Atlassian's Cloud list prices rise on 13 October 2026, by between 3% and 10% depending on product, plan and seat count, according to Atlassian partner Seibert. On 3 December, Atlassian starts billing for most AI and automation meters once customers pass the allowances bundled into those same seats. Two days earlier, on 1 December, Microsoft will switch on usage-based billing by default for new Microsoft 365 Copilot Business licences sold through its Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partner channel.
Neither vendor is retiring the seat. Both are adding a meter on top of it. We think the most consequential term in that meter is not the per-credit rate but the default setting. At Microsoft, the defaults point the wrong way: new small-business subscriptions sold through partners arrive with the meter running, while enterprise tenants get one that waits for permission.
The seat stays, and costs more
Atlassian's cloud pricing FAQ says the October increases reflect "the latest innovations now available across our apps, collections, and platform." Seibert reports that where the rise falls in the 7% to 10% band, subscriptions under 5,000 seats pay 7% more and larger ones 10%.
Atlassian announced the second layer on 1 September. Rovo credits, consumed by Rovo Chat, Confluence AI Slides, the Jira Coding Agent and Teamwork Graph queries, become a metered allowance, alongside automation steps and AI agent resolutions. Inline summaries, rewrites and Rovo Search stay free. The Rovo allowance is pooled across the organisation and sized per user: 25 credits a month on Standard, 70 on Premium and 150 on Enterprise for Jira and Confluence, and ten times those figures in the Teamwork and Service Collections, according to Atlassian's Rovo credits documentation. Extra credits list at $0.01 each.
An Atlassian customer renewing this quarter therefore pays a higher seat price justified partly by AI, then pays again for AI use beyond what the seat includes.
Microsoft set out its version in a 25 September post and Message Center notice MC1479276. "Everyday AI" stays on the per-user Copilot licence. "Advanced AI", including new frontier models, may be available through usage-based billing in Copilot Credits. The per-user licence remains, and the meter sits on top of it.
The vendor decides what counts as advanced
The Microsoft notice describes two routes to the meter: using a frontier model or advanced capability, or hitting a limit and choosing to extend with credits. Microsoft defines both thresholds. Futurum Group reports that Microsoft plans to move some capabilities from the meter into the licence over time, and advises buyers on multi-year deals to seek commitments on when that happens. A seat price fixed at signing does not settle it.
Atlassian shows the line moving in practice. Automation now counts every step rather than every rule run, so a 20-step flow that used to count once now counts 20 times, and Enterprise plans that included unlimited automation move to a monthly allowance, according to Atlassian partner Adaptavist. A capability that sat entirely inside the seat price now sits partly inside the meter.
There is a fair case for metering. A long-running agent does more work than a single chat reply, and a flat fee has to cover the heaviest user. Futurum describes Microsoft's split as giving buyers a predictable floor while shifting the hardest forecasting problem, the cost of long-running agents, onto enterprise FinOps teams. That is the trade. The renewal quote stops describing the full bill, and terms the vendor can revise govern the difference. Atlassian's Usage-Based Offering Terms, for instance, let it change how many credits each feature consumes, effective from the date of the change.
The defaults run the wrong way
In enterprise tenants, Microsoft's usage-based features do not work until an admin creates a spending policy in the Microsoft 365 admin center, according to MC1479276. Nothing draws on credits before that policy exists.
Copilot Business is the edition for organisations with 300 or fewer users. For new Copilot Business licences bought through CSP from 1 December, pay-as-you-go becomes the default billing configuration, covering Copilot Cowork, Work IQ APIs and GitHub Copilot Harness. The default spending limit is 4,000 Copilot Credits per user per month, which admins can change. In Microsoft's own example, a 100-seat customer could consume up to 400,000 credits a month under that default. Microsoft moved the start from 2 November, and says the change will initially not apply in 11 markets, including India, Germany, France and Brazil.
Microsoft's partner notice is open about the purpose. Alongside less setup friction, it says early usage "can create a natural path to expanded consumption" and lists upsell conversations among the benefits.
Atlassian's contract applies one rule to every paid plan. Its Usage-Based Offering Terms say extra usage beyond the allowance is enabled by default, and admins can set limits or switch it off. Its cloud pricing FAQ says the opposite: that extra usage billing "requires opt-in" and customers are never charged beyond the allowance unless a billing admin enables it. Buyers should ask which one their order form reflects.
We think Microsoft got the enterprise default right and the small-business default wrong. A meter that stays off until someone acts protects the customer who does nothing. A meter that runs until someone acts protects only the customer who acts. Microsoft has given the first arrangement to tenants large enough for enterprise licensing, and the second to organisations small enough to qualify for Copilot Business. Atlassian's contractual default has the same weakness for its smaller customers, but it does not reserve the safer setting for the largest ones.
The 4,000-credit ceiling is a number Microsoft chose. It is not a budget the customer approved.
What changes at renewal
Atlassian says it will honour quotes generated before 13 October at the old price until they expire. From 3 December, the extra-usage setting on each meter decides the variable part of the bill. Today that is an admin setting. It becomes a contract term only if the buyer makes it one.
For Copilot Business buyers working through a CSP partner, the question before 1 December is whether a new subscription arrives metered and what limit the partner leaves in place.
For larger buyers, the terms worth negotiating have shifted. A renewal that fixes the seat price but is silent on the included allowance, the per-credit rate and how many credits each feature consumes leaves the vendor free to reprice by reclassification. So does one with no notice period before a feature moves from included to metered.
Both default-on changes take effect in the first week of December. The invoices that follow will be the first evidence of whether those defaults produce the overruns that spending controls exist to prevent.
Sources
- Microsoft. "Evolution of the Copilot pricing model." Microsoft Copilot Blog, 25 September 2026. https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/microsoft-copilot-blog/evolution-of-the-copilot-pricing-model/4559416
- Microsoft 365 Message Center. "MC1479276: Microsoft Copilot: Evolving the Copilot pricing model and new FinOps capabilities for AI." 25 September 2026 (via Message Center archive). https://mc.merill.net/message/MC1479276
- Microsoft. "October 2026 announcements." Partner Center, 2026. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/partner-center/announcements/2026-october
- Microsoft. "Microsoft Copilot Business FAQ." Microsoft Learn, 2026. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/copilot/copilot-business-faq
- Atlassian. "Atlassian's usage-based pricing: AI value with predictability and control." 1 September 2026. https://www.atlassian.com/blog/company-news/expanded-usage-based-pricing
- Atlassian. "Usage-Based Pricing." 2026. https://www.atlassian.com/resources/usage
- Atlassian. "Usage-Based Offering Terms." Effective 1 October 2026. https://www.atlassian.com/legal/usage-based-offering-terms
- Atlassian. "Future Cloud list pricing: Overview and FAQs." 2026. https://www.atlassian.com/licensing/future-pricing/cloud/list/faqs
- Atlassian Support. "How Rovo credits work." 2026. https://support.atlassian.com/rovo/docs/rovo-usage-limits/
- Seibert. "Atlassian Cloud Pricing Increase: October 2026." 10 September 2026. https://us.seibert.group/blog/atlassian-cloud-price-increase-2026
- Adaptavist. "Atlassian is introducing usage-based pricing for AI capabilities." 2 September 2026. https://www.adaptavist.com/blog/atlassian-introducing-usage-based-pricing-for-ai-capabilities
- Futurum Group. "Microsoft Splits the Copilot Pricing Model Into Everyday and Advanced AI." 30 September 2026. https://futurumgroup.com/insights/microsoft-splits-the-copilot-pricing-model-into-everyday-and-advanced-ai/