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Build surfaces — where you build, who controls it, how it's billed

Three questions come up the moment an organization gets serious about agents, and they're usually answered on three different pages:

  1. Where can we actually build agents?
  2. Who controls each of those places?
  3. How is each one billed?

This page answers all three in the same look. It maps every surface on the ramp to its governance control plane and its billing model, so a champion, an admin, and a finance owner can read the same table and agree on what's allowed, who owns it, and what it costs.

Unofficial — verify against Microsoft docs

This is community guidance to help you reason about the shape of the controls and billing — not a contract or a configuration runbook. Names, rates, defaults, and capabilities evolve. Always confirm specifics against the linked Microsoft documentation before you make a governance or budget decision.

The places you can build an agent

These are the three surfaces where a maker or developer authors a new agent. Read left to right: the further right you go, the more you build — and the more control (and cost ownership) shifts to you.

Build surface Where you build it Who can build (the maker gate) Who controls / governs it How it's billed
Agent Builder
low-code, inside M365 Copilot		 In the Microsoft 365 Copilot experience (Copilot Chat) — no separate tool Any licensed user your tenant allows to create and share agents Microsoft 365 admin center (agent create/share controls) + Purview; surfaced in the Agent 365 registry Included in the Microsoft 365 Copilot license. Generative answers are zero-rated in Agent Builder / on M365 surfaces without tenant-graph grounding; tenant-graph grounding meters at 10 credits/message, and unlicensed users on metered features accrue Copilot Credits (pay-as-you-go)
Copilot Studio
low-code, standalone designer		 In Copilot Studio, targeting a Power Platform environment Makers with a Copilot Studio license and a maker role in an environment Power Platform admin center + data policies (DLP), Purview maker audit, Microsoft Sentinel alerts, pre-publish security scan; Agent 365 registry Copilot Credits — pay-as-you-go, message packs, or pre-purchase. On M365 surfaces (Copilot Chat, Teams, SharePoint) licensed users accrue zero credits; unlicensed users and any external channel are charged at the per-feature rate card
Foundry
pro-code, engineered		 In Azure — a Microsoft Foundry project, via SDKs / CI-CD Developers with Azure RBAC roles on the subscription / project Azure RBAC + Azure Policy, managed identities, per-project isolation; governed as an "Enterprise AI app" in Purview; Agent 365 registry Azure consumption, billed to your Azure subscription: base-model inference tokens (input + output) per agent, Code Interpreter per session, File Search by vector storage, plus the standard-setup resources (Storage, Cosmos DB, AI Search, Key Vault)

Two things that are true of every build surface

  • The maker gate is a real control. In all three, an admin decides who may build and share — this is the first place to set policy, before an agent ever exists.
  • Licensing ≠ consumption. A license (M365 Copilot, Copilot Studio) is what unlocks the surface; billing is what you pay as agents run. The two are separate line items — the table's last column is about run-time cost, not the entitlement.

…and the surfaces you use (included for completeness)

Agents you consume rather than author still have a control plane and a billing model, and people routinely conflate them with the build surfaces — so here they are in the same shape.

Use surface Who controls / governs it How it's billed
Chat Microsoft 365 admin center Covered by the Microsoft 365 Copilot per-user license. Without a license, web-grounded chat is free but can't reason over your work content
First-party agents Microsoft 365 admin center → Integrated apps (per-agent enablement) Included in the Microsoft 365 Copilot license — the prebuilt agents aren't sold separately
Cowork Microsoft 365 admin center; Frontier enrollment for the full feature set Metered as Copilot Credits through the Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat pay-as-you-go meter — licensed users are covered by their license; unlicensed usage is metered

The two things to get right — control and billing

1 · Where you control — the governance planes

Every surface has an admin plane where you set who can build, what data an agent may touch, and how it's audited. There are three of them, and one control plane that spans all:

  • Microsoft 365 admin center — governs Chat, First-party agents, Cowork, and Agent Builder (agent create/share, Integrated apps, per-agent enablement).
  • Power Platform admin center — governs Copilot Studio: environments, data policies (DLP), connector approvals, publishing rights.
  • Azure (RBAC + Policy) — governs Foundry: least-privilege roles, managed identities, per-project isolation, network controls.
  • Microsoft Agent 365 — the control plane above all three: a single registry, an Entra Agent ID for every agent, and one Purview data-governance view across the whole fleet.

