How agent billing works

Audience: ISMS administrators and Microsoft 365 global administrators preparing to enable the optional Certaria AI Agent.

Scope: How to configure Microsoft Copilot Credits for the optional Certaria AI Agent layer. The Certaria AI Agent is optional. Skip this guide entirely if you only want the always-on Microsoft Teams workflow base (compliance reminders, incident forms, policy acknowledgement cards).

On the figures. Microsoft sets and changes these prices. This guide reflects the published Copilot Credits billing model as of 30 May 2026; check the current Microsoft documentation before you budget. See the Microsoft Copilot Studio Licensing Guide and the requirements-messages-management Learn page.

What you are enabling

The Certaria AI Agent is a Copilot Studio custom-engine agent published to your Microsoft Teams channel (and, when published in the v1.0.1 release, also to Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat). Once enabled, your staff can interact with Certaria conversationally: ask compliance questions, log incidents through dialogue, request control evidence summaries. The AI Agent runs in addition to the always-on workflow Adaptive Cards that ship with the base v1.0 product.

The agent itself is included in your Certaria managed solution at no extra cost. What you pay for is the Microsoft Copilot Credits that the agent consumes when it runs. Credits are billed by Microsoft directly to your tenant, with no Talastron markup.

The Copilot Credits rate card

Per Microsoft’s published Copilot Credits billing rates:

Agent feature	Credits per action	Free for M365 Copilot licensed users?
Classic answer (pre-authored response)	1	Yes (subject to fair-usage limits)
Generative answer (AI-generated response)	2	Yes
Agent action (trigger, topic, or tool call)	5	Yes
Tenant graph grounding for messages	10	Yes
Agent flow actions	13 per 100 actions	Yes

Typical 50-employee engaged usage with the Certaria AI Agent runs around 3,000-5,000 credits/month, depending on how heavily your staff use the conversational interface for tasks, incidents, and acknowledgements.

Three billing paths

You choose how to fund Copilot Credits. The three paths below are presented PAYG-first because pay-as-you-go is the broadest-applicability path. It works for every Microsoft 365 customer regardless of existing Azure or Copilot licence position. Choose the path that best matches your tenant’s existing setup.

Path A: Pay-as-you-go via your Azure subscription

Best for: customers who already have an Azure subscription, or are comfortable creating one. Gives you the most flexible cost control with a per-agent monthly hard cap.

How it works: Microsoft meters Copilot Credit consumption against your Azure subscription per the published pay-as-you-go meters and bills monthly for actual usage. You configure a per-agent monthly hard cap in the Power Platform admin centre to prevent surprise overages.

Setup steps:

1. In the Microsoft 365 admin centre, ensure you have an active Azure subscription linked to your tenant.
2. In the Power Platform admin centre, go to Billing policies and create a billing policy linked to your Azure subscription.
3. Assign the billing policy to the environment where Certaria is installed.
4. In Licensing > Copilot Studio > Manage Agents, set a monthly credit cap for the Certaria AI Agent. Recommended starting cap: 6,000 credits/month for a 50-employee customer; adjust based on engagement.
5. Return to the Certaria setup wizard or the ISMS Management Hub landing page and click Enable AI Agent.

Typical monthly cost: approximately £15-40/month at 50-employee engaged usage. You can cap below this if you want a tighter budget. The agent gracefully disables for the remainder of the month if the cap is reached, and re-enables when the next billing cycle starts.

Path B: Prepaid capacity pack via your Microsoft 365 admin centre

Best for: customers who prefer prepaid budgeting and want to avoid setting up an Azure subscription. Each pack gives you a known fixed quantity of credits.

How it works: You buy a Microsoft Copilot Studio prepaid capacity pack from the Microsoft 365 admin centre Marketplace. Each pack provides 25,000 Copilot Credits per month at approximately £160/pack indicative (check the live Marketplace at purchase for your exact local pricing). Credits replenish monthly with the subscription. No Azure subscription is required for the purchase itself.

Setup steps:

1. In the Microsoft 365 admin centre, go to Marketplace and search for “Microsoft Copilot Studio.”
2. Select the Microsoft Copilot Studio product, choose a subscription length and billing frequency, and select the number of packs you want (each pack provides 25,000 credits/month).
3. After purchase, in the Power Platform admin centre go to Licensing > Copilot Studio > Summary, find the Prepaid capacity card, and click Manage capacity to allocate the credits to your Certaria environment.
4. Return to the Certaria setup wizard or the ISMS Management Hub landing page and click Enable AI Agent.

