Services
Affected Platforms
Summary
Microsoft 365 admin center will introduce prepaid Capacity Packs for Copilot Chat, offering 25,000 messages/month to manage costs before pay-as-you-go charges. Rollout starts late September 2025. Features include usage monitoring, departmental allocation, automatic PAYG fallback, and no required admin action before rollout.
Details
To help organizations manage metered consumption costs for Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, we're introducing support for prepaid Capacity Packs in the Microsoft 365 admin center (MAC). This feature enables global administrators to use prepaid message bundles before incurring pay-as-you-go (PAYG) charges.
This update applies specifically to Copilot Chat environments provisioned via the Power Platform admin center (PPAC), including departmental or custom Copilot agents built using Microsoft Copilot Studio.
Each Capacity Pack includes 25,000 Copilot messages per month, which can be allocated to Copilot Chat environments via PPAC. Once enabled, MAC will prioritize usage from these prepaid packs and automatically switch to PAYG when capacity is exhausted.
Admins can monitor usage in PPAC, including:
- Total messages consumed
- Remaining prepaid capacity
- Message allocation per environment
This update is associated with Microsoft 365 Roadmap ID 496139.
When this will happen- Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out in late September 2025 and expect to complete by late September 2025.
- General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out in late September 2025 and expect to complete by early October 2026.
This feature helps organizations manage Copilot Chat costs by allowing the use of prepaid message bundles before PAYG charges apply. It supports:
- Improved budget control through prepaid capacity
- Departmental usage isolation via environment-level allocation
- Simplified billing setup in MAC
- Automated provisioning for Copilot Chat environments
- Enhanced cost visibility and governance through detailed usage reporting in PPAC
The feature also supports unlicensed users and includes automatic fallback to PAYG when prepaid capacity is exhausted, ensuring uninterrupted service.
Existing pay-as-you-go billing methods will remain available and unchanged. Capacity Packs offer an additional prepaid option and do not replace current billing models.
The feature is on by default and requires no manual configuration to begin using.
What you can do to prepareNo admin action is required before rollout.
Compliance considerationsNo compliance considerations identified, review as appropriate for your organization.