Put in conversations a day, replies each, and the mix of generative, grounded and action replies. You get the Copilot Credits a month, the cheaper of a prepaid pack or pay-as-you-go, and what's actually moving the bill.
Everything runs in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere and there's no email box.
Across the whole team using this agent, not one person's chats.
Every reply the agent sends counts on its own, since each one draws its own credits.
21 is a typical five-day working month. Raise it if the agent also answers on weekends.
These three are independent. A reply can be generative, grounded and call an action all at once, and the credits for each stack on top of each other.
Composed by the agent from a knowledge source, not a fixed script. Scripted costs about 1 credit, generative about 2.
Grounded in your own tenant data through Microsoft Graph, SharePoint, Teams or Outlook. Roughly 10 credits on top, the single biggest lever here.
The agent calls a connector to look something up or complete a task elsewhere. Roughly 5 credits on top, each time it happens.
Grounding drives most of this bill: even a small share of tenant-grounded replies adds far more than the reply type itself.
Pay-as-you-go stays cheaper below about 20,000 credits a month (USD 200 ÷ USD 0.01). A pack only wins past that, and only if you use most of it, since unused credits don't roll over. NZD uses 1 USD ≈ NZD 1.72, as at late July 2026. Figures are a planning estimate against Microsoft's published weights, not a live meter reading.
Four things this calculator can't see from here.
The credit weights are Microsoft's own rough figures, not your tenant's live meter. "About 1", "about 2", "roughly 10", "about 5 or so" are the words the credit meter breakdown uses, and I've kept that vagueness rather than dress it up as an exact number. Your actual bill can land either side of this estimate.
Autonomous, event-triggered runs aren't modelled at all. An agent that fires off work by itself, nobody typing to rate-limit it, starts at 25 credits or more per run and can chain several actions in one go. That's a different kind of interaction from replying to a chat, not one of the three shares above, so if your agent does that, add its runs on top using the credit meter breakdown's own table.
An M365 Copilot seat can cover part of this for free. If a staff member already holds one, their classic answers, generative answers and tenant-Graph grounding inside Copilot Chat, Teams or SharePoint draw on their seat instead of this shared pool. That break doesn't apply to actions, or to anyone outside your organisation, and I haven't modelled it here since it depends on who's actually asking.
The exchange rate moves. 1.72 was this site's own published rate for late July 2026. Check the day's rate before you budget the NZD line against anything real.
The weights: 1 credit for a scripted reply, 2 for a generative one, plus roughly 10 for grounding it in tenant data and about 5 for each connector action it calls, are Microsoft's own numbers as carried in the credit meter breakdown, as at July 2026. They stack per reply exactly as described there, which is also why this calculator treats the three shares as independent rather than as a single choice.
The two prices, USD 200 a month for a prepaid pack of 25,000 credits, and USD 0.01 a credit pay-as-you-go, come from Copilot Studio pricing for NZ firms, also as at July 2026. A pack only works out cheaper past about 20,000 credits a month (200 divided by 0.01), and even then only if you're using most of it, since unused credits in a pack don't carry over.
NZD figures use 1 USD ≈ NZD 1.72, the rate this site has used since late July 2026. Microsoft's prices are in USD and the rate moves, so treat the NZD line as a guide and check the current one before you rely on it.
Cite the method freely. The credit weights and prices are Microsoft's own, summarised in the two posts linked above; it's the formula worth citing, not a number that will still be current next quarter:
Copilot Studio credit estimator, Kove. kove.nz/copilot-studio-credit-estimator
Multiply conversations a day by replies per conversation by your working days a month to get replies a month. Multiply that by the average credits per reply, which stacks 1 credit for a scripted answer or 2 for a generative one, plus roughly 10 if it's grounded in your tenant data and about 5 for each connector action it calls. That's the monthly credit total.
Pay-as-you-go, at USD 0.01 a credit, is cheaper below about 20,000 credits a month. A prepaid pack of 25,000 credits for USD 200 only wins past that point, and only if you're using most of the pack, since unused credits don't roll over to the next month. As at July 2026.
Multiply the USD figure by about 1.72, the rate this site has used since late July 2026. Microsoft bills in USD and the exchange rate moves day to day, so treat the NZD line as a guide, not a quote.
Grounding a reply in your tenant data, through Microsoft Graph, SharePoint, Teams or Outlook. It adds roughly 10 credits on top of a generative answer, more than doubling the cost of that one reply, while switching a reply from scripted to generative only adds 1. Scope grounding to the job in front of the agent rather than wiring it to everything.