A worked example
Copilot Studio pricing, metered: an open-source worked example
Copilot Studio has no monthly price for a single agent. Its price is a cent a Copilot Credit, a $200 block of 25,000, or a year bought in advance, with $30 charged for each Microsoft 365 Copilot seat. Kortix is the open-source AI Operating System, and it meters the machine instead of the answer.
The open-source AI Operating System
One cent a credit on the meter · $200 for 25,000 in a pack · Three routes, one bill
Agent feature Billing rateClassic answer 1 Copilot CreditGenerative answer 2 Copilot CreditsAgent action 5 Copilot CreditsTenant graph grounding for messages 10 Copilot CreditsThree routes into the same credit
Microsoft publishes three ways to pay for agent work (Microsoft’s Copilot Studio page, read 21 October 2026). The meter charges a cent a credit and settles once the billing month closes. A capacity pack is $200 a pack a month for 25,000 credits, billed annually, and the capacity refreshes each month. The pre-purchase plan commits a prepaid amount up front and turns it into a discount on the same credits, and the pay-as-you-go meter needs no commitment at all. An Azure subscription is required either way.
Nobody is charged for building. The per-person line sits elsewhere: Microsoft 365 Copilot costs $30 a seat a month, paid yearly, and a seat also wipes credits off the bill, because employee-facing use by the person holding it never reaches the feature rows. A support agent talking to customers on a public site is metered whatever seats the team holds.
Every line of the rate card, and the credits a single answer draws, is on the Copilot Studio credits page. What follows takes one month of answers through each route, then rebuilds the agent and watches the total move.
One support agent, priced three ways
Stated workload, an illustration of ours rather than Microsoft’s: a support agent handling 3,000 conversations a month, 60% of them scripted in advance, the other 40% generated with tenant graph grounding and one action, and three people holding Microsoft 365 Copilot.
A scripted answer spends 1 credit. The generated, grounded, actioned one spends 17: 2 for generation, 10 for grounding and 5 for the action.
- Conversations a month: 3,000
- Scripted answers, 1,800 at 1 credit: 1,800 credits
- Grounded generative answers, 1,200 at 17 credits: 20,400 credits
- Copilot Credits a month: 22,200
- 22,200 credits, one pack or the meter: $200.00 or $222.00
- Three people on Microsoft 365 Copilot at $30: $90.00
- Month, pack route and meter route: $290 and $312
Packs arrive in blocks of 25,000, so a month of 22,200 credits takes exactly one: $200 against $222 for the identical credits on the meter. Three seats add $90, which puts the month at $290 or $312. That $22 margin is thin, and it rests on a workload that stays under one pack. An agent drawing 26,000 credits a month turns the same pack into an overbuy, and the meter into the cheaper route.
A year bought up front only helps at volume. The pre-purchase plan’s discount climbs with the amount committed, so the rate beats a pack once a tenant’s monthly draw is large enough to fill several packs, and it loses on a workload this size, where 22,200 credits a month still takes one pack at $200.
What changes the bill is the agent, not the team
Hold the traffic steady and change one decision at a time. Answers all scripted: 3,000 credits, $30. Answers generated, grounded and actioned: 51,000 credits, $510. Put a reasoning model behind every reply at 1,200 premium tokens, and 12 credits join each conversation, lifting the month to 87,000 credits and $870. Same seats, same channels, a total 29 times larger.
A monthly quote hides that span. Two vendors can print a per-month figure while pricing unlike quantities of work in unlike units, each with its own expiry rule. Microsoft built an estimator for the same reason: agent type, traffic, orchestration, knowledge and tools go in before any number comes out.
What the meter is buying
A credit measures Microsoft’s throughput, and the balance falls when a model answers, when retrieval runs, when an action fires. Its price belongs to a vendor free to reset it, and the month ends with an invoice plus agents you can export as topics.
Kortix prices the other side of that line. Free is $0 with 500 credits per month, every feature and 1 project, on the user’s own provider keys or ChatGPT subscription. Managed models are on the Credits plan only. The paid plan is credits: 25 tiers from $50 a month (5,000 credits) to $50,000 a month (5,000,000 credits), at 100 credits per dollar. Members are free, and the account shares one credit pool. Unused monthly credits roll over one month (See the pricing, read 21 October 2026).
Cost one workload on both meters, print the model invoice on its own line, and the two figures finally describe the same thing. The comparison table puts the difference in one place: a Microsoft credit buys an assembled answer, a Kortix credit buys machine time.
Two meters, priced on the same question
Kortix heads the table because the two systems count different things, and only one of them bills the machine.
Microsoft’s rates come from its billing page for Copilot Studio; Kortix’s from its pricing page. Both were read on 21 October 2026.
Copilot Studio pricing, in the questions buyers type
Every figure comes from the Microsoft pages linked in the prose.
A cent a credit on the meter, $200 for a 25,000-credit pack, or a prepaid plan committed in advance, plus $30 for each Microsoft 365 Copilot seat. The three builds land between $30 and $870 a month.
A cent on the pay-as-you-go meter, and 0.8 cents inside a full $200 pack. What one credit buys depends on the build: 1 for a scripted reply, 2 generated, 10 for tenant graph grounding, 5 for an action.
Partly. Employee-facing use of an agent by someone who holds a Microsoft 365 Copilot seat is included in that seat. Publishing to external channels needs a standalone Copilot Studio plan, and those agents are metered.
Messages stopped being the unit. A Copilot Credit measures the time and effort an agent spends retrieving information, answering a prompt or performing an action, and each of those draws on one tenant-wide balance, with prepaid capacity spent before the meter starts. The credits page carries the rate for each.
It can be cheaper, because the two meters measure different things. Kortix is the open-source AI Operating System: $0 with 500 credits a month on your own provider keys, then credit tiers from $50 a month, and members cost nothing. Your model provider sets most of what is left.
Price the same workload on a meter you can read
Every Copilot Studio figure here is Microsoft’s own, published and open to rechecking. Kortix bills the machine the agent works on, and your provider bills the model.