Microsoft's Copilot Cowork, an agentic feature that executes full multi-step tasks inside Microsoft 365, went generally
The Story
available in June; usage-based billing for most tenants started 1 July 2026.
Why It Matters
Cowork doesn't draft, it finishes: point it at a task across Word, Excel, Teams, and connected tools and it returns a completed deliverable, billed per task in Copilot Credits on top of your existing Copilot license. Tenants that trialed it under Microsoft's Frontier program got a grace period, and that grace period ended 1 July, so any staff who kept using it through preview are now generating live charges.
What To Do About It
Check the Cost Management Dashboard in the Microsoft 365 admin center this week. Cowork is off by default, but if anyone enabled it during preview, set a spending cap per user and group before your first invoice lands, not after. Budget by task tier, light, medium, heavy, rather than per seat.
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