Microsoft 365 Copilot Pay-as-You-Go Credits Setup

It is free for organizations that buy their Microsoft licensing through IT Partner — that is the whole qualification. Customers kept asking for it, the work is a few engineer hours, and it belongs with the licensing relationship that already includes unlimited break-fix support during business hours. There is no catch on our side; the only money that changes hands is Microsoft's: the Copilot Credits your users consume are billed by Microsoft to your linked Azure subscription at its published rate, and we neither mark them up nor absorb them. If your licensing is elsewhere, the same setup is a fixed-price quote in writing, paid after you approve delivery — or you move your billing to us first and it comes with that.

Users without a Microsoft 365 Copilot license can use agents — an agent built in SharePoint, an agent published from Copilot Studio, an agent available in Copilot Chat — with each interaction metered in Copilot Credits instead of blocked. Copilot Chat itself is already available to your Microsoft 365 users; it is the agent grounded in your tenant's data that needs either a Copilot seat or a meter behind it. Licensed Copilot users are unaffected: their seat already covers agent use in Copilot Chat, Teams and SharePoint, plus the built-in Researcher, Analyst and Facilitator agents.

Microsoft's list rate is $0.01 per Copilot Credit on the pay-as-you-go meter, billed monthly in arrears to your Azure subscription. What an interaction costs depends on what the agent does: a classic answer is 1 credit, a generative answer 2, an agent action 5, and each message grounded in your tenant's Microsoft Graph data 10 — so a typical SharePoint-agent exchange meters at about 12 credits, roughly twelve cents. Those are Microsoft's published figures at the time of writing; we do not set them, mark them up or guarantee them. What we do is set up the spend report so you can read your own number after the first weeks and decide whether a seat, a capacity pack or the meter is the right shape.

Yes — the billing policy must point at an Azure subscription and resource group in the same Microsoft Entra tenant; that subscription is where Microsoft invoices the credits. If you have none, Microsoft's wizard can create one during the policy setup, which also makes you Owner of the subscription and resource group, or we provision an Azure plan through our CSP so the Azure consumption arrives alongside your licensing on an IT Partner invoice. A subscription in another tenant, or one carrying a spending cap or trial credit, cannot be used.

That message is Microsoft's way of saying the tenant's commerce runs through a partner and the subscription you offered was not provisioned through that channel. The fix sits with the partner: an Azure plan subscription provisioned through their CSP, and the policy pointed at it. If that partner is us, it is part of this setup. If it is someone else, they need to provision the Azure plan — or you move your CSP billing to IT Partner, which is free and changes nothing inside the tenant, and we do it.

A security group, unless you have a specific reason not to. Group scoping limits who can generate metered usage, ties the meter to a business decision rather than to anyone who finds an agent, and lets you add a second policy later for another cost centre. It also avoids a Microsoft rule that bites in the other direction: once an "all users" policy is connected, no group-scoped policy can attach until the broad one is disconnected. We create or reuse a group with you and record in the handover who owns its membership.

No — and it is important that finance hears this from us rather than from the invoice. Microsoft states that the budget on a billing policy only triggers alerts: usage continues after the amount is passed, and the alert email can take up to 24 hours. We set the budget and alert recipients anyway, mirror it with an Azure Cost Management budget on the resource group, and note in the handover which limits in your tenant actually stop usage and which only alert. If you need certainty, prepaid capacity changes the enforcement picture, and we explain that trade-off before you buy anything.

Capacity packs are prepaid blocks of 25,000 Copilot Credits per month at Microsoft's pack price; the Copilot Credit Pre-Purchase Plan is an annual commitment bought as an Azure reservation at a volume discount Microsoft publishes. Two things to know before choosing either: Microsoft requires pay-as-you-go to be enabled first for Copilot Chat and SharePoint agents, and when consumption exceeds the prepaid amount it rolls to pay-as-you-go automatically — so this setup is the prerequisite in every case. We can transact packs or a pre-purchase plan through our CSP when the spend justifies them, quoted separately at Microsoft's price, and we generally suggest running on the meter for a month or two first so the purchase is sized on your data rather than a guess.

Same currency, different switch. Copilot Studio agents consume Copilot Credits too, but pay-as-you-go for them is a billing plan in the Power Platform admin center linked to an Azure subscription and to the environments where the agents live, with an optional monthly consumption limit per agent. We set it up in the same visit when you build your own agents, pointing at the same Azure subscription so finance sees one meter. Building the agents is a separate service.

Cowork, generally available since June 2026, bills in Copilot Credits through the usage-based billing controls in the Copilot > Cost management node rather than through the classic billing policy — a billing method, a default spending policy, limits and alerts. Where your tenant offers it and your users are on it, we enable and configure it in the same setup. Microsoft is moving more AI experiences under that node over time; we configure what your tenant shows on the day and say so in the handover.

Disconnect the policy from the service, or disable pay-as-you-go entirely, on the same admin-center page — the steps are in the handover. Microsoft says it can take up to two hours for users to lose access to the agents, and consumption already recorded is still invoiced. Narrowing the security group is the gentler lever and takes effect the same way.

An account holding Global, Billing or AI Administrator in Microsoft 365 that is also Owner or Contributor on the Azure subscription and resource group — Microsoft's requirement, not ours. For licensing customers we usually work through the least-privilege delegated (GDAP) access already in place under our published access policy; otherwise a temporary role you grant and we ask you to revoke once the handover is done. We do not need, and do not ask for, standing global admin.

The listed duration is two days, and most of it is waiting on people rather than on Microsoft: the hands-on work is a few engineer hours once an Azure subscription and the right roles exist. Creating a subscription, provisioning an Azure plan, or chasing a role assignment adds calendar time, never cost.

Yes, two ways. The same two-day setup as a fixed-price engagement — quoted in writing before work begins, paid after you approve delivery — or move your Microsoft 365 CSP billing to IT Partner first: that switch is free, involves no tenant migration or downtime, keeps your subscriptions at Microsoft's published list prices with their existing term dates, and brings this setup and unlimited business-hours break-fix support with it. There is no lock-in either way; you can move your subscriptions to another partner at any time under Microsoft's own transfer workflow.