Guides
Copilot Studio or a managed AI agent: which fits your company?
Copilot Studio is Microsoft's tool for building your own Copilot agents inside Microsoft 365. A managed AI agent is built and run for you, across your systems and customer channels. This guide compares the two on facts, as of October 2026, and says when each is the better choice.
Short answer
Choose Copilot Studio when your team wants to build agents itself, for internal use, inside Microsoft 365 and with Microsoft 365 Copilot licences. Choose a managed agent when customers, dealers or several teams need an agent across your ERP, CRM and channels such as your website and WhatsApp, with approval, monitoring and someone who keeps improving it.
What is Copilot Studio and what is a Copilot agent?
Copilot Studio is Microsoft's low-code environment for building agents: chatbots and autonomous agents that answer from knowledge sources and take actions through connectors and MCP servers. A Copilot agent built there is published to Microsoft Teams, Copilot Chat, SharePoint, a website or other channels. Usage is billed in Copilot Credits.
- Building: makers work in a web editor with topics, knowledge sources and tools; generative orchestration lets the agent choose tools itself. A Copilot Studio user licence for makers costs nothing, but the tenant needs a Copilot Credit pack or a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence first.
- Channels: Teams and Microsoft 365 Copilot, SharePoint, a demo website, your own website, a mobile app, Facebook, WhatsApp and Azure Bot Service channels such as Slack, Telegram and email.
- Tools: more than a thousand Power Platform connectors (standard connectors such as SharePoint included, premium ones in select plans), custom connectors to any public API, and MCP servers.
- Governance: administrators control channels, data policies and capacity in the Power Platform admin center.
Sources
- Microsoft Learn: publish and deploy your agent (channels) (learn.microsoft.com)
- Microsoft Learn: use connectors in Copilot Studio agents (learn.microsoft.com)
- Microsoft Learn: extend your agent with Model Context Protocol (learn.microsoft.com)
- Microsoft Learn: standard harness licensing (learn.microsoft.com)
What does Copilot Studio cost compared with a managed agent?
Copilot Studio bills usage in Copilot Credits: a capacity pack of 25,000 credits costs €173.30 per month on an annual commitment ($200.00 in the US), and pay-as-you-go costs $0.01 per credit. A generative answer costs 2 credits, an agent action 5. A managed agent from BeeManaged costs from €0.35 per customer conversation, with setup quoted up front.
- Rates per feature (Microsoft Learn, October 2026): classic answer 1 credit, generative answer 2, agent action 5, tenant graph grounding 10, agent flow actions 13 per 100 actions. Reasoning models add a premium per 1,000 tokens.
- Microsoft's own example of a customer support agent on a website: four classic and two generative answers per visitor is 8 credits per conversation. At the pay-as-you-go rate that is $0.08; at the pack rate roughly $0.064 (our calculation from Microsoft's rates). Build hours, premium connectors and the people who maintain the agent come on top.
- Zero-rated: when employees with a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence (€26.00 per user per month) use the agent in Copilot Chat, Teams or SharePoint, classic answers, generative answers and tenant graph grounding do not consume credits.
- Enforcement: at 125 percent of prepaid capacity Microsoft disables custom agents until capacity is added or pay-as-you-go is switched on. Unused credits do not carry over to the next month.
- BeeManaged: customer-facing agents from €0.35 per conversation, setup quoted up front at €175 per hour, monitoring and dashboard €250 per month, consultation package €1,750. Internal agents are custom work, priced in consultation. No licence per user.
Sources
- Microsoft Learn: Copilot Studio billing rates and management (learn.microsoft.com)
- Microsoft: Copilot Studio plans and pricing (microsoft.com)
- Microsoft Nederland: Copilot Studio-abonnementen en prijzen (microsoft.com)
- Microsoft Copilot Studio Licensing Guide (PDF) (go.microsoft.com)
Can a Copilot Studio agent serve customers on your website or WhatsApp?
On a website, yes: you set the agent to No authentication, embed Microsoft's Web Chat code and anyone with the link can chat. For WhatsApp, Copilot Studio used Azure Communication Services; according to Microsoft, new WhatsApp connections are no longer possible through that route after 23 October 2026. External users consume credits at the standard rate.
- Website: the demo website is for testing only; for production you add the Web Chat snippet to your own site. An agent without authentication cannot use tools that need the user's credentials.
- WhatsApp: agents connected before 23 October 2026 keep working; agents not connected before that date cannot be connected via the Azure Communication Services route (Microsoft Learn, October 2026). The WhatsApp channel does not support file upload or download.
- Attachments: users cannot send attachments to a Copilot Studio agent in any channel, unless an Azure Bot Service skill processes them.
- A managed agent from BeeManaged runs on your website, on the WhatsApp Business Platform and by email as standard, hands over to an employee and logs each conversation in app.beemanaged.com.
Sources
- Microsoft Learn: publish an agent to a live or demo website (learn.microsoft.com)
- Microsoft Learn: publish an agent to WhatsApp (learn.microsoft.com)
What about systems outside Microsoft, approvals and monitoring?
Copilot Studio reaches other systems through connectors, custom connectors and MCP servers, so Exact Online, AFAS or a service desk are possible if someone builds and maintains that connection. Approval of actions, conversation review and improvement are your team's work. A managed agent brings those with it: approval queue, audit log and monthly review.
- Systems: a connector call runs with the user's credentials by default, or with the maker's credentials on an authenticated channel. MCP servers need generative orchestration switched on, and you are responsible for any non-Microsoft server you connect.
- Approval: Copilot Studio has no built-in approval queue for write actions; you design that in topics or agent flows yourself.
