Copilot Credits: cost and the new default billing

From 1 December, usage-based billing applies to new Copilot Business subscriptions via CSP, but not in Germany at first. What admins and budget owners need to know.

Anyone who uses paid Copilot services has to budget for the credits consumed in addition to the seat price. In a notice to partners on 1 October 2026, Microsoft announced that usage-based billing will be enabled by default from 1 December 2026 for new Microsoft 365 Copilot Business subscriptions bought through Cloud Solution Provider (CSP), with a preset limit of 4,000 Copilot Credits per user per month. On 25 September 2026, Microsoft had also introduced "the new Copilot" with Home, Code and Autopilot.

This post puts both developments into context: what Microsoft says, what budget calculations that information allows, and what admins can configure in advance. Where Microsoft says nothing, the post says so explicitly.

As of 6 October 2026

TL;DR

From 1 December 2026, usage-based billing is on by default for new Copilot Business subscriptions via CSP, with a default limit of 4,000 Copilot Credits per user per month that admins can adjust. In the same notice, Microsoft lists Germany among the markets where the change is not available at first.
Prices according to Microsoft, as of 6 October 2026: Copilot Business from €18.20 per user per month (annual billing, excl. VAT), promotional price €15.60 in the first year; according to Microsoft's Credits Guide, one Copilot Credit costs USD 0.01. I did not find a euro price per credit on the pages I checked.
The limit is a ceiling, not a forecast. Anyone who checks the Spending Policies in the Microsoft 365 admin centre before the rollout decides for themselves who may consume how much.

What changes on 1 December

The basis is the Partner Center announcement of 1 October 2026. It is addressed to CSP partners who sell Microsoft 365 Copilot Business. The key points according to Microsoft:

Default on: For new Microsoft 365 Copilot Business licences bought through CSP, usage-based billing (pay-as-you-go) is enabled by default from 1 December 2026. As an earlier date, Microsoft mentions 2 November 2026.
Scope: The notice refers to "New purchases" of Copilot Business licences, including standalone offers and bundles.
Default limit: 4,000 Copilot Credits per user per month, adjustable by admins. Microsoft's example: with 100 users, the default limit would allow up to 400,000 Copilot Credits per month, billed according to actual usage.
Intended for: The notice names Copilot Cowork, Work IQ APIs and GitHub Copilot Harness as billable scenarios.
Availability: The change starts for eligible customers in supported markets. According to Microsoft, it is initially not available in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Italy, Korea, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain. Microsoft plans to share more information as availability grows.

For companies in Germany, this means: according to this notice, the December date does not initially apply to the German market. The notice does not say what applies in Germany instead or later. Your CSP partner can tell you more.

Sources: Partner Center Announcements, October 2026.

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What Copilot Credits are and which activities consume them

According to Microsoft, Copilot Credits are a shared currency for eligible Microsoft services with usage-based billing. The model supplements fixed licences with billing based on actual usage. According to Microsoft's Credits Guide (October 2026), the number of credits per response, action or operation depends on the complexity of the task, and credits are pooled at tenant level.

The Microsoft documentation (page dated 2 October 2026) lists these services as governed by usage-based billing:

Microsoft 365 Copilot
Cowork (Copilot licence required)
Advanced work in SharePoint and in OneDrive (Copilot licence required for each)
Work IQ API for custom apps and agents
Copilot Managed Runtime
Teams Phone Agent

The Credits Guide also describes billing sections for Copilot Code, Microsoft Copilot Studio and Business Applications. Microsoft announces that more agents and services will be added.

What a credit costs. According to the Credits Guide of October 2026, one Copilot Credit costs USD 0.01 on the pay-as-you-go meter, and the guide notes that all prices are given in USD and may change. This is the US list price as stated in the guide. Anyone who pays in advance gets tiered discounts under the Copilot Credit Pre-Purchase Plan (P3) according to the guide, from 5 percent (from 300,000 credits) to 20 percent (from 300,000,000 credits). A price per credit in euros is not given on the Microsoft pages I checked for this post. For a budget in euros, you therefore need a quote from your partner.

Sources: Usage-based billing overview, Copilot Credits Guide.

