Copilot: the flat fee does not cover everything. Microsoft bills advanced AI by usage, at $0.01 per credit

Until now, a Copilot budget was a number of seats multiplied by a price. On 25 September 2026, Microsoft told administrators (Message Center post MC1479276) that advanced AI features would be billed by usage, on top of the licence. On 1 October, it gave its partners the date and the default limit for Copilot Business licences.

What Microsoft announced

• Two regimes. Microsoft's Copilot blog sums it up: everyday AI stays at a fixed price per user, advanced AI runs on Copilot Credits. According to post MC1479276, the rollout starts in the fourth quarter of 2026.
• The price. $0.01 per credit on pay-as-you-go. One-year pre-purchase plans give a 5% discount for 300,000 credits, up to 20% for 300 million.
• What consumes credits. According to Microsoft's licensing site: Copilot Cowork tasks, Work IQ APIs, Copilot Studio agents, Dynamics 365 agents and app hosting in the Copilot Managed Runtime.
• On by default in CSP. For new Microsoft 365 Copilot Business licences bought from a CSP reseller, usage-based billing will be on by default from 1 December 2026. The date announced earlier was 2 November.
• The default limit. 4,000 credits per user per month, which admins can change.
• The countries. The default will not be available at first in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Italy, Korea, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain.

What it adds up to

Users	Default limit (credits per month)	Maximum at $0.01 per credit
1	4,000	$40
100	400,000	$4,000
1,000	4,000,000	$40,000

This arithmetic is ours, based on Microsoft's public figures; the example of 100 users and 400,000 credits appears in its announcement. The limit is a maximum: Microsoft bills actual usage. These amounts come on top of the licence price, and Microsoft publishes this rate in US dollars.

What applies to you today

Your situation	What changes
Copilot Business bought through CSP, in a first-wave country	New licences arrive with usage-based billing switched on from 1 December 2026.
Copilot Business bought through CSP in France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands or Poland	No default at first. Microsoft says it will share more as availability expands.
Enterprise tenant	The features are visible to all users and stay inactive until an admin creates a spending policy (MC1479276).
Existing licences	The announcement to partners covers new purchases.

The danger, the advice

The danger	The advice
Users see features that need credits and ask for them. The first policy is created in a hurry, for everyone, with no limit.	Decide before anyone asks: which groups get access, and for which use. A policy applies to all users by default; restrict it to a security group.
The default limit is taken for a budget. 4,000 credits per user per month is the vendor's default value, which your admins can change.	Set your own monthly limit, per policy and per user, from the measured consumption of a pilot group.
A user reaches the limit mid-month and loses access to agents and services until the first of the next month.	Set the alert thresholds for admins and for users, and name the person who approves requests for more credits.
The setting that auto-applies new services is selected by default: each newly supported service enters the policy without a decision on your part.	Check that setting. Turn it off, or name someone to review each newly covered service.
You track cost per licence while consumption now happens per task.	Track cost per use case and per agent every month, next to what that usage produced.

What to do this week

1. Find out how you buy Copilot. Through CSP or an Enterprise agreement, with Business or Enterprise licences.
2. Check whether a spending policy already exists. Look in the Cost management dashboard of the Microsoft 365 admin center. Note who created it.
3. Check the roles. Which administrators can create or change a policy. Microsoft's documentation names the Global administrator and the Billing administrator for the choice of billing method.
4. Pick a pilot group and measure one month of consumption before opening access more widely.
5. Set limits and alerts, and decide the path for credit requests.

What a solid team does differently

It treats Copilot spending as consumption to be steered. Each use case has an owner, a limit and a monthly review that sets the cost against the result. It redoes the sums at each vendor announcement, because the list of usage-billed services is growing: Microsoft writes that it is working to bring more agents and services into this model.