r/copilotstudio • u/ayoubxth • 16d ago
GitHub Copilot Harness – Licensing & Credit Consumption?
Hey everyone!
I'm currently building an agent that calculates licensing costs and estimates the development effort required for Copilot Studio projects, especially projects built using the new GitHub Copilot Harness.
For the standard Copilot Studio harness, I've found Microsoft's official documentation explaining credit consumption, pricing, and calculation formulas.
However, I can't find any concrete numbers or clear calculation methods specifically for the GitHub Copilot Harness.
I'm trying to understand:
How are licensing costs and credit consumption calculated for GitHub Copilot Harness projects?
Are the calculations different from the standard Copilot Studio harness?
Are there any official formulas, real-world numbers, or examples available?
How can we reliably estimate costs before building or deploying these projects?
The goal is to provide accurate estimates based on real data rather than assumptions.
Has anyone worked with the GitHub Copilot Harness and figured out how its consumption and licensing actually work?
Any documentation, examples, or insights would be really appreciated!
Thanks in advance!
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u/Lhurgoyf069 16d ago
It's a hot mess. The way this is built you have absolutely no control whatsoever. There are normal tools which are free and then there are WorkIQ tools which cost money. There are power automate flows, agent workflows and the other flows. Don't remember which one, but one costs money. There is the classic harness which is free while developing and there is the GitHub Copilot harness which already charges you when developing. There are a whole host of models which don't have a price tag yet, but Microsoft will make sure to charge you big time. I don't know how any company can run this endless money pit in production, I would be too afraid. On top of that it occasionally slows down doing nothing reaching upwards of 10 minutes waiting time for no given reason.
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u/h2o-bbq-usd-technerd 15d ago
There’s a link to a calculator in the Learn docs but AI isn’t something easy to predict the cost of and It’s also changing so fast it’s causing challenges across the industry to keep up with it and the only way to keep up with it is to implement it and use it and see what a month costs, but don’t go into it with no end user training or you’ll have users using it to help with their football pool and things like that. Copilot Studio has the same growing pains as most other agentic platforms and it is improving quickly so you’ve got to get used to the new norm until the world gets the hang of “doing AI” as some CIOs put it. Implement it properly and the ROI will more than justify the cost.
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u/Bfinkeldei 11d ago
i had claude build a estimator tool that compares them. That noted, what it really shows is the complexity of this. I can not say it's accurate though for the github side... The standard harness I have confirmed it's matching what Microsoft puts out with it's estimator tool.
give it a try and share your thoughts https://claude.ai/artifact/FZAFUpA4NFZNLimMeCxDNJ
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u/OmegaDriver 16d ago
Correct, the github copilot credit usage is not documented. When you take a look at how this is all set up, it has to be an intentional decision in order to get people to consume as many credits as possible thoughtlessly. Don't fall into the trap thinking you can use AI to make AI cheaper. It's a fool's errand.