The new Copilot: Home, Code, Autopilot

On 25 September 2026, Microsoft announced "the new Copilot" on the Official Microsoft Blog. The app gets three new building blocks:

Home: the new starting point where chat and Cowork come together, with Office in Copilot (Word, Excel and PowerPoint).
Code: according to Microsoft's description, a way for non-developers to build small, purpose-specific solutions as well. It is based on the same technology as GitHub Copilot and runs in an isolated environment.
Autopilot: according to Microsoft, a persistent, proactive and personal agent that runs in the cloud and keeps working even when nobody is sitting in front of it. It was previously called Scout.

On availability, Microsoft writes: Home and Code are to be rolled out in the Frontier programme over the following weeks, and Autopilot was to be expanded to a private preview at the end of September. The announcement does not specify availability for the EU.

One sentence from the same post matters for the budget. Microsoft separates two types of cost: a user subscription licence (USL) covers everyday AI such as chat and Copilot in the Office apps at fixed cost. Cowork, Code and Autopilot, as well as the models "Astra" and "Fable", run through usage-based billing according to Microsoft. In addition there are "FinOps for AI" features: cost control in Agent 365 also for Code and Copilot Managed Runtime, Spending Policies via API, routing of credit requests into existing approval processes, and selection of model families per group. According to Microsoft, users see their usage and remaining balance directly in Copilot.

Sources: Microsoft Blog, 25 September 2026, Partner Center Announcements, September 2026.

What this means for the budget

The seat price is the fixed budget item. According to the German Microsoft page on Copilot Business (retrieved on 6 October 2026), Microsoft 365 Copilot Business costs €18.20 per user per month with annual billing (annual subscription with automatic renewal), prices excl. VAT. The page also shows the promotional price of €15.60. According to the footnote, this discount offer applies from 1 July 2026 to 31 December 2026, an annual subscription is required, and the special prices apply to the first year only. According to the page, Copilot Business requires the licence of an eligible Microsoft 365 plan and is designed for up to 300 users.

A calculation from list values only, for 10 users:

Item	Calculation	Result
Seats, list price (euros, excl. VAT)	10 x €18.20	€182.00 per month
Seats, promotional price in the first year (euros, excl. VAT)	10 x €15.60	€156.00 per month
Maximum credits under the default limit	10 x 4,000 credits	40,000 credits per month
Ceiling of credit costs under pay-as-you-go (US list price)	40,000 x USD 0.01	USD 400 per month, i.e. USD 40 per user

Two notes on the table. First, the seat prices are in euros and the credit price is in US dollars, so I do not add the two parts and do not apply an exchange rate. Second, the ceiling is not an expected value. It only shows the maximum the default limit of 4,000 credits would allow at USD 0.01 per credit. How many credits a team actually consumes depends on the services used and the task complexity, and Microsoft gives no average for this. For an estimate, Microsoft offers the Copilot Credit Estimator (according to the Credits Guide for Copilot Cowork and GitHub Copilot Harness), which according to the guide provides only informational estimates and does not guarantee final costs.

The post What does AI cost per team in 2026? explains how seat costs, usage costs and implementation costs add up. It also collects the prices of Claude and GitHub Copilot as of 5 October 2026.

What admins should set up now

Everything below is in the Microsoft documentation (pages dated 2 October 2026). The settings are in the Microsoft 365 admin centre under Copilot, Cost Management.

Enable and review the Spending Policy. During setup, you enable the default policy, choose the billing configuration and decide whether a monthly credit limit should apply. P3 balance builds on pay-as-you-go billing. Microsoft recommends setting a monthly limit per user so that a single person does not consume all available credits. This setting is optional, but Microsoft advises reviewing it.
Narrow down users and services. You can apply policies to all users or to specific security groups and define which agents and services may consume credits under the policy.
Set "Auto-apply new services" deliberately. The setting is on by default: new supported services and agents then automatically fall under the policy. Anyone who wants to review new services first turns it off.
Configure alerts. Admins can set a threshold as a credit amount or percentage and define email recipients. With a per-user limit, notifications for the users themselves can also be set up.
Define models for Cowork. For Copilot Cowork, model profiles can determine which models are available (at least two models per profile).
Regulate credit requests. According to the documentation, anyone who reaches their limit can request more credits. Separate routing policies can be defined for these requests, for example into an internal IT portal.
Evaluate usage. The dashboard shows usage by policy, user, group, agent and service. Read-only roles can see it without being able to change policies, so finance can follow along as well.

