Category: Copilot cost and licensing

Short version: Microsoft is ending the AI Builder credits that come bundled with Power Apps, Power Automate and Dynamics 365 licenses. The cut-off is not November 1 for everyone. Licenses bought or renewed before November 1, 2026 keep their seeded credits until the end of their contract term. From your first renewal on or after that date, AI Builder features in your apps and flows draw on Copilot Credits instead, and if none are available, those runs stop.

What is changing

AI Builder powers features such as invoice and receipt processing, document processing, text recognition and prompts inside Power Apps and Power Automate. Until now, many organizations ran these features on seeded credits included with premium licenses, for example 5,000 AI Builder credits per Power Automate Premium license and 500 per Power Apps Premium license, up to 1,000,000 per tenant.

Microsoft is replacing AI Builder credits with Copilot Credits, the same currency used by Copilot Studio. The features keep working. What changes is how they are paid for.

Microsoft states that starting November 1, 2026, no new or renewed Power Platform or Dynamics 365 licenses will receive seeded AI Builder credits, and that customers who purchased or renewed eligible licenses before that date keep them through the end of the applicable contract term. Many articles, and one line on Microsoft’s own credit management page, still give November 1, 2026 as the removal date for everyone. Microsoft’s licensing overview and End of AI Builder credits pages are explicit that existing seeded credits are honored through the end of the contract term.

There is also no automatic conversion. Microsoft is explicit that AI Builder credits are not converted into Copilot Credits.

What happens to your apps and flows

From November 1, 2025, AI Builder features in apps and flows already work in a dual mode: they use AI Builder credits first, then Copilot Credits. Once your seeded credits stop, every run falls through to Copilot Credits. If the environment has none, the run is blocked.

Blocked runs are the real risk. A flow that extracts data from invoices or reads documents can start failing partway through a month once credits run out, and the problem may only surface when a downstream process is missing data.

What it costs in Copilot Credits

Microsoft publishes a rate for each AI Builder capability. At pay-as-you-go pricing, one Copilot Credit costs $0.01. The table below shows the most common capabilities, with the cost of 1,000 units at pay-as-you-go rates.

A worked example

A finance team has 10 Power Automate Premium licenses. Together they bring 50,000 seeded AI Builder credits a month. Their invoice flow processes about 1,500 pages a month, which uses 48,000 AI Builder credits (32 per page), so today it runs at no extra cost.

After their first renewal on or after November 1, 2026, the same 1,500 pages need 12,000 Copilot Credits (8 per page). On pay-as-you-go that is about $120 a month, or $1,440 a year, that was not in last year’s budget. A $200 capacity pack of 25,000 credits would also cover it, but costs more than pay-as-you-go at this volume.

Your numbers will differ. Model choice matters too: a basic prompt costs 15 times less per token than a standard one.

How to check your exposure

1. Find your renewal dates. Check when your Power Apps, Power Automate and Dynamics 365 subscriptions renew: in the Microsoft 365 admin center under Billing, or in your Enterprise Agreement or partner records. The first renewal on or after November 1, 2026 is your deadline.
2. See how many AI Builder credits you use. In the Power Platform admin center, go to Licensing, then Capacity add-ons, and open the Summary tab for your overall AI Builder credit consumption. The admin center also offers a consumption report by environment.
3. List the apps and flows that use AI Builder. Note which ones are business critical, which environment they run in, and roughly how many pages, images or tokens they process each month.
4. Convert to Copilot Credits. Multiply monthly volume by the rates above. That is your monthly Copilot Credit need once seeded credits end.
5. Make sure each environment can pay. Either allocate prepaid Copilot Credit capacity to it or link it to an Azure subscription through a pay-as-you-go billing policy. Without one of these, runs are blocked.

Your options

• Pay-as-you-go: link the environment to an Azure subscription and pay $0.01 per Copilot Credit used. Best for low or unpredictable volume.
• Prepaid capacity packs: $200 per month for 25,000 Copilot Credits, pooled across the tenant and allocated to environments. Cheaper than pay-as-you-go once you consistently use more than 20,000 credits a month per pack.
• Pre-purchase plan: a one-year prepaid commitment for larger volumes, with discounts of up to 20%.
• Reduce what you consume: use a lighter model where it is good enough, avoid re-processing the same document, and retire flows nobody depends on.

If you still have AI Builder capacity add-ons, Microsoft notes they reach end of life on November 1, 2026 and asks customers to turn off auto-renew in the Microsoft 365 admin center or Partner Center. Existing add-on credits keep working until those licenses expire.

Compare packs and pay-as-you-go

Once you know your monthly Copilot Credit usage, our free calculator shows whether prepaid packs or pay-as-you-go cost less, and how much an underused pack wastes. It runs in your browser and needs no sign-up.

Sources

• Microsoft Learn: End of AI Builder credits (updated October 2, 2026)
• Microsoft Learn: AI Builder licensing overview and rate table (updated September 8, 2026)
• Microsoft Learn: AI Builder credit management (updated October 8, 2026)
• Microsoft Learn: Manage Copilot Studio credits and capacity

Checked against Microsoft documentation on October 26, 2026. Licensing details change often; confirm against your agreement before making purchasing decisions.