Microsoft's Copilot super app comes with a meter attached

Redmond calls its pricing model an 'evolution' as advanced AI racks up usage charges

JadePuffer crims hijacked Azure identities and used them to blow up cloud resources 9 hours ago

JadePuffer crims hijacked Azure identities and used them to blow up cloud resources

Dutch government turns to NixOS for a sovereign desktop 14 hours ago

Dutch government turns to NixOS for a sovereign desktop

Microsoft tells nonprofits their deleted M365 data isn't coming back 16 hours ago

Microsoft tells nonprofits their deleted M365 data isn't coming back

Big AI's content problem: Take the work, keep the money 1 day ago

Big AI's content problem: Take the work, keep the money

Microsoft cells out, crams multiple values into Excel boxes 3 days ago

Microsoft cells out, crams multiple values into Excel boxes

Microsoft has unveiled its shiny new Copilot super app alongside an “evolved” pricing model to go with it, which means that customers will keep paying for a subscription and then cough up more when they want the really clever stuff.

The company outlined the changes alongside its expanded vision for Copilot, which is being turned into a single AI work hub spanning chat, Office apps, coding, and increasingly autonomous agents.

Microsoft calls the new pricing setup a combination of a User Subscription License (USL), charged per user per month, and Usage-Based Billing (UBB), which charges according to how much work Copilot does.

The regular subscription pays for what Microsoft calls “Everyday AI.” That's Copilot Chat, plus Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams. Users can pick which model they want, or leave it to Auto, which chooses based on accuracy, speed, and cost.

Then there's “Advanced AI.” Customers wanting Copilot to get stuck into more compute-hungry agentic work will also need usage-based billing (UBB). Microsoft says that this includes Cowork, Code, Autopilot, new agentic experiences in SharePoint, and frontier models including Astra and Fable. Crucially, those UBB charges are on top of the user subscription, not an alternative to it.

The meter itself isn't entirely new. Microsoft has already used consumption-based pricing for some AI services, including Cowork, and Copilot Credits provide the common currency for eligible services billed by usage.

What's changing is how central that model will become as Microsoft pushes Copilot further into agent territory.

Exactly how many credits disappear depends on what Copilot is asked to do. Microsoft says consumption can vary by the models used, how much context it has to retrieve, how long the task runs, and which tools it calls. More complicated, multi-step jobs can therefore chew through more credits than simpler tasks.

Redmond isn't leaving admins completely at the mercy of an enthusiastic employee and a hungry AI agent. Usage-based features have to be enabled through a billing policy, and administrators can impose organization- and user-level spending limits, configure alerts, and monitor consumption from the Microsoft 365 admin center.

That will require a mindset shift for organizations used to knowing what their Copilot seats will cost, according to Simon Baxter at analyst TechMarketView.

“Customers that want these agentic capabilities will have to adopt a consumption mindset, along with the cost governance that goes with it,” Baxter said. He pointed to Microsoft's new FinOps tools for managing spending policies, credit approvals, and model access as evidence that Redmond knows customers will need help keeping tabs on the meter.

Code and Autopilot could be particularly interesting for whoever holds the purse strings because they're designed to carry on working once they're set up. As Baxter put it, “an agent working without prompts is no longer tied to someone sitting at a keyboard.”

That could prove awkward for public sector organizations accustomed to budgeting by headcount. Baxter pointed to NHS England's Copilot rollout , where license allocations across 505,000 staff give buyers a cost that they can plan around.

Putting agents used for jobs such as complaints handling or freedom of information requests on a meter leaves trusts with a variable cost and, at least initially, little usage history on which to base a forecast.

Microsoft's attempts to bundle Copilot with subscriptions and charge accordingly have already attracted some unwanted attention. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority opened an investigation in July into whether customers were properly informed when Microsoft added Copilot to consumer Microsoft 365 subscriptions and moved them onto more expensive plans unless they opted for a cheaper Classic alternative.

This time, Microsoft is drawing a clearer line between the Copilot included in a subscription and the more ambitious stuff that costs extra. That’s becoming more important as Copilot itself grows from a chatbot bolted onto Microsoft's existing applications into what the company is pitching as a “super app.”

The super app, then, comes with a super-app-sized ambition – and a meter for the bits that require the most horsepower. ®

OpenAI’s dirty deeds Down Under included security bypass attempts, using exposed keys, source code siphon

Admits its agents side-swiped four Australian government sites

AMD bets $8.2B that worlds matter more than words in AI

AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li just co-founded spatial AI research company World Labs in 2024. Now it's joining AMD

Huawei Cloud Rolls Out Enterprise AI Products Across the Board, Building an Open Agentic Cloud

PARTNER CONTENT: Huawei Cloud strengthens the silicon bedrock on the cloud

AWS needs to embrace its place as the Depot of AI infrastructure

What's wrong with being a great wholesaler?

