Microsoft launches global Copilot Cowork AI agent with usage‑based billing

On June 16, 2026 Microsoft announced the worldwide general availability of Copilot Cowork, an AI‑driven agent within Microsoft 365 Copilot that executes multi‑step, long‑running tasks and returns finished deliverables rather than drafts. The service runs on Anthropic’s Opus 4.8 and Sonnet 4.6 models, with a cost‑optimized Cowork 1 model slated for release soon and GPT‑5.5 available to Frontier users.

Copilot Cowork is billed separately from the standard $30 per‑user Copilot license through usage‑based Copilot Credits priced at $0.01 each. Credit consumption depends on the AI model used, the amount of organizational context retrieved, the number of tool calls, and task runtime, with light tasks costing roughly 100‑300 credits, medium tasks 400‑700 credits, and heavy tasks 700+ credits. Administrators can monitor and control expenses via built‑in cost‑management features. Existing Frontier participants receive a grace period until July 1, 2026 before billing begins. A comparison showed Copilot Cowork to be about 30‑40 % cheaper per prompt than the competing Claude Cowork service.