If someone without the paid helper asks a SharePoint helper a question, the company pays a few pence for that answer. The bill goes to the company's Azure account.
Agents in SharePoint can be used by people without a Copilot licence if the organisation turns on pay-as-you-go. Each answer is charged through an Azure subscription. Microsoft lists the price as $0.01 a message, with a typical question and answer counting as 12 messages.
Unlicensed use of SharePoint agents bills through a Microsoft 365 pay-as-you-go billing policy linked to an Azure subscription and resource group, scoped to one security group per policy (up to 10 policies). Microsoft lists $0.01/message with 12 messages per successful interaction. Monitor in Azure Cost Management.
How it's set up
Microsoft's setup guide describes the steps. A SharePoint administrator with Owner or Contributor rights on an Azure subscription and resource group creates SharePoint agents as an Azure resource. Then they create a pay-as-you-go billing policy in the Microsoft 365 admin center and connect it to the SharePoint agents service.
Each billing policy is assigned to a security group. Microsoft says only users in that group can use SharePoint agents through pay-as-you-go, that each policy currently takes one security group, and that you can create up to 10 policies. That gives you a way to see costs per group, for example per department.
People with a Copilot licence aren't billed through this route.
What it costs
Microsoft's pay-as-you-go pricing page lists agents in SharePoint at $0.01 per message, counted by the number of messages used. It adds that "a successful interaction uses 12 messages", where an interaction is a question and an answer. So a typical answer costs about $0.12.
That fits Copilot Studio's rates, where an answer grounded in tenant data counts 10 for the grounding and 2 for the generative answer. I'd still treat 12 as typical rather than fixed, and check actual usage in Azure Cost Management.
Who pays
The bill goes to the Azure subscription linked to the billing policy. Whose budget that is depends on how your organisation charges for Azure. If IT pays for the subscription and the HR site's agent is the busy one, IT pays for HR's questions unless someone recharges it.
That's why I like one billing policy per department where the numbers justify it. Microsoft lets you assign a policy to a security group, so each department can have its own policy and its own line in Cost Management. A budget alert on each, as in Budgets that follow teams and agents, adds an early warning.
A worked example
These numbers are illustrative.
An organisation has 400 unlicensed staff in its operations department who use a SharePoint agent on the operations site.
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| People who use it in a month | 250 |
| Questions per person per month | 8 |
| Interactions | 2,000 |
| Messages (× 12) | 24,000 |
| Cost at $0.01 per message | $240 |
| At $1 = £0.77 for illustration | about £185 |
If the same 250 people each had a Copilot licence at £23.10 a month, that would be £5,775 a month. For this pattern of use, pay-as-you-go is much cheaper. The comparison changes for heavy users, as in Seat licence or Copilot Credits: the break-even.
Capacity packs
Microsoft also sells prepaid Copilot Studio capacity packs of 25,000 credits a month, which can pay for Copilot Chat agents. Microsoft's capacity pack page notes that Copilot credit policies are currently only available for Copilot Chat, and that SharePoint agents should continue to use pay-as-you-go billing.
What I'm still checking
Microsoft's pay-as-you-go pricing page was last updated in April 2025 and describes "messages", while newer pages talk about Copilot Credits at the same $0.01. I believe they're the same unit renamed, but I haven't found a Microsoft page that says so directly. Check the meter names in your Azure bill.
Sources
- Microsoft Learn, Set up SharePoint agents as an Azure resource, accessed 11 October 2026.
- Microsoft Learn, Microsoft 365 pay-as-you-go pricing, accessed 11 October 2026.
- Microsoft Learn, Microsoft Copilot pay-as-you-go service overview, accessed 11 October 2026.
- Microsoft Learn, Use Copilot Studio capacity packs for Microsoft Copilot Chat and SharePoint agents, accessed 11 October 2026.
- Microsoft Learn, Billing rates and management, Copilot Studio, accessed 11 October 2026.