- Monitoring: analytics and credit consumption are in Copilot Studio and the Power Platform admin center. Reading conversations, fixing wrong answers and updating knowledge sources is an ongoing task.
- BeeManaged: the agent prepares, a colleague approves in app.beemanaged.com, every question and action is logged, and we review conversations and improve the agent monthly.
When is Copilot Studio the better choice?
When the agent is for your own people, lives in Teams or Copilot Chat, mostly needs Microsoft 365 and Dataverse data, and your team has or wants Power Platform skills. If employees already hold Microsoft 365 Copilot licences, internal use is zero-rated, and your data and agent stay inside your own tenant under your own governance.
In those cases we say so in the intake. Building a managed agent for a job Copilot Studio does well inside Microsoft 365 would cost you more than it brings.
- An internal helpdesk agent in Teams that answers from SharePoint and a Dataverse table, built by your IT team.
- Agents on Dynamics 365 or Dataverse data, where Microsoft's own MCP server and connectors are the shortest route.
- Organisations that want full ownership of the agent in their own tenant and have the people to maintain it.
- Quick internal experiments: a maker can publish a first agent to Teams in a day, with no external party.
Copilot Studio or a managed AI agent: the comparison
| Copilot Studio | Managed agent from BeeManaged | |
|---|---|---|
| Who builds and manages | Your makers or a partner; you maintain topics, knowledge and connectors | BeeManaged builds, runs and improves; you decide and approve |
| Licence and usage costs | Copilot Credits: €173.30 per 25,000 per month or $0.01 per credit; zero-rated for Microsoft 365 Copilot users inside Microsoft 365 | From €0.35 per customer conversation, setup quoted up front, monitoring €250 per month; internal agents in consultation |
| Customers outside the organisation | Website via Web Chat without authentication; WhatsApp route closed for new connections after 23 October 2026 | Website, WhatsApp Business Platform and email as standard, with handover to a person |
| Systems outside Microsoft | Connectors, custom connectors and MCP servers you configure and maintain | Official vendor APIs for Exact Online, AFAS, CRM and service desks, built and maintained by BeeManaged |
| Ongoing optimisation and monitoring | Your team, with Copilot Studio analytics and the admin center | Monthly conversation review, audit log and report, included in monitoring |
| Governance and approval of actions | Admin center policies; approval of writes you design yourself | Approval queue for every write, rights per role, read-only by default |
| Data and hosting | Your Microsoft tenant; WhatsApp content flows to Meta | EU hosting, no training on your data, data processing agreement |
| Best for | Internal agents in Teams and Copilot Chat on Microsoft 365 data | Customer, dealer and cross-system processes with approval |
Copilot Studio and BeeManaged side by side
The two are not either-or. Many companies run Copilot Studio agents for their own people in Teams and a managed agent for customers, dealers and cross-system processes. Both can use the same MCP servers and the same Microsoft Graph permissions, so a document in SharePoint is the source for both without duplicating it.
A practical split: Copilot Studio for the agent that helps your project team find documents in Teams; a managed agent for the dealer who asks on WhatsApp when the order ships, which needs Exact Online, the CRM and a person who approves the delivery date.
What does this mean for a manufacturing company?
Most manufacturing companies run Microsoft 365 next to an ERP such as Exact Online or AFAS Profit, a CRM and a service desk. Copilot Studio covers the Microsoft 365 part well for your own people. The processes that earn money, quotes, order status, service tickets and dealer questions, cross those systems and reach customers, and that is where a managed agent fits.
Start with one process and the systems it touches. If it stays inside Microsoft 365 and inside your team, build it in Copilot Studio. If it reaches a customer or a second system, talk to us about a managed agent, or run both side by side.
Updated · As of October 2026 · Author Roy Rutten, AI architecture and development
Frequently asked questions
What does Copilot Studio cost?
Usage is billed in Copilot Credits: a pack of 25,000 credits costs €173.30 per month on an annual commitment ($200.00 in the US), pay-as-you-go $0.01 per credit. A generative answer is 2 credits, an agent action 5. Employees with a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence use agents inside Microsoft 365 without consuming credits (Microsoft, October 2026).
Can I put a Copilot Studio agent on my website?
Yes. Set authentication to No authentication, publish, and embed Microsoft's Web Chat code in your site. Anyone with the link can then chat, and the agent cannot use tools that need the user's credentials. External conversations consume credits at the standard rate.
When do you choose a managed agent?
When customers or dealers talk to the agent, when it needs data from your ERP, CRM or service desk next to Microsoft 365, and when you want approval of actions, monitoring and improvement arranged for you instead of staffed by your own team.
Can BeeManaged work next to Copilot?
Yes. Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Studio agents keep serving your own people in Microsoft 365; a BeeManaged agent takes the customer channels and the cross-system processes. Both can use the same Microsoft Graph permissions and MCP servers.
What happens if Microsoft changes the pricing model?
Microsoft changed the unit from messages to Copilot Credits on 1 September 2025 without changing the pack size or the pay-as-you-go rate, and it has added prepurchase plans since. We check the rates on this page at every update and date them. A managed agent is priced per conversation and does not depend on Microsoft's credit model.
Does Copilot Studio need Microsoft 365 Copilot licences?
No. You can run Copilot Studio with a Copilot Credit pack or pay-as-you-go alone. A Microsoft 365 Copilot licence (€26.00 per user per month) makes internal use by that user zero-rated and includes Copilot Studio for extending Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Not sure which route fits your process?
Plan a conversation. We look at one process with you and tell you honestly whether Copilot Studio, a self-service connector or a managed agent is the better choice.