The full column-by-column detail — identity, data residency, Purview coverage, audit trail — lives on the Security & Governance page. This page is the "who owns the switch and what does it cost" companion to it.

2 · How it's billed — the three billing models

There are only three billing shapes to learn:

  • Per-user license (entitlement) — Microsoft 365 Copilot covers Chat, First-party agents, and Agent Builder's included features; a Copilot Studio license unlocks Studio. You pay per seat, not per run.
  • Copilot Credits (consumption) — Copilot Studio agents, and Cowork/Agent Builder features that meter (e.g. tenant-graph grounding, external channels, unlicensed users). Buy as pay-as-you-go, message packs, or a pre-purchase commit. Learn the model in How Copilot Credits work, then size it with the Credit Estimator.
  • Azure consumption (consumption) — Foundry agents bill for the model tokens and Azure resources they actually use, straight to your Azure subscription.

Where the numbers live

This page shows the model — which surface bills which way. For the credit model in depth (build size vs. run cost, the M365 Copilot discount) read How Copilot Credits work; for the rate card and the math (per-feature rates, licensed-vs-unlicensed zero-rating, message-pack sizing, a whole-portfolio roll-up) use the interactive Credit Estimator. For the entitlements (which license unlocks which stage, and who assigns it), see Licensing & Prerequisites.

The detail behind each build surface

The collapsible sections below add the granular control + billing detail and link straight to the authoritative Microsoft documentation.

Agent Builder — control & billing detail

Control. Agent Builder lives inside the Microsoft 365 Copilot experience, so it inherits M365 Copilot's protections and is governed from the Microsoft 365 admin center. Your tenant must allow makers to create and share agents — some orgs restrict this — and admins can set approval / publishing controls. Agents surface in the Agent 365 registry with an Entra Agent ID and Purview coverage.

Billing. Agent Builder's core generative answers are included in the Microsoft 365 Copilot license and are zero-rated on Microsoft 365 surfaces / in Agent Builder when they run without tenant-graph grounding. Tenant-graph grounding always meters at 10 credits/message, and unlicensed users on any metered feature accrue Copilot Credits (pay-as-you-go).

Copilot Studio — control & billing detail

Control. Studio agents live in Power Platform environments and are governed from the Power Platform admin center. Data policies (DLP) control maker & user authentication, knowledge sources, actions / connectors / skills, HTTP requests, channel publication, and autonomous triggers. Maker audit logs flow to Microsoft Purview, agent-activity alerts to Microsoft Sentinel, and a pre-publish security scan warns makers of risky configurations. CMK and Customer Lockbox are supported.

Billing. Studio meters in Copilot Credits (formerly "messages"), which you can consume pay-as-you-go, buy as message packs, or commit via pre-purchase. The key rule: on Microsoft 365 surfaces (Copilot Chat, Teams, SharePoint) authenticated users with an M365 Copilot license accrue zero credits — only unlicensed users do; on any external channel (custom website, external or custom app, standalone) all users are charged. Per-feature rates: classic answer 1, generative answer 2, agent action 5, tenant-graph grounding 10/message, agent-flow action 0.13, AI tools 0.1 / 1.5 / 10, voice 10 / 35 / 75.

Foundry — control & billing detail

Control. Foundry is a pro-code, developer-owned platform in Azure, not the M365 admin center. Access is Microsoft Entra ID + Azure RBAC (preferred over key auth) with least-privilege built-in roles and PIM for just-in-time access. The standard agent setup uses your own single-tenant Azure resources — Storage, Cosmos DB, AI Search, Key Vault — so agent data stays in your tenant, isolated per project, with system / user-assigned managed identities scoping access.

Billing. Foundry agents bill as Azure consumption, charged to your Azure subscription:

Where this leads

📚 Learn more.

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