Understand estimated credit usage

To help you understand the impact of your agent design choices while you build and test, Copilot Studio provides estimated Copilot Credit usage in near real time across the Preview, Evaluate, and Monitor experiences. The estimates in Preview and Evaluate are near-real-time approximations that give you immediate visibility into how many credits an action is likely to consume, without waiting for the full billing pipeline to complete. The view in Monitor is updated a few times a day and shows the accurate number of credits consumed for all events processed up to that point. End to end, this means that while you interact with your agent, you get an approximation of credits consumed in Preview and Evaluate. Those events are then processed, and the final, accurate number is reflected in Monitor within a few hours.

How estimated credit usage works

Copilot Studio calculates each estimate using information available at runtime, including the AI models used, the tools and actions executed, and the harness and orchestration components involved in generating the result. Using this information, Copilot Studio approximates how many Copilot Credits were consumed and surfaces that information in near real time, so you can evaluate cost while you build, test, and iterate.

Identify estimated credit values

Whenever a credit value is an estimate, the user interface includes an information icon and an explanatory message indicating that the value is intended for planning purposes and will be finalized later.

In Preview, you see a running estimate of Copilot Credits used during the current session. Select the credit estimate to see the tooltip.

In Evaluate, you see the estimated Copilot Credits used for an evaluation run.

View final credit consumption

For the most accurate view of credit usage, use the Monitor experience and review the Total estimated credits used metric for your agent. This value reflects the number of Copilot Credits that will be billed for the selected period and serves as the source of truth for credit consumption reporting.

Because final credit processing takes longer than estimating usage in real time, Monitor reporting is subject to a reporting delay. It takes a while for this data to update, so the number might not reflect the entire bill until all activities for the selected period are processed. Once processing is complete, these values are the authoritative measure of credits consumed.