Microsoft Quietly Turned On Copilot Consumption Billing, and You Could Get a Surprise Bill
If you use Microsoft Copilot, and especially if you use it hard and heavy, this one matters. Microsoft is turning on consumption billing by default, and if you are not paying attention, you could open a bill that you were absolutely not prepared for.
What Consumption Billing Actually Means
When you use AI tools, everything runs on what they call tokens. Think of tokens as the fuel the AI burns every time it thinks, writes, searches, or does anything for you. The smarter the AI, the faster it burns through tokens. And right now there is a massive gap between the smartest and the dumbest AI tools available. If you are running on the smartest version, you will blow through your allotment far quicker than you might expect.
Once you hit your limit, consumption billing kicks in and starts charging you for every token beyond that. The problem is Microsoft flipping this on by default, without you making that call. That is not cool. My opinion is they should let you hit the limit, stop, and then ask you if you want to pay for more. That is how it should work.
How Bad Can It Get?
I have heard stories of businesses bragging about burning through a million dollars of tokens in a single month. A million dollars. Now, I honestly do not know what those teams are doing to rack up that kind of number, but the point is it can get out of hand fast if nobody is watching it. For most small businesses using Copilot sensibly, you should not be anywhere near that. But you still need to know whether the meter is running.
What to Do Right Now
Log into your Microsoft 365 admin center. If you are not sure where to find the consumption billing settings, just ask Copilot itself and it will point you to the right spot. Once you are there, check whether consumption billing has been turned on. My recommendation is simple: turn it off. I would rather run out of tokens than get an unexpected charge at the end of the month. Set a hard limit, know where you stand, and make the decision yourself about whether you want to pay for more.
- Log into your Microsoft 365 admin center
- Ask Copilot where to find the consumption billing dashboard if you need help navigating
- Check whether consumption billing is currently enabled
- Turn it off if it is on
If you are one of my clients on Copilot and you want a hand with this, give us a call and we will walk you through it.
Questions about how this affects your setup? Schedule a free IT consultation and we’ll walk through it with you.
Wherever your team is based, ACS provides hands-on managed IT support — see how we help businesses in Traverse City & Northern Michigan.