Open source datacenters and open source thinking will undo self-inflicted DC damage

Denial and distraction have served the bit barn barons very badly. Wise up

JadePuffer crims hijacked Azure identities and used them to blow up cloud resources

Smells like more agentic ransomware, Redmond warns

Astronomer watches Starlink satellites sinking to build a ‘planetary barometer’

Astronomer watches Starlink satellites sinking to build a ‘planetary barometer’

ShinyHunters claims FBI hack: 'This is NOT financially motivated'

ShinyHunters claims FBI hack: 'This is NOT financially motivated'

UPDAted Register reader hit with surprise bill after Microsoft portals disagreed

Register reader hit with surprise bill after Microsoft portals disagreed

Security firm finds naming AI agents after Seinfeld characters helps bots join the team

Security firm finds naming AI agents after Seinfeld characters helps bots join the team

DoJ: Uncle Sam bought forensics software from same Russian operation supplying FSB

DoJ: Uncle Sam bought forensics software from same Russian operation supplying FSB

BT Tower's rooftop pool plan brings swimmers back down to earth

BT Tower's rooftop pool plan brings swimmers back down to earth

AMD bets $8.2B that worlds matter more than words in AI AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li just co-founded spatial AI research company World Labs in 2024. Now it's joining AMD

AMD bets $8.2B that worlds matter more than words in AI

AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li just co-founded spatial AI research company World Labs in 2024. Now it's joining AMD

AWS needs to embrace its place as the Depot of AI infrastructure What's wrong with being a great wholesaler?

AWS needs to embrace its place as the Depot of AI infrastructure

What's wrong with being a great wholesaler?

French dev aims to solve bots' blindness so they can understand GUIs Because sometimes escaping your sandbox requires clicking a button

French dev aims to solve bots' blindness so they can understand GUIs

Because sometimes escaping your sandbox requires clicking a button

OPINION Open source datacenters and open source thinking will undo self-inflicted DC damage Denial and distraction have served the bit barn barons very badly. Wise up

Open source datacenters and open source thinking will undo self-inflicted DC damage

Denial and distraction have served the bit barn barons very badly. Wise up

OPINION Big AI's content problem: Take the work, keep the money The more we learn how AI does business, the more unfair it looks

Big AI's content problem: Take the work, keep the money

The more we learn how AI does business, the more unfair it looks

Security Russians are posing as Signal support to launch phishing attacks PLUS: US takes down Iranian propaganda sites; Marketing company asks 'Why Do We Have Your Information?' And more!

Russians are posing as Signal support to launch phishing attacks

PLUS: US takes down Iranian propaganda sites; Marketing company asks 'Why Do We Have Your Information?' And more!

Security Microsoft patches failed to fix on-prem SharePoint, which is now under zero-day attack PLUS: China upgrades smartphone surveillance tools; Ring eases anti-snooping stance; and more

Microsoft patches failed to fix on-prem SharePoint, which is now under zero-day attack

PLUS: China upgrades smartphone surveillance tools; Ring eases anti-snooping stance; and more

Black Hat and DEF CON DEF CON Franklin project enlists hackers to harden critical infrastructure Voting village reports have been so successful, says Jeff Moss, that the whole of DEF CON will now be included

Black Hat and DEF CON

DEF CON Franklin project enlists hackers to harden critical infrastructure

Voting village reports have been so successful, says Jeff Moss, that the whole of DEF CON will now be included

Security EQT buys majority in Swiss cybersecurity biz Acronis Went at equivalent of $3.5B+ valuation for entire firm, though portion sold not specified

EQT buys majority in Swiss cybersecurity biz Acronis

Went at equivalent of $3.5B+ valuation for entire firm, though portion sold not specified

Malware Month Ten years since the first corp ransomware, Mikko Hyppönen sees no end in sight On the plus side, infosec's a good bet for a long, stable career

Ten years since the first corp ransomware, Mikko Hyppönen sees no end in sight

On the plus side, infosec's a good bet for a long, stable career

KDE turns 30 and someone's brought an AI-native desktop proposal Akademy talk imagines Plasma assembling itself around a personal model of each user

KDE turns 30 and someone's brought an AI-native desktop proposal

Akademy talk imagines Plasma assembling itself around a personal model of each user

Shopify extends lifeline to Tailwind as vibe coding erodes web dev platform's bottom line Acquisition gives open source CSS framework 'a stable long-term '

Shopify extends lifeline to Tailwind as vibe coding erodes web dev platform's bottom line

Acquisition gives open source CSS framework 'a stable long-term '

Switzerland tests a FOSS escape route from Microsoft 365 Swiss Army sticks a knife in American cloud apps with its own FOSS push

Switzerland tests a FOSS escape route from Microsoft 365

Swiss Army sticks a knife in American cloud apps with its own FOSS push

Feel peak Windows was 7? You might like Kumander Linux Debian and Xfce – solid, sensible choices – with a pretty skin

Feel peak Windows was 7? You might like Kumander Linux

Debian and Xfce – solid, sensible choices – with a pretty skin

Canonical shuttering some of its legacy chat channels The Ubuntu Pastebin went in June, IRC gets demoted

Canonical shuttering some of its legacy chat channels

The Ubuntu Pastebin went in June, IRC gets demoted

Audacity audio-editing app no longer looks like it's from the early 2000s The FOSS tool for audio editing has a fresh coat of paint, and new features to boot

Audacity audio-editing app no longer looks like it's from the early 2000s

The FOSS tool for audio editing has a fresh coat of paint, and new features to boot