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When you evaluate operational quality, reliability, and cost, consider the choice of agent host, such as Microsoft 365 Copilot (declarative agents), Copilot Studio (custom agents), or Azure. Keep this decision separate from the agent authoring method. Where an agent runs or is hosted determines its orchestration capabilities, model access, and operational features. These features directly affect response quality and performance.
This article explains how agent host platforms affect solution capabilities. You learn how different authoring methods can create agents on the same host platform while maintaining consistent quality and behavior, and how a single authoring method can create agents on different platforms with different quality and behavioral results.
Microsoft 365 Copilot hosting
Microsoft 365 Copilot provides a managed hosting environment for declarative agents with built-in governance, security, and compliance capabilities. This platform offers consistent performance characteristics regardless of the authoring method you use to create the agent.
For example, you can author declarative agents by using the Agent Builder feature in Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, or the Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit. The agent host determines the orchestration, catalog, and language model options available to the developer. These options are the largest influencers of response quality. Authoring and creation platforms should be the secondary criterion for a solution in the operational steady state phase.
Different authoring platforms provide varying levels of operational capabilities suited to different organizational needs and development lifecycle stages. As long as the underlying agent host remains Microsoft 365 Copilot (declarative agents), the quality remains consistent as you progress through different authoring canvases to meet your operational needs.
The following table summarizes considerations for which authoring platform to use for declarative agents as an illustrative example.
| Requirement | Agent Builder feature in Copilot | Copilot Studio | Pro Code |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solution owner | Individual | Group | Enterprise |
| Update and maintenance | No versioning | Versioning with locked editing | Versioning with concurrent editing |
| Evaluation framework | Test Panel | Test Panel and Pro Code | Fully customizable |
| CI/CD | None | Some | Yes |
| Real-time monitoring | None | None | Yes |
| Telemetry | Limited | Some | Fully customizable |
| Cost/return on investment | Included with Microsoft 365 Copilot | Ranges from license to consumption | Fully customizable based on pro-code choices |
Consider other factors such as developer lift and debugging tools (not shown in the table). Keep in mind that these factors are heavily influenced by your organization's security posture and its capacity for a particular development platform.
Promote Microsoft 365 Copilot declarative agents built in Agent Builder to a declarative agent authored with the Microsoft 365 Agents Toolkit. This strategy maintains Microsoft 365 Copilot as the orchestrator to ensure consistent agent behavior. If an experimental custom agent built in Copilot Studio meets the proof of concept evaluation criteria and source control is required for enterprise operations, promote the agent to a managed pipeline in Power Platform. This approach ensures the Copilot Studio orchestrator remains the primary mechanism for maintaining agent behavior.
Next step
Learn how to measure agent quality, validate performance across diverse scenarios, and ensure operational readiness before deployment by using evaluation frameworks.