Create a Copilot Agent with Agent Builder or Copilot Studio: the steps according to Microsoft Learn, common pitfalls, and what an agent costs.
There are two ways to create a Copilot Agent: with Agent Builder directly in Microsoft 365 Copilot, or in Copilot Studio. Agent Builder is enough if the agent only needs to answer questions from selected SharePoint files. You need Copilot Studio as soon as the agent should do something, such as looking up a record in Dataverse or starting a Power Automate flow. This article walks through the process in Copilot Studio step by step and explains where the costs come from. As of: September 2026, all menu paths and figures follow the linked pages on Microsoft Learn.
For a pure question-and-answer agent on SharePoint, Agent Builder is often enough. For actions, Dataverse, or channels other than Teams and Copilot, use Copilot Studio. Costs arise either through licenses or through Copilot Credits, depending on who uses the agent.
Microsoft lists four tools for building your own agents, from no-code to full development. The overview is on the Learn page Choose the right tool to build your declarative agent. For most businesses, two of them are relevant:
There are also agents that are created directly on a SharePoint site. What they can do is covered in our article on SharePoint Agents. The fourth option, the Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit, is aimed at developers.
Our rule of thumb from projects: as long as the agent only reads and answers, start with Agent Builder. If it needs to look something up, calculate, or trigger something, you will end up in Copilot Studio anyway.
The basic process in Copilot Studio has four steps: describe, connect knowledge, test, publish. The steps follow Microsoft's quickstart guide.
One pitfall up front: with a trial license, you can build agents and try them out in the test pane, but you cannot publish them. This is stated in the same quickstart guide.
The click-through process is rarely the problem. Projects almost always get stuck at three points.
Permissions. An agent on SharePoint answers with the rights of the person asking. If folders are shared too broadly, the agent finds things no one should find. This is the same pattern as with the Copilot rollout, described in our article on Oversharing and SharePoint Permissions.
Credits. An agent used by employees without a Copilot license consumes Copilot Credits, for every single response. Without a cap, this only shows up on the invoice. In the Power Platform Admin Center, you can set monthly limits per agent under "Licensing", "Copilot Studio", "Manage Agents" (Microsoft Learn: Billing rates).
Test cases. Without predefined questions with expected answers, there is no benchmark for whether the agent is any good. Then it comes down to the gut feeling of the first users. For a medical device supplier, we built an agent for item and stock inquiries in Copilot Studio on Dataverse. The test questions were fixed before the first line of configuration, and in the end the agent answered all known test cases correctly. How you can automate such tests in Copilot Studio is shown in the article on the Copilot Studio Kit.
A Copilot Agent either costs nothing extra or costs Copilot Credits, depending on who uses it. For users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, Microsoft does not charge extra for generative responses, actions, and searching company knowledge during interactive use. All other uses run on Copilot Credits. The rates according to Microsoft Learn, as of September 2026:
A complex question to an agent with Tenant Graph Grounding therefore costs 12 credits, according to Microsoft's own example. You buy credits as a capacity pack with 25,000 credits per month, or pay as you go through an Azure subscription (Microsoft Learn: Capacity Packs). What that means in euros, we work out in the article Copilot Licenses and Costs, the credit model explained in detail Copilot Studio License: Copilot Credits. Before building, it's worth taking a look at the Copilot Studio Agent Usage Estimator, which Microsoft links on the same Learn page.
Building it yourself pays off if the agent answers a clearly defined question, the documents are well organized, and someone in-house has a few days' time. The guide above will take you a long way.
We would recommend a sprint if the agent needs to access Dataverse or a specialist system, if actions are involved, or if there is a deadline. In our Agent Sprint we build an agent in your environment within five days, with a test case set, publication in Teams for a pilot group, and handover. The sprint costs a flat fee of 5,000 euros net, licenses and credits not included. All prices net, plus travel costs and expenses for on-site appointments. No hidden hours. We plan multiple agents or multiple systems as an individual project, see Copilot Studio Agents. Whether your project fits into five days, we clarify in a free initial consultation, 30 minutes.
For users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, there are no additional costs during interactive use. For everyone else, Microsoft counts Copilot Credits, for example 2 credits for a generative response and 10 for a company knowledge search (as of September 2026, Microsoft Learn). To build in Copilot Studio, your tenant also needs a Copilot Studio license, according to Microsoft either its own subscription or the Teams plan from selected Microsoft 365 plans.
According to Microsoft, Agent Builder is available to users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. Without this license, it only works if the tenant has pay-as-you-go set up for Copilot Studio. Which features are then available depends on the billing model.
No. With Copilot Studio's trial license, you can build agents and try them out in the test pane. Publishing the agent, for example in Teams, is only possible with a regular license.
A simple agent in Agent Builder is often ready the same day. With actions, permission checks, test cases, and handover, we plan for five working days, spread over two to three weeks, because the department needs to test in between.
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Certifications
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We check with you whether your use case fits into a five-day sprint, which licenses and credits you need, and where the agent gets its knowledge from.