Typical monthly cost: one pack at approximately £160/month indicative covers around 4-8 months of typical 50-employee engaged usage. The 25,000-credit allocation is significantly larger than the 3,000-5,000 credits/month a 50-employee customer typically consumes. For most SMEs, a single pack covers months of usage with significant headroom.

Important caveat (Copilot-Chat-only scoping): Microsoft’s standalone Copilot credit policy mechanism (which lets a prepaid pack run without any pay-as-you-go fallback) is currently scoped to Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and SharePoint agents per Microsoft’s capacity packs guidance. The Certaria AI Agent is a Copilot Studio custom-engine agent published to Teams, which may fall outside the Option A standalone-credit-policy scope depending on how Microsoft expands the mechanism in future waves. In practice this means: if your pack is exhausted mid-month and you have no pay-as-you-go fallback configured, the Certaria AI Agent may become unavailable for the remainder of that month. Mitigation: either (a) buy enough packs that you genuinely cannot exhaust them, or (b) pair Path B with Path A as a pay-as-you-go safety net for overage handling. Microsoft calls option (b) “Configuration B” in their billing-policy documentation: you pay the prepaid pack rate up to the pack’s limit, then PAYG rate for any usage above. We recommend the (b) safety-net approach for customers who anticipate variable AI Agent usage patterns.

Path C: Use your existing Microsoft 365 Copilot licences

Best for: customers whose teams are already licensed for Microsoft 365 Copilot. Zero incremental cost. The Certaria AI Agent’s consumption is included in your existing M365 Copilot licence per the published rate card footnote 1, subject to fair-usage limits Microsoft may update.

How it works: Microsoft 365 Copilot-licensed users get no-charge access to Copilot Studio agent consumption (Classic answers, Generative answers, Agent actions, Tenant graph grounding, Agent flow actions) for employee-facing Business to Employee usage scenarios where the agent operates using the authenticated user’s identity.

Setup steps:

1. Confirm your staff have active Microsoft 365 Copilot licences assigned (Microsoft 365 admin centre > Billing > Licenses).
2. In the Certaria setup wizard or the ISMS Management Hub landing page, click Enable AI Agent.
3. No billing policy or capacity pack configuration is needed. The agent operates under each user’s M365 Copilot licence automatically.

Typical monthly cost: £0 incremental for licensed users. You are already paying for Microsoft 365 Copilot (typically around £24/user/month at Enterprise pricing); the Certaria AI Agent’s consumption is included in that existing entitlement. Caveat: the no-charge consumption is subject to fair-usage limits that Microsoft can update as the product evolves. For most SME usage patterns this is not a practical concern, but heavy AI Agent users may eventually receive guidance from Microsoft to supplement with Path A or B if fair-usage thresholds are exceeded.

Which path should I choose?

Your situation	Recommended path
You already have an Azure subscription and want flexible per-agent monthly hard caps	Path A (PAYG)
You prefer prepaid budgeting and want to avoid Azure subscription setup	Path B (prepaid pack)
Your staff already have Microsoft 365 Copilot licences	Path C (existing licences; zero incremental cost)
You want maximum predictability with overage safety	Paths B + A together (prepaid pack with PAYG fallback)
You’re not sure yet	Start with Path A at a low monthly cap (around 3,000 credits, approximately £24/month). Switch to Path B or C once you understand your engagement pattern.

What if I don’t enable the AI Agent at all?

The Certaria v1.0 base product runs perfectly well without the AI Agent. The always-on workflow features delivered via Microsoft Teams Adaptive Cards (compliance task reminders, incident report forms, policy acknowledgement cards) continue to operate using your existing Microsoft 365 Business Premium licences. You can defer the AI Agent enablement indefinitely, or enable it later from the ISMS Management Hub landing page.

Need help?

• Email support@certaria.co.uk for billing-path setup questions.
• For Microsoft-side billing policy issues (Azure subscriptions, billing policy creation, Power Platform admin centre capacity allocation), Microsoft’s documentation is authoritative. Start at the pay-as-you-go set up guide.
• For Copilot Credits consumption monitoring, the Power Platform admin centre’s Licensing > Copilot Studio > Summary page shows real-time consumption by environment and per agent.