微软推出了全新的 Copilot 超级应用，并配套了一套“升级版”的定价模式。这意味着用户仍需支付订阅费用；而当他们希望使用 Copilot 的高级功能时，还需额外付费。微软详细介绍了这些变化，并阐述了其对 Copilot 的全新规划：该应用正被打造成为一个集聊天、Office 功能、编程以及越来越自主的智能辅助工具于一体的综合性 AI 工作平台。
Microsoft has unveiled its shiny new Copilot super app alongside an “evolved” pricing model to go with it, which means that customers will keep paying for a subscription and then cough up more when they want the really clever stuff. The company outlined the changes alongside its expanded vision for Copilot, which is being turned into a single AI work hub spanning chat, Office apps, coding, and increasingly autonomous agents.
微软将这种新的定价模式称为“用户订阅许可（User Subscription License, USL）”与“基于使用量的计费（Usage-Based Billing, UBB）”的结合。其中，“用户订阅许可”按用户每月收费；“基于使用量的计费”则根据 Copilot 的实际使用量来计费。常规订阅费用涵盖了 Copilot 的基本功能（如聊天功能，以及其在 Word、Excel、PowerPoint、Outlook 和 Teams 中的集成功能）。
Microsoft calls the new pricing setup a combination of a User Subscription License (USL), charged per user per month, and Usage-Based Billing (UBB), which charges according to how much work Copilot does. The regular subscription pays for what Microsoft calls “Everyday AI.”That's Copilot Chat, plus Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams.
用户可以选择自己喜欢的计费模式，或者让系统自动选择最适合的计费方式（系统会根据任务的准确性、执行速度和成本来决定）。对于那些需要使用 Copilot 执行计算量较大的复杂任务的客户来说，他们也必须选择“基于使用量的计费”模式。微软表示，这类高级功能包括 Cowork、Code、Autopilot，以及 SharePoint 中的新智能辅助工具（如 Astra 和 Fable）。
Users can pick which model they want, or leave it to Auto, which chooses based on accuracy, speed, and cost. Then there's “Advanced AI.”Customers wanting Copilot to get stuck into more compute-hungry agentic work will also need usage-based billing (UBB). Microsoft says that this includes Cowork, Code, Autopilot, new agentic experiences in SharePoint, and frontier models including Astra and Fable.
需要注意的是，这些基于使用量的计费费用是叠加在用户订阅费用之上的，而非替代订阅费用的另一种支付方式。
Crucially, those UBB charges are on top of the user subscription, not an alternative to it. The meter itself isn't entirely new.
实际上，这种基于使用量的计费模式并非全新的概念——微软此前已经在部分 AI 服务中采用了这种计费方式（例如 Cowork）。Copilot Credits 是用于计费的标准货币，适用于所有符合使用量计费条件的服务。真正发生变化的是：随着微软进一步推动 Copilot 的发展，这种计费模式将变得越来越重要。具体需要消耗多少 Copilot Credits 取决于用户的具体需求：所使用的功能模型、Copilot 需要获取的上下文信息量、任务执行的时间长度，以及它所调用的工具数量。因此，复杂的多步骤任务通常会比简单任务消耗更多的 Credits。
Microsoft has already used consumption-based pricing for some AI services, including Cowork, and Copilot Credits provide the common currency for eligible services billed by usage. What's changing is how central that model will become as Microsoft pushes Copilot further into agent territory. Exactly how many credits disappear depends on what Copilot is asked to do. Microsoft says consumption can vary by the models used, how much context it has to retrieve, how long the task runs, and which tools it calls. More complicated, multi-step jobs can therefore chew through more credits than simpler tasks.
