AI Builder Credit Changes: Keep Power Apps and Flows Running

Beginning November 1, 2026, eligible new and renewed licenses will no longer include seeded AI Builder credits. Existing entitlements may continue through the applicable subscription term, but many organizations don’t realize their Power Apps and Power Automate flows depend on them. For years, premium licenses included seeded capacity in the form of AI Builder credits that covered document processing, text extraction, and AI prompts at no extra cost. That cushion is going away. Microsoft is moving AI Builder features to Copilot Credits, and if neither AI Builder credits nor Copilot Credits are available, affected AI Builder actions can eventually be blocked and cause the associated flow or app operation to fail. Here’s what’s changing and how to keep your automations running.

Microsoft announced the progressive end of AI Builder credits in October 2025, with two key dates. (Source: Microsoft Learn, End of AI Builder credits)

November 1, 2025: End of Sales for AI Builder capacity add-ons. New customers could no longer buy the AI Builder capacity add-on T1, AI Builder capacity add-on T2, or AI Builder capacity add-on T3. Each of these AI Builder service credit add-ons provided 1 million AI Builder credits per month. Existing customers could still renew or add more.

November 1, 2026: End of Life of AI Builder capacity add-ons and seeded credits. This is the date that affects most organizations:

The good news is that AI Builder features themselves aren’t being retired. Document processing, image recognition, text extraction, prediction, custom AI models, and AI prompts all keep working. They just run on a different consumption and billing model: Copilot Credits.

If your organization relies on seeded AI Builder credits in eligible SKUs, these are the licenses affected:

On a phone, scroll the table sideways to see both columns.

Source: Microsoft Learn, Licensing and AI Builder credits (updated October 8, 2026), and the Microsoft Power Platform Licensing Guide. Licensing terms and product names are subject to change.

Most of the listed licenses are capped at 1,000,000 seeded credits per tenant. Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations is capped at 20,000 per tenant, and Power Apps per app licenses purchased before November 2022 don’t include any credits. Many teams never noticed this AI Builder credit allocation because it covered light use automatically. That’s exactly why the change catches organizations off guard.

Until your AI Builder credits run out, Microsoft uses a dual-mode licensing model in the Power Automate and Power Apps context:

In the Microsoft Copilot Studio context, AI Builder features always consume Copilot Credits.

Consumption resets on the first of each month, and unused credits don’t roll over. When an environment has no credits left, AI Builder actions fail with EntitlementNotAvailable and QuotaExceeded error codes, and makers see a message that all AI Builder credits in the environment have been consumed. Users may also see messages such as “Missing Copilot Credit or AI Builder credit capacity” or “Credit usage exceeds allocation.” (Source: Microsoft Learn, All AI Builder credits have been consumed)

Start with an inventory. Review the AI Builder models and Power Automate flows used by Power Apps, Power Pages, Dynamics 365, and standalone automation processes, and list every AI Builder action: document processing, receipt and invoice processing, text extraction, image recognition, sentiment analysis, and AI prompts. Include cloud flows invoked by Power Pages sites, because any AI Builder action inside the flow consumes capacity in the Power Platform environment where that action runs. Note which environment each one runs in.

In the Power Platform admin center, select Resources > Capacity, and then review the Summary and Add-ons panes to see owned, allocated, and tenant-level capacity. (Navigation reflects the admin center at the time of publication; labels may change.) (Source: Microsoft Learn, All AI Builder credits have been consumed) For more detail, use the AI Builder consumption report to see usage per environment. To find which model uses the most credits, check the Dataverse AI Event table or the AI Builder Activity page in Power Automate.

There’s no direct conversion ratio between the two credit types, and rates differ by feature. Use the AI Builder capability rate table to estimate costs. (Source: Microsoft Learn, AI Builder capability rate table) Microsoft groups AI features into four tiers: Basic, Standard, Premium, and Content Processing.

Here’s an example. Using the Microsoft rate and U.S. pay-as-you-go price available as of October 15, 2026, processing 32,000 single-page receipts a month at eight Copilot Credits per page would consume 256,000 credits. At $0.01 per credit, the estimated monthly charge would be $2,560. Microsoft’s rate table lists receipt analysis at eight Copilot Credits per page and bases its pricing on 1 Copilot Credit = $0.01 under pay-as-you-go billing. (Source: Microsoft Learn, AI Builder capability rate table) Actual rates, regional pricing, and consumption rules may change, so validate the current rate table before budgeting.

For AI prompts, consumption depends on input tokens, output tokens, and the underlying generative AI model you choose. Switching a prompt from a premium model to a basic one can significantly reduce costs if the results are still good enough.

You have three main options:

Many organizations combine a prepaid pack for baseline usage with pay-as-you-go as a backup, to reduce the risk of failures when a busy month exceeds the plan. Even so, configuration, allocation, billing-policy status, and enforcement delays can still affect availability.

Purchasing capacity and allocating it are separate steps. Copilot Credits can be allocated to a specific environment or left at the organization (tenant) level. Allocate dedicated capacity to production environments where isolation is required, so a test environment can’t consume the credits your important automations need. Also review whether the tenant setting that permits consumption of unassigned credits aligns with your governance model.

The Power Platform admin center now includes tools to manage Copilot Credit usage:

Review these monthly, especially in the first few months after the change, when usage patterns are new.

As AI Builder usage moves to Copilot Credit consumption, some steps may not be worth the cost. For each AI Builder action, decide whether to pay for Copilot Credits, replace it with a simpler approach such as a standard form or manual review, or retire it. Note that business card reader and prediction are currently free. Microsoft also states that training models on the AI Models page and testing prompts or models don’t consume credits. (Sources: Microsoft Learn, AI Builder capability rate table; Microsoft Learn, Licensing and AI Builder credits)

The end of AI Builder credits doesn’t have to break your automations. Take inventory of your AI Builder actions, check your current consumption, estimate your Copilot Credit needs, and put the right capacity and controls in place before your flows start failing.

Windows Management Experts helps organizations plan, govern, and optimize Power Platform and Dynamics 365 environments. If you’re not sure how this change affects your apps and flows, schedule a consultation with our team and we’ll help you build a plan.