Microsoft Copilot Studio

Microsoft Copilot Studio is an end-to-end conversational and agentic AI platform for creating, customizing, and publishing AI agents. It originated as Power Virtual Agents, which reached general availability in December 2019, and was rebranded and rebuilt around generative AI as Microsoft Copilot Studio in November 2023, when Microsoft shifted the underlying architecture from rule-based intent matching to GPT-powered generative orchestration. Existing Power Virtual Agents bots continue to run without interruption under the new name, now with access to expanded AI capabilities.

Copilot Studio lets builders create agents using natural language prompts or a graphical low-code interface, ranging from conversational agents that answer questions and guide workflows to autonomous agents that plan, learn, and escalate tasks independently. Agents can be grounded in an organization's SharePoint libraries, Dataverse tables, and more than 1,400 external connectors, and can complete real actions through flows, prompts, and APIs. The platform supports multi-agent orchestration for routing complex tasks between specialized agents from Microsoft or partner providers, voice-enabled agents for phone support, and a growing Agent Store of pre-built templates for scenarios in finance, HR, IT, legal, and customer service.

Built for both business users and developers inside the Microsoft ecosystem, Copilot Studio publishes agents into Microsoft 365 apps like Teams and SharePoint, as well as external channels including websites, apps, and messaging platforms. Governance, security, and cost management run through the Power Platform admin center, with usage tracking via Microsoft Purview and Viva Insights. According to Microsoft, 90% of the Fortune 500 use Copilot Studio, with customers like Estée Lauder, Dow, Amgen, and Virgin Money using it to build agents for insight generation, cost savings, R&D acceleration, and customer engagement.

Microsoft Copilot Studio is included at no extra cost for Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses, priced at $30 per user per month (paid yearly), which covers unlimited internal agent building and usage within Microsoft 365. For standalone or external-facing use, Copilot Studio is sold as tenant-wide Copilot Credit packs of 25,000 credits for $200 per pack per month, where credits are consumed per agent action or response at varying rates; a pay-as-you-go meter is also available with no upfront commitment, billing only for credits consumed at the end of the monthly period. Both options require an Azure subscription to use agents, and Microsoft offers a $200 Azure credit for new accounts. A pre-purchase plan lets organizations save up to 20% by buying Copilot Credit Commit Units upfront, with automatic pay-as-you-go coverage once prepaid credits run out. There are no feature differences between the Copilot Credit packs and the pay-as-you-go meter; the only difference is billing structure.