Since Copilot Cowork arrived in June 2026, one question keeps coming up: what does Copilot actually cost now? Two things need to be told apart. On one side, Microsoft 365 Copilot, the assistant many already know, which answers and writes in Word, Excel, Teams or Outlook: its subscription does not change. On the other, Copilot Cowork, far more recent: an agent that carries out entire tasks on your behalf, autonomously and in the cloud. That one is now paid for on usage, in credits. Good news for an IT lead: this spend is capped, and nothing runs until IT has switched it on. Here is how it works, with worked examples.
- Your Microsoft 365 Copilot licence stays unchanged and includes Copilot in Word, Excel, Teams, Outlook and chat.
- Copilot Cowork, the assistant that executes end-to-end tasks, is billed on top, on usage, via Copilot Credits.
- A credit costs a little under one cent. A simple task uses few; a complex task uses many.
- IT decides who can use it and how much they can spend, with hard caps. No nasty surprises once those limits are set.
Copilot Cowork, what is it?
Where the Copilot assistant answers a question or drafts an outline, Cowork acts. You describe the outcome you want, and it plans then executes a multi-step task, end to end. It coordinates your Microsoft 365 apps (emails, calendar, files, Teams), draws on your organisation’s context, and delivers finished work rather than a mere suggestion, under your control at the key steps.
The key difference to remember: Cowork runs in the cloud, not on your computer. If you know Claude Cowork or Claude Code, it is the same agent logic, but hosted at Microsoft: nothing runs on your machine, and the task keeps going even with your computer switched off. In practice, you can hand it things like preparing a client-meeting brief from your emails and CRM, producing a recurring weekly report, or compiling several sources into a ready-to-review summary.
Why Microsoft is moving to usage-based pricing
A fixed per-person subscription works well for an assistant that answers questions. It holds up less well for an agent that plans and executes work in several steps, because the effort involved, and therefore the real cost, varies enormously from one task to another. Microsoft has therefore added a consumption model for these uses, starting with Copilot Cowork, made generally available on 16 June 2026.
The Copilot credit, in plain terms
Think of the Copilot Credit like the tokens at a car wash: the express programme costs a few tokens, the full wash needs more. You only pay when the AI actually does work for you, and one token is worth a little under one cent. The number of tokens spent on a task depends on four things, in plain language:
- The model used: a powerful model costs more than a lightweight one.
- The amount of data to read: the more the AI has to dig through your emails, files and calendars, the heavier it is.
- The number of actions: sending an email, creating a document, updating a file, every step counts.
- The duration: a long task mobilises more resources.
What stays included, what costs credits
| Included in the Microsoft 365 Copilot licence | Billed in credits, on usage |
|---|---|
| Copilot Chat (questions, writing, analysis) | Copilot Cowork (end-to-end task execution) |
| Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams | Copilot Studio workflows (each run consumes credits) |
| Agents created in Copilot Studio, for licensed users | Dynamics 365 agents and Power Platform workloads |
| Built-in Researcher, Analyst, Facilitator agents | Work IQ APIs (billed on usage) |
| Understanding of your work context (Work IQ) |
The rule to remember: asking Copilot is included, having it execute autonomous work is billed on usage.
How much does a task cost? Three examples
Microsoft groups Cowork tasks into three sizes. The ranges below are planning estimates and vary with the real complexity:
- Light task, 70 to 200 credits (about 0.60 to 1.60 francs). Example: preparing a weekly team update every Monday morning, from the calendar and a few priorities.
- Medium task, 400 to 600 credits (about 3 to 5 francs). Example: putting together a client-meeting brief, gathering emails, calendar and CRM data into a summary note.
- Heavy task, more than 1500 credits (more than 12 francs). Example: analysing six months of usage data to produce a board-ready summary.
The right reflex: reason by task and by user profile, not uniformly per person.
A worked example: a 5-user SME in French-speaking Switzerland
Take a 20-person firm where 5 staff use Cowork daily. We split them into two profiles and apply the average amounts above. Figures are purely illustrative, to be refined with Microsoft’s official estimator.
| Profile | No. | Tasks/month (estimate) | Credits/month | Monthly cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Regular use | 3 | 15 light + 3 medium | ~3,500 / person | ~28 CHF / person |
| Intensive use | 2 | 20 light + 10 medium + 4 heavy | ~13,700 / person | ~110 CHF / person |
Total for these 5 users: roughly 300 francs per month in Cowork credits, on top of the Microsoft 365 Copilot licences. A budget you can steer: simply set a monthly cap at this level, and raise it once real usage is observed.
Keeping the bill under control
This is the part that reassures most. All the spend is steered from the cost-management dashboard in the Microsoft 365 admin centre. In practice, IT can:
- Decide who is allowed to use Cowork and with what budget, before any spend.
- Set hard caps at the organisation, group or user level, to prevent any overrun.
- Receive alerts as a threshold approaches.
- Track consumption in real time and see, user by user, where the credits go.
Two simple savings levers: route routine tasks to a cheaper model, and keep heavy usage for the cases that justify it. For a figure tailored to your organisation, Microsoft provides a free estimator (the Customer Cowork Estimator). Our field advice: start with a small cap, observe for three to four weeks, then adjust.
The Swiss angle: budget and data
Three points for an organisation in French-speaking Switzerland. First, allow a small margin in your annual budget: Cowork’s pricing is recent and still liable to change. Next, usage-based billing makes monitoring worthwhile, but caps prevent any overrun. Finally, Cowork acts on your Microsoft 365 data (emails, files, calendars) to carry out its tasks: the question of data residence and nFADP compliance arises as it does for any AI processing of business data, a topic we address separately.
Our recommendation: start small and measure
Rather than opening Cowork to the whole organisation, start with a small base of volunteer power users. Give each a modest budget, for example 20 to 30 francs of credits per month, with a hard cap. Then measure over a few weeks: which tasks do they use it for, how much time do they save, what concrete results come out of it? These few indicators tell you whether the return on investment is there, before widening to other teams. This is the approach we put in place with the organisations we support.
FAQ
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PrismIA helps organisations in French-speaking Switzerland scope and roll out Copilot: credit-budget estimation, governance caps and team training. Explore our AI training · Audit and consulting.