According to the documentation, when a limit is reached, the people affected lose access to the agents and services for the rest of the month until the credits are reset on the first of the month. That is a reason to agree limits and the request route before the rollout and not only when someone is locked out in the middle of a project.

Measuring whether the usage pays off is a task of its own. For that there is a free PDF on how to measure AI adoption. Agent 365, Claude and Gemini Enterprise for SMEs compares approaches to managing agents across the company. The comparison of ChatGPT, Copilot and Claude shows which assistants suit DACH companies. If you want to go through the numbers for your team together: talk to us for 30 minutes.

Sources: Set up usage-based billing, Manage AI experiences enabled by usage-based billing, Monitor Copilot Credit spending.

FAQ

What do Copilot Credits cost?

According to Microsoft's Credits Guide (October 2026), one Copilot Credit costs USD 0.01 on the pay-as-you-go meter; all prices in the guide are in USD and may change. Anyone who buys credits in advance receives tiered discounts of 5 to 20 percent with the Pre-Purchase Plan (P3). The Microsoft pages I checked give no euro price per credit.

What is the difference between Copilot Chat and Microsoft 365 Copilot?

According to the Microsoft documentation (as of 1 October 2026), Copilot Chat (Basic) is included in eligible Microsoft 365 licences and mainly uses web data. It can use company content via files explicitly provided, content opened in supported apps (such as Teams and Outlook), or appropriately connected pay-as-you-go agents. The premium variant with the Copilot add-on offers prioritised access and responses grounded in the organisation's data (Microsoft Graph, Work IQ). Custom agents are usable in Copilot Chat only via pay-as-you-go.

Can the credit limit be changed?

Yes. Microsoft writes that admins can adjust the default limit of 4,000 credits per user per month. In the admin centre, you set up Spending Policies with monthly limits for the policy and optionally per user, as well as alerts and the route for credit requests.

What is Microsoft Copilot Autopilot?

According to Microsoft, Autopilot is a persistent, proactive and personal agent that is hosted in the cloud and runs in your own tenant, with its own identity, its own memory and its own workspace. It was previously called Scout. According to the announcement of 25 September 2026, it was to expand to a private preview at the end of September. The announcement does not specify availability for the EU.

Does the change also apply to existing contracts?

The notice of 1 October 2026 names new purchases of Copilot Business licences as its scope. The notice makes no statement on existing subscriptions. Ask your CSP partner what applies to your contract. For the German market, the notice also states that the change is initially not available.

What does Microsoft 365 Copilot Business cost?

According to the German Microsoft page (retrieved on 6 October 2026): €18.20 per user per month with annual billing, excl. VAT, promotional price €15.60 for the first year for sign-ups between 1 July and 31 December 2026. An eligible Microsoft 365 plan is a prerequisite. The usage-based credits are added depending on usage.

Sources

Microsoft, Partner Center Announcements, October 2026 (notice of 1 October 2026, retrieved on 6 October 2026): learn.microsoft.com
Microsoft, Partner Center Announcements, September 2026 (retrieved on 6 October 2026): learn.microsoft.com
Microsoft, Usage-based billing and cost management for Copilot Credits (page dated 2 October 2026, retrieved on 6 October 2026): learn.microsoft.com
Microsoft, Set up usage-based billing for Copilot Credits (retrieved on 6 October 2026): learn.microsoft.com
Microsoft, Manage AI experiences enabled by usage-based billing (retrieved on 6 October 2026): learn.microsoft.com
Microsoft, Monitor Copilot Credit spending (retrieved on 6 October 2026): learn.microsoft.com
Microsoft, Copilot Credits Guide (October 2026, retrieved on 6 October 2026): aka.ms/CopilotCredits/LicensingGuide
Microsoft, Microsoft Copilot overview, licence variants (page dated 1 October 2026, retrieved on 6 October 2026): learn.microsoft.com
Microsoft, Introducing the new Copilot with Home, Code and Autopilot (25 September 2026): blogs.microsoft.com
Microsoft, Microsoft 365 Copilot Business, German page (retrieved on 6 October 2026): microsoft.com/de-de