⚡

Copilot Studio Credit Estimator

Standard harness vs GitHub Copilot harness — model the burn before it models you.

★ GitHub

1 Pick a starting scenario

2 Workload volume

users

🧱 Standard Harness

deterministic · rate-card billing

Topics, triggers, agent flows, connectors. Free to author until publish. Per-feature Copilot Credit rates; B2E usage included for M365 Copilot licensed users.

Per-session feature mix

K
K
0
0
0

🐙 GitHub Copilot Harness

agentic · usage-based billing

Goal-oriented reasoning loop, skills, file generation, self-recovery. Credits cover LLM tokens, tools, knowledge, MCPs and the harness itself. Bills from the first build action — no M365 Copilot inclusion.

Task complexity mix (per session)

%
%
5%
Advanced: credit midpoints per tier

Development burn ?

0
0
0

3 Pricing & procurement

%

4 The verdict

🧱 Standard

$0
/month · 0 credits
  • Per session $0
  • Best buy —
  • Absorbed by M365 licenses $0
— cost multiple

🐙 GitHub Copilot

$0
/month · 0 credits
  • Per task $0
  • Best buy —
  • Dev burn share 0%

Credit composition

Monthly cost vs sessions ?

Pack optimizer ?

Build phase vs steady state ?

5 What money can't buy — capability gap

Cost is only half the decision. Some workloads are architecturally impossible on the Standard harness, no matter the budget.

Capability
🧱 Standard
🐙 GitHub Copilot
Deterministic topic routing (auditable, can't hallucinate)
✓ Native
~ Emergent
Free authoring & iteration until publish
✓ Yes
✗ Metered from first build action
M365 Copilot license inclusion (B2E = $0 runtime)
✓ Yes (fair use)
✗ Never — all usage billed
Multi-step reasoning with self-correction & retry
✗ Stuck on failure path
✓ Plan → execute → recover
Native file generation (Word / Excel / PDF)
✗ No
✓ Yes
Reusable Markdown skills (SKILL.md)
✗ No
✓ Yes
Agent flows (cheap deterministic automation)
✓ 13 cr / 100 actions
✗ Workflows bill per credit incl. triggers
Predictable per-interaction cost
✓ Fixed rate card
~ 100 to 500+ cr range per task

6 The rate card, memorized for you

🧱 Standard harness — fixed per-feature rates (credits)

Classic answer
Generative answer
Agent action
Tenant graph grounding
/100Agent flow actions
/pageContent processing
/1K tokReasoning surcharge
0.1–10/1K tokAI tools (basic→premium)
10–75/minVoice tiers

🐙 GitHub Copilot harness — usage-based, credits per task (planning midpoints)

Light task · published range 100–300
Medium task · published range 300–500
Heavy task · published range 500+

The two harnesses don't share a billing model: the Standard harness bills a fixed, deterministic rate per feature, while the GitHub Copilot harness bills whatever a task actually consumes — tokens, tools, knowledge, MCPs and the harness itself — so its cards are planning midpoints inside Microsoft's published ranges. Unlock only if the published rates change; edits apply to every calculation on this page and are flagged in exported reports.

Sources & disclaimer

Planning estimate only — not a billing commitment. Rates exclude bring-your-own-model (Azure Foundry) configurations. GitHub Copilot harness tiers are published as ranges; actual burn depends on agent design, knowledge sources and tool calls. M365 Copilot inclusion is B2E-only, subject to fair-use limits Microsoft can revise, excludes Computer-Using Agents, and for agent flows applies only to the "When an agent calls the flow" trigger. Always verify against the current Copilot Studio Licensing Guide before procurement.