A Quick Guide to Understanding the Licensing, Cost, and Usage of Microsoft Copilot for Power BI
What is Microsoft Copilot?
Microsoft Copilot is an AI-powered chatbot integrated into Microsoft products. The purpose of Copilot is to generate content, create suggestions, and automate tasks to enhance Microsoft users’ productivity and efficiency. For example, Copilot can be used to summarize meetings notes on Teams, help a software developer write new lines of code, or be prompted to create a job description for a new hire. Microsoft is continually improving the functionality of Copilot to bring more value to users. (2)
What is Copilot for Power BI?
Copilot for Power BI, now integrated within Microsoft Fabric, makes use of the transformational power of generative AI to help you get the most from your data. (3) It improves analytics, data interactions, and report creation inside Power BI for both business and technical users by offering report queries, summarization of key points, and more. (3)
Understanding how Copilot is licensed and billed is key to effectively managing your resources and costs. In this quick guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know on managing the licensing, cost, and usage of Copilot.
Licensing and Enabling Copilot
Copilot is turned on by default in Fabric. Administrators can turn off Copilot in the Fabric admin portal if your organization isn’t interested in using it. Copilot is licensed and billed via Fabric Capacity Units (CUs), such as F2, F4, or F64, within your existing environment. Azure Fabric Capacity. To utilize Copilot, ensure it is enabled within your Microsoft Fabric workspace. Currently, Copilot for Power BI is only available for organizations who have purchased a Fabric F64 Capacity or higher.
Understanding Copilot’s Token-Based Consumption
Copilot costs are calculated based on token consumption. A token is a unit of text consisting of characters, words, punctuation, or whitespace. For instance, the sentence “Hello, world!” contains four tokens: “Hello”, “world”, the two quotation marks on either end of the sentence, and exclamation mark at the end of the sentence. Tokens are broken down into input tokens, which are the total number of tokens in a query, and output tokens, which are the total number of tokens in a completed output response. (4)
To understand how the token consumption translates into Fabric Capacity Units, the following Fabric Copilot Consumption Formula is applied.
Fabric Copilot Consumption Formula:
Fabric Copilot Consumption (CU Seconds) =
[(Input Token Count × 400) + (Output Token Count × 1,200)] / 1,000
Example Calculation:
- Input tokens: 18,000
- Output tokens: 3,000
- Total Consumption: (18,000 × 400 + 3,000 × 1,200) / 1,000 = 7,560 CU Seconds
Cost Implications: Pay-as-You-Go vs. Reserved Instance
Microsoft offers two pricing options for Copilot for Power BI: pay-as-you-go and Reserved Instance.
Pay-As-You-Go Model: In this model, organizations are billed based on actual usage, measured in Capacity Units (CUs) per hour. This approach offers flexibility, allowing organizations to scale their capacity up or down according to demand. However, it’s important to note that while this flexibility can be cost-effective, any Power BI reports and features reliant on the capacity will become unavailable when the capacity is paused or stopped. (5)
Reserved Capacity Model: This model involves committing to a specific capacity size, such as F64, for a set duration, typically one or three years. By making this commitment, organizations can benefit from cost savings compared to the pay-as-you-go rates. The reserved capacity ensures continuous availability of services like Copilot for Power BI, without interruptions. However, this model requires an upfront commitment and may lack the flexibility to adjust capacity based on fluctuating demand. (6)
Total costs for utilizing Copilot in Power BI will depend on whether you use the pay-as-you-g or the Reserved Instance payment model.
- Pay-as-you-go: $0.22 per CU/hour (Azure US pricing)
- Reserved Instance (RI): $0.14 per CU/hour
Using our example from above:
- Pay-as-you-go: Approximately $0.46 per interaction
- Reserved Instance: Approximately $0.27 per interaction
Choosing the Right Billing Model
The billing model your company chooses will depend on your needs and projected usage capacity of Copilot for Power BI. Pay-as-you-go is deal for testing or infrequent use, providing flexibility without upfront commitments, while Reserved Instance is more suitable for regular users, offering predictable and considerable cost savings over a longer term.
Conclusion
A clear understanding of Copilot for Power BI’s licensing, cost structure, and usage metrics will help your business optimize value while controlling costs. Choose the billing model that fits your organization’s usage and budgetary needs to enable powerful analytics performance with predictable costs.
For expert advice or answers to specific questions on your Power BI licensing and analytics management, reach out directly to our Microsoft Practice Director Chris van der Zwaan here.
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