AI Builder Credits vs. Copilot Credits Explained

Anyone using an AI feature from AI Builder in Power Automate or Power Apps will sooner or later run into two different terms in the Power Platform admin center: AI Builder Credits and Copilot Credits. Both sound similar, both get consumed by AI features, and that's exactly what causes confusion in practice, especially when a flow suddenly stops with an error like "QuotaExceeded" and nobody can immediately say which of the two balances is actually empty.

This article draws a clean line between the two systems: where AI Builder Credits come from, when Copilot Credits come into play, how the two interact, and what fundamentally changed with the licensing changes as of November 1, 2025. The only source used is Microsoft's official Power Platform documentation, so you can rely on solid figures instead of forum half-knowledge for your next capacity planning.

What Are AI Builder Credits?

AI Builder Credits are the original billing currency for AI features in Power Automate and Power Apps. According to the Microsoft documentation on licensing and AI Builder credits AI models such as document processing, text recognition, or AI prompts consume these credits as soon as they actually run in a flow, an app, or a scheduled run. Simply testing models or prompts in the prompt builder, on the other hand, costs nothing, and neither does training your own models.

AI Builder Credits come from two sources:

• AI Builder capacity add-on: provides 1,000,000 credits per add-on, currently purchasable only by existing customers as a renewal or true-up.
• Credits included in licenses: Power Automate Premium, for example, comes with 5,000 credits per license, Power Apps Premium with 500. According to the documentation, these seeded credits will be removed entirely on November 1, 2026.

Important for anyone just starting out with the Power Platform: new customers have not been able to buy the AI Builder add-on since November 1, 2025. For them, there's no way around Copilot Credits once the seeded credits from existing licenses are used up.

What Are Copilot Credits?

Copilot Credits are the overarching billing currency for Microsoft Copilot Studio and, at the same time, the safety net for Power Automate and Power Apps once no AI Builder Credits are available there anymore. Since September 1, 2025, Copilot Credit has, according to the Copilot Studio documentation on billing rates become the unified currency for agents; previously, billing was done in "messages". Neither the quantity nor the price per prepaid package has changed as a result.

In Copilot Studio, every interaction of an agent is billed in Copilot Credits, tiered by function: a classic, pre-authored response costs 1 credit, a generative response 2 credits, an agent action 5 credits, and grounding via the tenant-wide Microsoft Graph 10 credits. AI tools within Copilot Studio, such as text and generative AI tools or content-processing tools, are billed differently on top of that depending on the tier.

The Key Difference: Which System Applies When?

This is exactly where most of the confusion arises, because the answer depends on the environment in which an AI feature runs.

In Power Automate and Power Apps: AI Builder Credits First, Then Copilot Credits

In classic cloud flows and in Power Apps, according to the documentation on licensing and Copilot Credits, the system first tries to consume AI Builder Credits. Only once no more AI Builder Credits are available, or the environment has exceeded its AI Builder capacity, does Copilot Credit automatically step in as a reserve, provided any are assigned. If both allowances are empty, Power Automate blocks the affected action with error codes such as `EntitlementNotAvailable`, `NoCapacity`, or `QuotaExceeded`.

In Copilot Studio: Copilot Credits Only

As soon as an AI feature runs inside a Copilot Studio agent or an agent flow, a different rule applies: according to the documentation, Copilot Credits are always consumed here, and there is no fallback to AI Builder Credits. This also applies when a classic flow is later converted into an agent flow. The prompts and models it contains, which previously tried to use AI Builder Credits first, consume exclusively Copilot Credits from that moment on. So anyone migrating an existing flow to an agent flow should factor this change into their capacity planning, or they may later be surprised by a balance that drops faster than expected.

What Costs How Much? A Look at the Copilot Credit Rates

According to the documentation, the billing rates for AI tools in Copilot Studio are tiered:

• Text and generative AI tools (Basic): 0.1 Copilot Credit per 1,000 tokens, characters, image, or page.
• Text and generative AI tools (Standard): 1.5 Copilot Credits per the same unit.
• Text and generative AI tools (Premium), for example for reasoning models with deeper inference: 10 Copilot Credits per unit.
• Content-processing tools, for example document processing in an agent flow: 8 Copilot Credits per image or page.

An example from the documentation makes the difference tangible: an agent cloud flow processes a three-page document with a custom document-processing model. That consumes 3 pages of the content-processing feature, i.e. 24 Copilot Credits, in addition to the cost of the actual flow actions.

Monitoring Consumption Before the Environment Gets Blocked

Both balances are monitored separately, in different places in the Power Platform admin center:

• AI Builder Credits: Licensing > Capacity add-ons > Summary, where allocation and consumption bars show how much of the total allowance has already been used.
• Copilot Credits: Licensing > Copilot Studio, with its own overview per environment and per agent.

For AI Builder Credits, a kind of grace rule also applies: if calculated consumption exceeds the available capacity, the environment enters an overage that, according to the documentation, is not billed immediately and has no effect on next month's consumption, as long as it's corrected in time. Copilot Studio has a similar grace period: enforcement only kicks in at 125 percent of prepaid capacity, and for agent flows, new flow runs are then specifically blocked, while the parent agent keeps running for all other interactions.

The easiest way to stay in control of both systems is to get into the habit of regularly checking both overviews in the admin center, instead of only looking once the first error code shows up. Anyone running Power Automate flows with AI features in production, and who doesn't want to leave capacity planning to chance, will find support at NordFlux's Power Automate consulting for aligning license requirements and flow architecture cleanly from the very start.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is the Most Important Difference Between AI Builder Credits and Copilot Credits?

AI Builder Credits are the primary currency for AI features in classic Power Automate flows and Power Apps, while Copilot Credits are the mandatory currency for Copilot Studio. In Power Automate and Power Apps, Copilot Credits only step in once no AI Builder Credits are available anymore; in Copilot Studio, on the other hand, exclusively Copilot Credits are always consumed.

Can I Still Buy AI Builder Credits as a New Customer?

No. According to the documentation, since November 1, 2025, new customers can no longer purchase the AI Builder capacity add-on and must buy Copilot Credits instead. Existing customers can still renew or top up their AI Builder add-on until November 1, 2026.

What Happens to the AI Builder Credits Included in My Power Automate Premium License?

According to the documentation, these seeded credits, for example 5,000 per Power Automate Premium license, will be removed entirely on November 1, 2026. After that, only credits from the AI Builder add-on remain active; all other sources go away.

Does Testing a Prompt or Model Consume Credits?

No, testing is free in both systems. Neither testing a prompt in the prompt builder nor testing a prebuilt or custom model on the AI models page consumes AI Builder Credits, and in Copilot Studio, testing in the embedded test chat doesn't cost anything either.

What Happens When a Classic Flow Is Converted Into an Agent Flow?

From the moment of conversion, the AI prompts and models it contains consume exclusively Copilot Credits; falling back to AI Builder Credits is then no longer possible, even if AI Builder Credits were still used in the classic flow beforehand. You should factor this in before migrating a production flow to an agent flow.