The meter is coming, and other things we learned about AI this autumn
Copilot is switching to usage billing in December. A client's Team or Enterprise decision turned out to be about one habit. And a dashboard came out of it. Four minutes, three things.
Three things from the last few months, each short enough to read with a cup of tea. The longer versions are on our journal, Terrified of AI, if one of them lands.
The meter is coming
From 1 December 2026, new Microsoft 365 Copilot Business licences bought through partners come with usage-based billing switched on by default. The rate is $0.01 a Copilot Credit, with a default cap of 4,000 credits per user per month. That is up to $40 a user on top of the $21 seat, according to Microsoft Partner Center announcements from October 2026.
The number is not the interesting part. The behaviour is. A flat seat was rationed by whoever signed the order. A meter gets rationed by whoever runs out first, and in most small firms that is the most junior person, the one who was told to use it for everything. We wrote up what that does inside a firm, and the three things to do before December. There is a calculator on that page. Put your own headcount in before you read the rest.
Enterprise or not
We spent the summer inside a client’s decision between Claude Team and Claude Enterprise, with their permission and with nothing here that identifies them. Every objection on the table was about cost.
The cost turned out to be a behaviour. About 80 per cent of usage was on the most expensive model, not because the work needed it but because it was the default. Default to the cheaper model, keep the expensive one as a choice for the jobs that earn it, and most of the gap between the two plans closes on its own. The security and admin case for Enterprise then stands on its own feet rather than fighting the invoice.
The whole argument, in order is on the journal, and so is what the rollout was actually like, including the bits that took longer than anyone wanted.
Nobody defends a number they cannot see
That work left us with a problem we kept hearing from other firms. Somebody has to defend the AI spend at the next meeting, and nobody can see it.
So we built AI Hub. It is a dashboard for organisations on Claude Enterprise. It shows adoption, spend by model and by team, the value coming out of Claude Code, and a compliance view that by construction cannot read anyone’s content. Swanswater designed it, as the consultancy and design arm. It runs on Clearview, the monitoring platform of STG, our technology arm with the IT and cyber practice behind it, so the security and compliance are in the technology rather than bolted on afterwards. Access is from £35 a month.
If you want to do something about any of this
Most firms do not need any of it to start, and the free self-audit tells you which of three things to do first. If you would rather do it with us, the fees are fixed and on the advisory page.