Read the opening of The Real Cost of Copilot, free.
The first 20 pages of the FinOps manual for Copilot's credit meter: the front matter and the two chapters that break the meter down. It comes with the live Pre-Flight Credit Estimate worksheet, so you can run the numbers as you read.
Twenty pages of the book, not a teaser PDF.
You get the real opening of The Real Cost of Copilot: the front matter and two full chapters, so you can judge the method before you buy the rest.
How to read a dated FinOps book
Who it is for, what it does and does not cover, the note on pricing volatility, and how confidence is flagged so you always know a banked rate from an estimate.
Copilot Got a Meter
Copilot is a consumption product now. The rename that confused everyone and changed nothing, and why your current cost tooling cannot see the meter at all.
Anatomy of a Credit
A Copilot Credit broken to its verified per-unit rates: the rate table, Microsoft's own worked totals, the zero-rating boundary, and how overage is enforced.
The sample is the book's actual pages in PDF and EPUB. Read it on anything.
The one line most Copilot budgets get wrong.
Anatomy of a Credit turns on a single distinction. The sample spells it out, and the included worksheet bakes it into the math.
Interactive turns by a licensed Copilot user
These do not draw credits. Count them as metered and you over-budget a quiet pilot that was never going to cost what you feared.
Autonomous runs and unlicensed users
These draw credits. Miss this line and you under-budget the day an agent goes autonomous and the meter starts running on its own.
Get that one line right and the forecast holds. The sample explains it; the worksheet computes it.
The Pre-Flight Credit Estimate worksheet.
A working Excel workbook, not a screenshot. Set a few inputs and read the monthly credit draw and dollar cost before you ship the agent. The current rates are built in, as of May 2026.
Pre-Flight Credit Estimate
Live formulas. Set interactions per user, active users, and autonomous runs, and read the monthly credits and cost at both rates.
Cost-Stack Allocation
A template to split Copilot spend across teams and cost centres, so the forecast becomes a showback you can actually file.
Rate Reference
The per-unit credit rates and the money rates, each dated, so when Microsoft reprices you change one tab, not the whole model.
built-in May 2026 rates when you change the inputs.
The full method is The Real Cost of Copilot.
You have read the meter and the anatomy of a credit. The rest of the book is the FinOps method in full: see the whole cost surface, allocate it across four bills that share no key, forecast it, and cut it with five named design levers. The complete book plus its full companion workbook is $29.
All figures are dated as of May 2026. Verify against Microsoft's current pricing page before you commit a number to a budget.