How to Estimate Copilot Credit Usage for AI Builder and Flows

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Posted on by Sajeda_Sultana

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Hi everyone 👋

I recently explored the Microsoft Copilot Studio estimator to better understand how AI Builder and Copilot usage is calculated, and I wanted to share a simplified explanation that might help others.
👉 Estimator: https://microsoft.github.io/copilot-studio-estimator/

One thing that stood out to me is that even though we can see prompt and completion tokens in activity, there isn’t a direct “token-to-credit” conversion. Instead, everything is calculated based on how the AI is used like prompts, tool calls, and flow execution.

From what I’ve seen:

Each AI prompt or tool call is roughly around 5 credits
Flow execution adds additional credits (around 13 per 100 actions)
1 credit is approximately $0.01

So a simple way I’ve been thinking about it is:

If a flow runs frequently and includes AI steps, you can estimate cost based on number of runs × AI actions per run.

Another important point is around the $30 Microsoft 365 Copilot license. It gives access to Copilot and Copilot Studio, but it doesn’t make all AI usage free. Credits are still consumed depending on how the solution is used, especially for flows, agents, or external scenarios.

Also worth noting:

Flows without AI (no AI Builder or Copilot actions) don’t consume Copilot credits
Custom agents do consume credits when they call tools, run flows, or use knowledge sources

Overall, the estimator is quite helpful to get a rough idea before implementing a solution, especially when scaling.

I’d be interested to hear how others are estimating or optimizing their Copilot credit usage in real scenarios.

Thanks!

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11manish 1,918 on at

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Your understanding is very solid, and the way you’re thinking about estimating usage is definitely on the right track

A couple of refinements that might help make it even more accurate:

How Copilot / AI Builder usage actually works

You’re absolutely right that there is:

No direct token → credit conversion

Usage is based on how AI is used (prompts, tool calls, flows, etc.)

So thinking in terms of actions instead of tokens is the correct mental model.

A small clarification on “credits per prompt”

The “~5 credits per prompt” is a helpful estimate, but it’s not fixed.

Actual consumption can vary depending on:

Model used

Prompt complexity

Whether tools or flows are triggered

So it’s better to think of it as variable cost per AI action, not a constant number.

Flow execution costs

Your observation is directionally correct:

Flows do add to consumption

Especially when they include AI or premium connectors

But again, this depends on:

Number of actions

Type of connectors

Whether AI steps are involved

Copilot license ($30) clarification

This is an important point you highlighted well:

The license gives access to Copilot experiences, but does not make all AI usage free

Credits are still consumed when:

Agents call tools

Flows are triggered

External or advanced scenarios are used

What does vs doesn’t consume credits

Consumes credits:

Copilot prompts (in agents)

Tool calls (Dataverse, APIs, flows)

AI Builder usage

Knowledge retrieval scenarios

Does NOT consume credits:

Standard flows without AI

Basic automation

Non-AI connectors

A practical way to estimate

A more reliable approach is:

Total Cost ≈ (User interactions × AI actions per interaction)
+ (Flow runs × AI steps)

This aligns well with your idea of:

runs × AI actions per run

Final words:

Copilot usage is action-based, not token-based

And the best way to estimate cost is by modeling how often AI is actually invoked

Thanks
Manish

Visit my blog : https://powerappbuilder.blogspot.com/

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Valantis 4,793 on at

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Hi @Sajeda_Sultana,

1. For Copilot Studio agents, define a typical interaction (how many generative answers, classic answers, tool calls, agent flows, Graph grounding events, AI tool calls).
   2.   Apply the official Copilot Credits rate card and use the Agent Usage Estimator for validation.
   3.   For Power Apps / flows using AI Builder, identify each AI action, look up its rate in the AI Builder rate card, and multiply by the expected number of executions per month.
   4.   If you’re on pay‑as‑you‑go, multiply the total Copilot Credits by 0.01 USD to get a rough monthly cost.

Best regards,

Valantis

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🏷️ For follow-ups  @Valantis.

📝 https://valantisond365.com/

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Valantis 4,793 on at

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Hi @Sajeda_Sultana,

Just wanted to check in and see if everything is working now. If you still need any help, feel free to let me know.

Also, if the issue is resolved, it would be great if you could mark the answer as solved so others with the same question can find it easily.

Thanks and have a great day!

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David_MA 14,360 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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I am working on a project in Power Automate that is using the AI Builder tool, and from my understanding, in November AI Builder Credits will go away and will require Copilot Studio credits instead. I digress... I am trying to estimate how many credits I'll need for a document library that contains around 11,000 pdf files of contracts.

The goal is to extract a summary, the contracting party, contra party, contract start and end dates, as well as the contract type. The flow will then update fields added to the document library with this data. Except for the description, the other fields already exist and are required, but many people upload the file and never fill in the metadata. Thus, the goal is to go through all the existing documents and populate missing data and then going forward automate populating it when a new file is uploaded.

I used a custom AI builder prompt to do this.

The Run AI Prompt action gives you the number of tokens and credits used along with the above data. Right now, I am just testing, but when I move forward, I'll add some variables to capture the total tokens used and AI builder credits used to get some analytics back by adding rows to a spreadsheet with these values.

{

  "@odata.type": "#Microsoft.Dynamics.CRM.expando",

  "imagesCount@odata.type": "#Int64",

  "imagesCount": 0,

  "modelType": "default",

  "text": "{\n  \"Summary\": \"******.\",\n  \"ContractingParty\": \"**********\",\n  \"CounterParty\": \"*********\",\n  \"StartDate\": \"2026-04-01\",\n  \"EndDate\": \"2029-03-31\",\n  \"ContractType\": \"Sale Agreement\"\n}",

  "thoughtSteps": "",

  "finishReason": "stop",

  "totalTokens@odata.type": "#Int64",

  "totalTokens": 19202,

  "promptTokens@odata.type": "#Int64",

  "promptTokens": 18989,

  "completionTokens@odata.type": "#Int64",

  "completionTokens": 213,

  "modelName": "gpt-41-mini-2025-04-14",

  "costAsAiBuilderCredits@odata.type": "#Int64",

  "costAsAiBuilderCredits": 20,

  "costAsCopilotCredits": 0

}

The flow also uses the AI builder action Recognize text in an image or document to extract the text from the pdf to pass to the Run AI Prompt action, which just returns the number of AI builder credits used. I can add that to the spreadsheet as well.

In the minimal testing I've done so far, it is taking about 18 AI builder credits per document. If the averages hold up, I'll need about 198,000 AI builder credits for this project. If 25,000 Copilot credits cost $200, then this will cost us about $1,584. To do this manually, it would probably take someone at least 20 minutes to read through each contract to generate a summary and extract the above metadata in the list and then update it in the list, which is probably a conservative estimate.

The goal once this is done is to then get Copilot Microsoft 365 licenses for the key users of this SharePoint site so they can get information faster. We had considered creating a Copilot Studio agent, but after some research and doing some testing, we felt it would work better with Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses than with an agent.

I hope I didn't distract too much away from the original post, I just wanted to share a way I am estimating the number of credits needed for a current project.

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