Microsoft Offers Three Agent Build Paths in 2026: How to Choose the Right One

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Microsoft supports three official paths for building AI agents in 2026: Copilot Studio, Foundry Hosted Agents, and the Microsoft 365 Agents SDK, all feeding into the same tenant-wide agent inventory. Copilot Studio is a fully managed, low-code SaaS tool suited for makers who want to build agents without handling infrastructure. Foundry Hosted Agents serve as a middle-ground PaaS option, allowing pro-dev teams to run their own containerized code while Microsoft manages the runtime, scaling, and observability. The Microsoft 365 Agents SDK is the self-hosted, pro-code path, offering the widest channel reach and full orchestration control but requiring teams to manage their own compute. Choosing the right path depends on four key factors: who builds the agent, who owns the compute, which channels it must reach, and whether custom protocols or async behavior are needed.

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ProgrammingDEV Community ·

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