Microsoft's new Copilot app puts Cowork, Code, and Autopilot on usage-based billing

Microsoft is splitting what Copilot costs into two parts. Quick questions and drafting stay on the per-user subscription, while agents that run for hours are billed by how much they use. For enterprise customers, nothing on the metered side runs until an administrator sets a spending policy.

What the new app contains

Home combines Chat and Cowork in one place. Chat handles quick questions and drafts, and Cowork takes a delegated task and runs it until it returns a finished result. Office in Copilot brings Word, Excel, and PowerPoint into the same view.

Code builds apps, trackers, dashboards, and automations from a plain-language description. Microsoft says it runs on the same underlying technology as GitHub Copilot. The code runs in a sandboxed environment inside your organization's Microsoft 365 tenant.

Autopilot, previously called Scout, is an agent hosted in the cloud with its own identity, memory, and computer. It can watch channels, follow up on threads, and run recurring work without waiting for a prompt.

When each part arrives

• Home rolls out through the Frontier early-access program in the coming weeks.
• Code reaches the Frontier program at the end of September and comes to Microsoft 365 Premium and Pro subscribers as a preview later in 2026.
• Autopilot expands to a private preview at the end of September.
• Copilot Managed Runtime, which hosts apps built in Cowork, Code, and Copilot Studio, has been in preview since September 25, 2026.

How the two billing models split

The user subscription license (USL) is priced per user per month. It covers Copilot in Chat and in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams, along with model selection and Auto, which picks a model for each request.

GPT-5.6 and Sonnet 5 are included in the USL, and Microsoft says new models such as Opus 5 will be included with limits. If you reach a limit, you get a warning first. Then you choose between switching to Auto at no extra cost and moving to credits.

Usage-based billing (UBB) is counted in Copilot Credits. It covers Cowork, Code, Autopilot, and frontier models such as Fable and Astra, and it requires a USL. Both billing models currently run on models from OpenAI and Anthropic.

What administrators control

For enterprise customers, UBB features are visible in the product but stay off until an administrator creates a spending policy in the Microsoft 365 admin center. Nothing is billed before that.

A policy sets budgets for the whole tenant and for groups, caps for individual users, and alerts at spending thresholds. Policies can also be managed through the Microsoft Graph API. A setting that limits which model families each group can use is rolling out in Cowork first.

Cost management now covers Code and Managed Runtime as well as Cowork. Microsoft says Copilot Studio agents follow in October.