Service credits, what are they and how are they consumed?

[MichelMindsUnit]

Hello,

In the license guide for PowerApps+Flow the section about AI Builder mentions service credits.

We can purchase "units", each comes with "1 million service credits"

It's unclear to me what 1 service credit is exactly, can anyone clarify that?
And where can we see our current consumption of these credits?

This is what the guide says about it:

AI Builder capacity is expressed in the form of “service credits”. Service credits serve as the single (common) currency across all the scenarios supported by AI Builder. Available service credits are deducted when AI Builder services are used.
Different scenarios (for example, forms processing, prediction, etc.) burn down service credits at different rates.
Customers should purchase the appropriate number of AI Builder capacity add-on units based on anticipated usage across all scenarios.

It makes sense that the different models consume service credits at different rates (complexity, multi-page documents, what have you) but, without knowing what the value of each service credit is, it's very difficult to purchase the appropriate number of units.

Microsoft gives this example - giving me the hint that there is some kind of calculation that I'm unaware or:

Each unit of “AI Builder capacity add-on” includes 1 million service credits per month. For example, a customer requiring 4.7 million service credits per month (based on anticipated usage), should purchase 5 units of “AI Builder capacity add-on”.

Hope someone can shine some light onto what is 1 service credit, how is it measured and where can I see my current consumption/remaining credits?

- Michel

[Pochoide]

Is this still unanswered? I can't figure out exactly what's the difference between credits, service credits and units

[Antrod]

Hi @Pochoide ,

Service credits and credits are basically the same in the context of AI Builder. They represent the value that you get when buying AI Builder add-on units and therefore what you consume when running AI Builder models.

The AI Builder add-on unit is the base credits package you can buy. It contains 1M credits and you can buy several of them.

AI Builder credits are also included with other licenses such as Power Apps per user plan or Power Automate per user plan with attended RPA. You can learn more there: AI Builder licensing | Microsoft Learn

[JoshThornton]

It would be really helpful if you read the question and answered it before just posting generic Microsoft articles.

You have added nothing of value to the topic.

The question is how you can work out the rate of consumption from different tasks performed by AI builder. 

Everyone is capable of reading Microsoft articles explaining what a credit is, we dont need a copy and pastes of the same information!

[Antrod]

Hello @JoshThornton ,

Sorry you didn't find your answer in this thread.

My answer was intended to the previous user who wanted to understand the difference between AI Builder licensing concepts.

We are always willing to answer any community concern, so you are right to ask additional questions if things are not clear 🙂

I'll try to be exhaustive on the consumption rate topic to make sure I respond to your concern. I'll make sure to not quote articles or point at Microsoft documentation but solely answer with key information on the product.

• If you want to understand the consumption cost of each model or compute your potential credits cost with AI Builder, you can make a calculation using the consumption rates of all the AI Builder models. We also call it the burn rates of AI Builder models and they are available in the Power Platform licensing guide. For example, it can tell you how much credits it costs to process 1 page with the Document processing model. It also gives you the equivalent in $. Another thing you can do is use the AI Builder calculator. By experience, most of our customers are just using that to estimate their consumption. 
• If you are looking for ways to consult your live or past credits consumption per AI Builder model, this is not available (yet, but we have this in our backlog). The consumption reporting available today is only accessible by environment admins and gives the credits consumed per environment and per user. It is accessible in Power Platform Admin Center > Resouces > Capacity > Summary > Download reports.

If this doesn't answer your question at all, please write us at aihelpen@microsoft.com and we would be glad to understand more about your use case or any suggestion you may have to improve the product.

[Chris_Py]

(update to leehsiang post from 2020)

AI Builder prices were lowered on 2023/03 and calculator was updated, it now shows a 1 unit price of 500$ / 10.000 pages for Document Processing,  or 31200 pages for Invoice Processing.

The price is based on page count, not fields count. 

https://powerapps.microsoft.com/en-us/ai-builder-calculator/

[Pochoide]

@Chris_Py  how were the prices lowered? One unit was also $500 previously, some months ago

[Chris_Py]

price per page was lowered - unit price is the same but you get more pages.

[Anubhav12qw]

This is the answer to your question:

https://powerautomate.microsoft.com/en-us/ai-builder-calculator/#footnote-3

[Chris_Py]

There's a new feature that might help measuring the usage of AI Builder credit:

AI Builder now provides an activity monitor (in preview), that shows credit cost per action:
Activity monitoring (preview) | Microsoft Learn
This can be used to check usage with high level of detail.

It complements the AI Builder consumption report which shows daily usage at environment or tenant level.

Also note that the update of May 2023 Microsoft Power Platform Licensing Guide details the cost of each AI Builder operation (page 20 for May 2023 version).

[takolota]

So I built this template that processes any document just using the less expensive image recognition AI Builder service & GPT.

It seems much less expensive with a much lower barrier to entry only requiring a premium Power Automate license with 5000 AI Builder credits per month & some on-going LLM / GPT costs…

https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/Power-Automate-Cookbook/Extract-Data-From-PDFs-and-Images-With-G...

If I’m looking at this right, this method should cost 

Image recognition +.0017

GPT prompt & output +.007

Flow actions +.00375

So about $ .013 per page.

Less expensive than any of the other microsoft document/receipt/invoice processing options. And several of those take about 30 seconds to run. 
And the 5000 AI Builder credits that come with the now $15 premium Power Automate license is enough for 1500 Image recognition pages. So you could probably process 500-750 documents per month with just 1 premium Power Automate license.

So it seems this method is faster, less expensive, easier to adjust, & requires less set-up than other standard AI builder set-ups.

Once the GPT actions are in general availability, I don’t know why I’d use any of the other services. 🤷‍