Microsoft’s AI products are steadily moving away from the familiar per-user licensing model. Consumption-based billing via Copilot Credits is not limited to just experiences like Copilot Cowork anymore. Building new apps to run on the Microsoft cloud platform will now require Copilot Credits for the AI-assisted development part.
I joined Markus Erlandsson on the CRM Rocks podcast to discuss what this means in practice. We covered the recent Copilot Studio licensing changes, why credit-based billing is difficult to forecast for information-worker tasks, and why the most capable agent experiences are not necessarily the ones with the most predictable cost.
The conversation also touches on Copilot Cowork, Work IQ, the distinction between standard and advanced Copilot Studio harnesses, and the emerging question behind autonomous agents: when an agent works independently, who pays for its tokens, its SaaS licenses and its governance layer?
Below is a visualization of the themes we cover in the podcast, put together with Gemini Notebooks. You can also view it on my ShareSlides site.
For the latest Copilot Credits Guide and other licensing PDF documents, you can always find the live links from the Resources page of The Licensing Guide blog.
