Your AI Licence Became a Meter

From December 1 — not November 2, whatever most coverage says — new Microsoft 365 Copilot Business licences bought through a provider arrive with pay-as-you-go billing switched on. The default cap is 4,000 credits per user per month, in a unit Microsoft's own billing pages do not price.

On October 1, Microsoft told the companies that resell its software that pay-as-you-go billing becomes the default on new Microsoft 365 Copilot Business licences. A good deal of the coverage says that starts November 2. It does not. Microsoft moved it, and the announcement says so in its own first line: the date is December 1, and November 2 was "previously communicated." Our interest, and it is the least comfortable paragraph in this entry: that announcement was written for companies like ours. It describes your rising AI usage as a "Greater growth opportunity" leading to "upsell conversations." We would rather you set the cap. The technical part — you can skip this box Microsoft Partner Center announcements, October 2026, item dated October 1, 2026: "Update: Usage-based billing is default on for new Microsoft 365 Copilot Business licenses starting December 1, 2026." Microsoft's own summary: "The effective date for this change has been updated. Previously communicated as November 2, 2026, usage-based billing will now be enabled by default for new Microsoft 365 Copilot Business subscriptions purchased through CSP, beginning December 1, 2026." Impacted audience as stated: "CSP partners (distributors, indirect resellers, direct bill, SSPs), systems integrators, and software development companies selling Microsoft 365 Copilot Business." Scope: new purchases, "including standalone offers and bundles, with usage-based billing enabled by default." Eligible usage-based experiences named: Copilot Cowork, Work IQ APIs, and GitHub Copilot Harness. Default spending limit: "4,000 Copilot Credits per user per month, which can be adjusted by admins," with Microsoft's worked example that "a customer with 100 M365 Copilot Business users could consume up to 400,000 Copilot Credits per month under the default spending limit, with UBB charges based on actual usage." Initially unavailable in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Italy, Korea, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain. Partner Center sandbox environments available November 2. Microsoft's separate usage-based billing overview states that credits are "a common currency for eligible Microsoft services with usage-based billing" and that administrators can "Apply organization-level and user-level spending limits" — and neither page states a price per credit , pointing instead to a separate licensing guide and a credit estimator. What that actually means "Usage-based billing" means a meter. You keep paying the monthly price per person. On top of that, some of what the software does is charged by how much of it you use. "Copilot Credits" are the unit on that meter. Microsoft calls them a common currency across its services. What a credit costs is not on the page that sets your limit. "Default on" means nobody has to agree to it. Buy a new licence after December 1 through a provider and the meter is already running. Microsoft's reason is less setup — the licence arrives with the billing plumbing attached. The three things that actually matter One: the date is December 1. If you read November 2 somewhere, that was the old date and Microsoft replaced it. November 2 is when partners get test environments, which is probably how the two got mixed up. Two: it is new purchases only. Seats you already have are not changed by this. If you are not buying Copilot Business between now and the new year, this is not yet your problem — it is your next renewal's problem. Three: the cap is 4,000 credits per person per month, and your administrator can move it. Microsoft's own example is a hundred people able to burn up to 400,000 credits in a month under the default. That number is not a forecast of what you will spend. It is the ceiling nobody chose. The good news, and it is real Paying for what you use is usually better for a small business than paying for seats half the office never opens. Microsoft is also shipping cost controls rather than leaving you to discover the bill. For plenty of firms this will be cheaper than the licence they have now. What to do, and it is two questions Ask whoever sells you Microsoft licensing: what does a credit cost us, and what is our spending limit set to? Those are the two numbers, and neither is on the announcement. Then ask who can change the limit. A cap an administrator can raise is a cap until somebody is in a hurry. Do this before December 1 rather than after. Before, it is a decision. After, it is a conversation about an invoice.