Microsoft Copilot Studio [New Commerce Experience]
Microsoft Copilot Studio
This catalogue entry is the Copilot Studio tenant licence, which an administrator buys and cannot assign to anybody. For the standard per user route Microsoft documents two licences, a tenant licence and a Copilot Studio User Licence for each person who creates and manages agents, and states that when Copilot Studio is purchased through volume licensing or any channel other than the Microsoft 365 admin centre, both must be acquired through that same channel, preferably in one transaction. That sentence is aimed at partner and volume orders. Microsoft also documents alternative routes to authoring, so the tenant licence on its own is an incomplete order rather than a useless one.
What it is
Microsoft's low code platform for building and publishing AI agents. This entry is the tenant licence, listed in the Microsoft 365 admin centre simply as Copilot Studio. It is a subscription with monthly capacity, not a one off purchase.
Licences, and the routes that exist
For the standard per user route Microsoft documents both of these as required to create and manage agents:
- a tenant licence, acquired by an administrator and not assignable to individual users
- a Copilot Studio User Licence, assigned to each person who creates and manages agents
Microsoft separately documents other ways to reach Copilot Studio: a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, the Copilot Studio authors role in the Power Platform admin center used with pay as you go, and a trial licence. So a tenant that already holds Microsoft 365 Copilot is not necessarily blocked. What the tenant licence on its own does not do is give a named maker the standard per user entitlement.
In a correctly licensed organisation the admin centre shows two subscriptions, Copilot Studio and Copilot Studio User License, and only the second is assignable.
The channel rule that catches partner orders
Microsoft states that if Copilot Studio is purchased through volume licensing or any channel other than the Microsoft 365 admin centre, both the tenant licence and the user licences must be acquired through that channel, preferably as part of a single transaction. A tenant licence bought through one route and user licences through another is not the supported shape.
Capacity and enforcement
Consumption is metered in Copilot Credits, which replaced the earlier term messages on 1 September 2025 with no change to the quantity per prepaid pack or the pay as you go rate. Credits come from prepaid pack subscriptions, a pay as you go meter linked to an Azure subscription, or a one year prepurchase plan. Capacity is pooled across the tenant and allocated to environments in the Power Platform admin center, which is also where consumption is monitored. Microsoft's pages differ on how much of that reporting is aggregated, so check what your own admin centre shows before relying on a particular view.
Two rules govern the pool. Capacity is enforced monthly and unused credits do not carry over. Enforcement is not immediate at 100 per cent: Microsoft allows a degree of overage as a grace period and triggers enforcement when a tenant reaches 125 per cent of prepaid capacity, at which point admins are notified and custom agents are disabled until capacity is increased or the period resets.
Who does not need a licence
Microsoft states that users of your agents do not need a special licence: once an agent is published, anyone who can reach it can interact with it. Guest users of the tenant cannot access Copilot Studio itself.
What a Microsoft 365 Copilot tenant already holds, with the conditions attached
Microsoft states that for users licensed with Microsoft 365 Copilot, agents used in Copilot Chat, Microsoft Teams or SharePoint for classic answers, generative answers or Microsoft Graph tenant grounding do not count against the Copilot Studio pack or meter.
The conditions are part of the rule. Microsoft scopes the no charge treatment to employee facing usage where the agent operates under the authenticated Microsoft 365 Copilot licensed user's identity, and states that usage is subject to fair usage limits. Unlicensed users of the same agent are charged. So an internal agent used by a fully licensed team can be free of credits, while the same agent opened to everyone is not.
Two scoping notes
The licensing rules above describe agents built on Copilot Studio's standard harness, which is what Microsoft's licensing pages document. Agents and workflows built on the newer GitHub Copilot harness are billed differently, and Microsoft states that harness charges credits from the moment building starts, including previewing and testing, rather than after publish.
A trial licence lets you create agents and test them in the test chat panel, but you cannot publish the agent.
Is this licence on its own enough to start building agents?
Not for the standard per user route, which Microsoft documents as a tenant licence plus a Copilot Studio User Licence for each maker. This is the tenant licence and it cannot be assigned to a user. Microsoft documents other routes to authoring, including a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, the Copilot Studio authors role with pay as you go, and a trial.
Does it matter where we buy the user licences?
Yes. Microsoft states that if Copilot Studio is purchased through volume licensing or any channel other than the Microsoft 365 admin centre, both the tenant licence and the user licences must be acquired through that channel, preferably as part of a single transaction.
Do the people using our agent need licensing?
No. Microsoft states that users of your agents do not need a special licence once the agent is published. Guest users of the tenant cannot access Copilot Studio itself.
What happens if we exceed our capacity?
Capacity is enforced monthly and unused credits do not carry over. Microsoft allows a degree of overage as a grace period and triggers enforcement at 125 per cent of prepaid capacity, notifying admins and disabling custom agents until capacity is increased or the period resets.
We already have Microsoft 365 Copilot. Do we need this as well?
Possibly not for those scenarios. Microsoft states that for users licensed with Microsoft 365 Copilot, agents in Copilot Chat, Teams or SharePoint using classic answers, generative answers or Microsoft Graph tenant grounding do not count against the pack or meter. That is scoped to employee facing use under the licensed user's identity and subject to fair usage limits, and unlicensed users of the same agent are charged.
Can we publish an agent on the trial licence?
No. Microsoft states that the trial licence lets you create agents and test them in the test chat panel, but you cannot publish the agent.
- Vendor
- Microsoft
- Category
- AI
- Type
- SaaS
- Billing
- Monthly
- Commitment
- 1-Year
- Available terms
- Monthly, 1-Year
- Unit price
- €163.30 /mo
- SKU
- MST-NCE-CPS-C100
- 1You prepay through ITSailor (Malta). VAT handled, reverse-charge for valid EU VAT IDs.
- 2We provision through Pax8 wholesale into your Microsoft tenant, with no third-party MSP markup.
- 3You keep the tenant. Sovereign by default: every engagement closes with an Exit Kit.
AvePoint tyGraph for Copilot Adoption
AvePoint tyGraph for Copilot Adoption
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