Summary
This article provides guidance on licensing options, billing models, and support plans for Microsoft Dragon Copilot, an AI clinical assistant that combines voice, ambient, and AI capabilities.
Dragon Copilot services overview
Microsoft Dragon Copilot is an AI clinical assistant that unifies natural language dictation, ambient speech technology, and extensible AI workflows to empower healthcare teams. Designed for role-based experiences, it streamlines documentation, surfaces key insights, and automates routine tasks across care settings. Built on Microsoft’s secure, scalable architecture, Dragon Copilot helps organizations enhance clinical efficiency, improve patient outcomes, and support clinician wellbeing—delivering measurable impact across the healthcare ecosystem.
For more information, please visit https://aka.ms/DragonCopilot.
Licensing model: Per User subscriptions and pay-as-you-go consumption
Any user that inputs data into, queries, views data within Dragon Copilot or otherwise accesses Dragon Copilot directly or indirectly must be properly licensed. You can license your users for Dragon Copilot through a Dragon Copilot Per User Subscription License or a combination of Dragon Copilot Flex User Subscription License plus a pay-as-you-go consumption meter.
Dragon Copilot offers a range of business models and role-based feature sets designed to support clinical workflows—tailored to meet each customer’s unique needs.
Here is a high-level comparison of your options:
|
SKU name |
Licensing Scheme |
Clinical workflow supported |
Description |
Recommended for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Dragon Copilot (Physician Per User) |
Per User |
Clinical workflow for patient-provider interaction, e.g., physician workflow. |
Equips user to utilize all Dragon Copilot features (including Front-end Speech, ambient and AI features) for the patient-provider encounter for one monthly fee, without additional charges. |
Customers that want to provide access to Dragon Copilot patient-provider encounter features with a single user subscription license. The Dragon Copilot Per User Subscription License is intended to support the broad adoption by physicians and other relevant clinicians within an organization. |
| Dragon Copilot (Physician Flex) | Per User | Clinical workflow for patient-provider interaction, e.g., physician workflow. | Equips users with front-end speech for one monthly fee with the option to access ambient and AI features on a pay-as-you-go consumption basis. An Azure subscription is required and must be linked to the Dragon admin center. | Customers who wish to only pay for the ambient and GenAI features they use through pay-as-you-go consumption. |
| Physician PAYG consumption unit |
Consumption |
Clinical workflow for patient-provider interaction, e.g., physician workflow. |
Allows users with a Dragon Copilot Flex license to access all ambient and AI features but only pay for the features used. Requires linking an Azure subscription to your environment. Note: An environment in Dragon admin center is a container in which you can provision and configure your healthcare solutions. Learn more about Dragon admin center and pay-as-you-go billing. |
Enabling individual users assigned a Flex User Subscription License to run ambient and AI features within the application. This option is best for businesses that want to pay-as-you-go for only the users who apply the ambient and AI capabilities. |
| Dragon Copilot (Nurse Per User) | Per User | Nursing workflow, including flowsheets. | Customers who want to enable Dragon Copilot for nursing staff (including RNs, LPNs, CNAs, and PCTs) using flowsheet-based workflows. | Customers who want to enable Dragon Copilot for nursing staff (including RNs, LPNs, CNAs, and PCTs) using flowsheet-based workflows. |
Note: You can buy a mix of licenses and assign licenses to users within your organization in accordance with the Microsoft Product Terms.
Dragon Copilot consumption
Users licensed with the Dragon Copilot (Physician Flex) user subscription, who want to consume ambient and AI features through pay-as-you-go consumption, will be billed for each AI-Assisted Session they use. As of May 4th, 2026, the rate of the Dragon Copilot Physician pay-as-you-go AI-Assisted Session is 25 consumption units. The rate of the consumption unit is $0.01 / consumption unit.
An AI-Assisted Session is any session in which Dragon Copilot invokes AI capabilities to perform generation, summarization, reasoning, inference, or task execution in support of the user. Within a Session a user can use multiple AI features and still only be charged for one AI-Assisted Session. AI-Assisted Sessions often correspond to individual encounters in ambulatory settings; however, multiple sessions may be required to support a single inpatient encounter since inpatient care includes multiple patient interactions with distinct context and documentation outputs. AI-Assisted Sessions can also be used outside of patient encounters e.g. using Copilot Chat to obtain clinical information.
AI-Assisted Sessions include documentation and research workflows. Examples include:
- Ambient note generation.
- Research using generative tools (Chat) with or without document generation.
- Custom document generation.AI-driven contextual search.
- Data extraction into a structured form such as coaching, referral letters, after visit summaries, encounter summaries, evidence summaries, orders.
- Natural language editing or content creation in any target application, web browser or EHR.
Inclusion of 10 AI Assisted Sessions per month for every license purchased in Dragon Copilot Flex.
With Dragon Copilot (Physician Flex), a customer is eligible to receive 10 AI-Assisted Sessions per month per license in the tenant. To use these sessions, you’ll need to link an Azure subscription to your Dragon admin center environment. To learn more about how to link an Azure subscription, go to MS Learn.
The number of included AI-Assisted Sessions per tenant is calculated based on the number of licenses of Dragon Copilot (Physician Flex) held on the first of the month within a tenant. The available usage is shared among all users with an assigned Dragon Copilot (Physician Flex) license. Unused encounters are not rolled over at the end of the month.
If you go beyond the AI Assisted Sessions included in your monthly allotment, any additional sessions are billed on a pay as you go basis. And if needed, you always have control—ambient recording and AI features can be turned off at any time in the Dragon admin center.
How to buy
You can acquire Dragon Copilot subscription licenses through:
- Microsoft Customer Agreement (MCA)
- Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider, including Clinical Applications Embed
When the Microsoft Customer Agreement is not an option, you may acquire Dragon Copilot subscriptions through:
- Enterprise Agreement (EA)
- Enterprise Agreement Subscription (EAS)
- Server Cloud Enrollment (SCE)
- Enrollment for Education Solutions (EES)
Learn more about the Microsoft Customer Agreement.
Appendix
Appendix A: Dragon Copilot service support
Learn more about support options, which include:
Standard Support - (included with any Dragon Copilot purchase) - Best for businesses operating a simple environment or using a full-service partner.
Professional Direct Support - Best for businesses with a continuously operating production environment requiring faster response times and access to experts for advisory and escalation services.
Unified Support (custom) - Best for businesses that need comprehensive end-to-end support for the entire organization, covering all Microsoft technologies.
