Master Microsoft Foundry Agent Service with our step-by-step tutorial, detailed feature walkthrough, and expert tips.
Sign up for Azure subscription and access Microsoft Foundry portal Create your first prompt agent using the no
code interface with built
in templates Configure agent instructions, select models, and add tools from the catalog Test your agent in the playground and publish to production endpoint
💡 Quick Start: Follow these 3 steps in order to get up and running with Microsoft Foundry Agent Service quickly.
Explore the key features that make Microsoft Foundry Agent Service powerful for multi-agent builders workflows.
Azure AI Agent Service is now part of Microsoft Foundry (the platform previously branded as Azure AI Studio and Azure AI Foundry). Foundry is the umbrella platform for building AI applications and includes Foundry Models, Foundry Tools, Foundry IQ, and the Foundry Control Plane for observability. Agent Service is the specific component within Foundry dedicated to creating, deploying, and managing AI agents that can reason, use tools, and collaborate in multi-agent workflows.
You can access more than 11,000 models from the Foundry model catalog, including OpenAI GPT-4o and o-series, Meta Llama, Mistral, DeepSeek, and specialized industry and fine-tuned models. You can also bring your own fine-tuned or custom models and deploy them through the same managed infrastructure. The platform supports switching models at the configuration level without requiring code changes, and intelligent routing can automatically select the best model for each task.
Foundry Agent Service uses pay-as-you-go pricing based on the underlying resources an agent consumes: token-based model inference, storage, search queries (via Azure AI Search or Bing grounding), and compute for hosted agents. There is no separate per-agent fee. For higher-volume workloads, Microsoft offers Agent Commit Units (ACUs) as pre-purchased commitment plans that provide 5% to 15% discounts depending on the commitment level, applied across all resource types.
Yes. Multi-agent orchestration is a core capability, supported through Semantic Kernel and AutoGen integration as well as the native workflow agent type. You can define specialized agents (e.g., a researcher, a reviewer, and a writer) and coordinate them with patterns for delegation, handoff, sequential execution, group chat, and parallel processing. Human-in-the-loop approval steps can be inserted at any point in the orchestration graph.
Based on our analysis of the AI Agents category, Foundry trades some raw flexibility for enterprise managed-service benefits. OpenAI's Assistants API is simpler to start with but limited to OpenAI models and lacks Microsoft 365 integration, private VNet isolation, and Entra-based RBAC. Open-source frameworks like LangGraph, AutoGen, and CrewAI offer maximum customization and portability but require you to build and manage your own hosting, security, and observability infrastructure.
Now that you know how to use Microsoft Foundry Agent Service, it's time to put this knowledge into practice.
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Follow our tutorial and master this powerful multi-agent builders tool in minutes.
Tutorial updated March 2026