微软并未完全将管理员的职责交给那些热情高涨的员工或智能辅助工具（如 Copilot）。根据分析师 Simon Baxter 的说法，基于使用情况的功能必须通过特定的计费政策来启用；管理员还可以在 Microsoft 365 管理中心设置组织级和用户级的消费限制、配置警报，并监控各项资源的消耗情况。对于那些习惯于预先知道 Copilot 使用成本的组织来说，这需要他们改变原有的思维方式。
Redmond isn't leaving admins completely at the mercy of an enthusiastic employee and a hungry AI agent. Usage-based features have to be enabled through a billing policy, and administrators can impose organization- and user-level spending limits, configure alerts, and monitor consumption from the Microsoft 365 admin center. That will require a mindset shift for organizations used to knowing what their Copilot seats will cost, according to Simon Baxter at analyst TechMarketView.
Baxter 表示：“希望使用这些智能辅助工具的客户必须接受‘按使用量付费’的机制，并相应地建立成本管理机制。”他提到了微软新推出的 FinOps 工具（用于管理支出政策、审批流程及模型访问权限），这些工具表明微软意识到客户在控制成本方面需要帮助。对于那些负责资金分配的人来说，代码编写和自动化任务处理功能（如 Autopilot）尤其具有吸引力，因为这些功能在设置完成后可以持续自动运行。
“Customers that want these agentic capabilities will have to adopt a consumption mindset, along with the cost governance that goes with it,” Baxter said. He pointed to Microsoft's new FinOps tools for managing spending policies, credit approvals, and model access as evidence that Redmond knows customers will need help keeping tabs on the meter. Code and Autopilot could be particularly interesting for whoever holds the purse strings because they're designed to carry on working once they're set up.
正如 Baxter 所说：“无需人工提示即可运行的智能辅助工具不再受限于具体操作人员的存在。”对于那些习惯按员工人数来制定预算的公共部门机构来说，这种模式可能会带来困扰。Baxter 以英国国家医疗服务体系（NHS England）的 Copilot 推广为例：该机构为 50.5 万名员工分配了 Copilot 许可证，从而使得采购部门能够据此制定预算计划。
As Baxter put it, “an agent working without prompts is no longer tied to someone sitting at a keyboard.”That could prove awkward for public sector organizations accustomed to budgeting by headcount. Baxter pointed to NHS England's Copilot rollout, where license allocations across 505,000 staff give buyers a cost that they can plan around.
然而，将用于处理投诉或信息请求等任务的智能辅助工具纳入计费体系后，相关机构的成本变得难以预测；而且由于初期缺乏使用数据，这些工具的实际使用情况也难以用于制定准确的预算预测。微软试图将 Copilot 与订阅服务捆绑销售的做法已经引发了争议：英国竞争与市场管理局（CMA）于 7 月展开了调查，以查明微软在将 Copilot 添加到消费者版 Microsoft 365 订阅服务中并强制用户升级到更昂贵套餐时，是否充分告知了用户相关情况（除非用户选择更便宜的 Classic 版本）。
Putting agents used for jobs such as complaints handling or freedom of information requests on a meter leaves trusts with a variable cost and, at least initially, little usage history on which to base a forecast. Microsoft's attempts to bundle Copilot with subscriptions and charge accordingly have already attracted some unwanted attention. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority opened an investigation in July into whether customers were properly informed when Microsoft added Copilot to consumer Microsoft 365 subscriptions and moved them onto more expensive plans unless they opted for a cheaper Classic alternative.
这一次，微软明确区分了那些包含在订阅服务中的功能（如 Copilot），以及那些需要额外付费才能使用的、更具高级性的功能。随着 Copilot 从一个简单的聊天机器人逐渐发展成为一个被微软称为“超级应用”（super app）的综合性平台，这种区分变得越来越重要。这个“超级应用”拥有宏大的发展目标，同时也配备了一个专门用于统计哪些功能需要更高计算资源（即更多计算能力）的统计工具。
This time, Microsoft is drawing a clearer line between the Copilot included in a subscription and the more ambitious stuff that costs extra. That’s becoming more important as Copilot itself grows from a chatbot bolted onto Microsoft's existing applications into what the company is pitching as a “super app.”The super app, then, comes with a super-app-sized ambition – and a meter for the bits that require the most horsepower. ®