Agent Builder vs Copilot Studio: Which Should You Use?

30-Second Decision

Microsoft documents four factors to evaluate: audience, deployment scope, functionality, and governance needs. Most decisions are clear after the first two.

If you are…	Use…
Building for yourself or a small team using Microsoft 365 content	Agent Builder
Building for a department, whole org, or external customers	Copilot Studio
Needing workflows, approvals, or integrations beyond Microsoft 365	Copilot Studio
Needing enterprise ALM (dev/test/prod environments, versioning, telemetry)	Copilot Studio
Starting simple, with plans to scale later	Agent Builder → then copy to Copilot Studio

Glossary

ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) — managing an application across dev, test, and production environments with versioning and controls
DLP (Data Loss Prevention) — policies that control what data can flow where within or outside your organization
Microsoft Purview — Microsoft’s compliance and data governance product (sensitivity labels, audit logs, retention policies)
Microsoft Graph — the API layer that connects to Microsoft 365 data (SharePoint, emails, Teams, etc.)

Agent Builder in Microsoft 365 Copilot

Access point: Microsoft 365 Copilot app
Intended user type: Information workers

Microsoft describes Agent Builder as the right choice when you want to quickly create an agent for yourself or a small team, using natural language and existing content — without any code.

Key capabilities

Natural language authoring
Content-focused Q&A based on organizational context from Microsoft Graph
Respects user permissions to Microsoft 365 data — if a user doesn’t have access to a SharePoint site, Teams channel, or Outlook mailbox, the agent will not surface content from those sources
Uses the Microsoft 365 Copilot orchestrator, foundation models, and services

Use cases

Project FAQ bots that answer common questions based on project documentation
Product documentation assistants that help employees find information from internal product manuals or wikis
Onboarding agents that help new team members get answers from internal knowledge bases

Governance

Who manages it?	IT admins
Where?	Microsoft 365 Admin Center → Copilot → Agents
Sharing controls	Microsoft 365 Admin Center → Copilot → Settings → Data access → Agents
Key controls	Enable/disable/block agents, view inventory, configure billing, review usage
Compliance	Microsoft Purview (sensitivity labels, audit logs, DLP, retention)

Copilot Studio

Access point: copilotstudio.microsoft.com
Intended user type: Makers and developers

Microsoft describes Copilot Studio as the right choice when you need an agent for a broader audience — a whole department, organization, or external customers — or when the agent requires advanced capabilities or more control over deployment and management. It is a standalone web portal built for complex or scalable solutions.

Key capabilities

Broad and external publishing
Multistep logic, approvals, and branching workflows
Advanced AI models and integration with Azure AI services
Prebuilt and custom connectors to data sources beyond Microsoft 365
Autonomous capabilities
Lifecycle management: versioning, dev/test/prod environments, role-based access controls, telemetry and analytics

Use cases

Customer support agents that create support tickets and escalate issues to a human
IT help desk triage agents that handle employee IT requests and route them to the right support team
Sales assistants for CRM that retrieve sales data, make notes, or kick off an approval workflow

Governance

Who manages it?	IT admins and Power Platform admins
Where?	Power Platform Admin Center
Key controls	Connector governance, environment-level DLP, role-based access, publishing approval workflows
ALM	Dev, test, and production environments with versioning
Deployment targets	Teams, websites, and custom endpoints
Compliance	Microsoft Purview (sensitivity labels, audit logs, retention) + telemetry and usage analytics

Feature Comparison

Excerpted from Microsoft’s official comparison (selected rows only; no rows added).

Feature	Agent Builder	Copilot Studio
Agent target audience	Individuals or small teams	Department, organization, or external customers
Agent type	Lightweight Q&A with organizational knowledge	Complex workflows, business system integration, enterprise governance
Management	Microsoft 365 Admin Center	Power Platform Admin Center (finer-grained controls)

Source: Microsoft Learn

Migration Path

You do not have to decide permanently upfront. When you copy an agent from Microsoft 365 Copilot to Copilot Studio, the core configuration and instructions are preserved — you extend them, you do not start over. This is Microsoft’s documented path for when requirements outgrow Agent Builder: you need enterprise-grade deployment, more data source integrations, or advanced security policies.

Licensing

Both tools are included with a Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on license for authenticated users.
Without that license: Copilot Credits or pay-as-you-go covers both.
Agent Builder is free for agents grounded on web knowledge only (not Microsoft 365 organizational content).