid P3 credits or prepaid capacity packs.

Policies control who can use which services and how much they can spend. They don't control which model people use. That's a separate setting. So the per-user limit is your main cost lever. Once someone hits it, they're stopped until the limit resets or an admin approves more credits.

The admin dashboard updates every four hours and shows which users and policies are getting close to their limits.

For financial services firms: responsibility is split by admin role. Only Global and Billing admins can set up billing methods. AI and License admins can edit policies, limits and alerts, but can't create policies. Reader roles can only view. Map that to your existing approval process before anyone turns Cowork on.

Three gotchas worth knowing

1. A policy is an access pass, not just a budget.

Anyone in a policy that includes Cowork can use it, even with a tiny limit. New policies cover All users unless you pick specific groups. To keep someone out, leave them out of every Cowork policy.

2. New services are added automatically.

The Auto-apply new services setting is on by default, so policies pick up new paid services as Microsoft releases them. If you'd rather review them first, turn it off.

3. Group limits can override yours.

If you're part of a group plan, your credits may come from a shared monthly limit. You might see credits left in your own allowance and still be blocked because the group has hit its overall limit. Point people to whoever manages credit limits in your organisation, and expect a few confused support tickets. [learn.microsoft.com]

Start small

You don't need to know exact numbers before you begin. Pick a pilot group, set a sensible limit and see what real use looks like for a month. That will tell you more than any estimate.

Want help setting it up or have any other questions about Copilot? Talk to us.

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