The New Economics of Enterprise AI: Why We Built Flex Credits

AI is reshaping work across HR, Finance, and IT. Not just how it gets done, but who does it. People and AI agents are now working side by side, with agents taking on more of the work itself.

We're helping our customers lead in this new era with Workday AI, built specifically for managing people, money, and agents. It’s grounded in a deep understanding of how work actually happens inside an organization—with the context and guardrails built in, not bolted on.

That foundation is what allows our agents to do real work from start to finish. And as agents take on more of that work, they create a new kind of value that scales with what they produce—not with how many people are using software to do their jobs.

Seat-based pricing has long been the right fit for software that helps a person do their job. AI introduces a new kind of value. When agents help draft contracts, reconcile accounts, design org structures, and onboard employees alongside your team, the value shifts from a user in front of a screen to a platform enabling outcomes. 

Flex Credits put the power in your hands: giving you control, flexibility, and predictability to align costs directly with the value you receive from Workday.

That’s why we introduced Workday Flex Credits—our usage-based pricing model for AI and platform innovations. With Flex Credits, Workday delivers transformative AI to you faster and with costs aligned to the value you receive, not token guesswork. 

Think of Flex Credits as the currency that powers those agents, giving you access to new AI use cases as they are available in Workday. Flex Credits put the power in your hands: giving you control, flexibility, and predictability to align costs directly with the value you receive from Workday.

A More Modern Model: Introducing Workday Flex Credits

Customers purchase credits and apply them toward using agents, platform innovations, and Sana as their needs evolve, helping ensure they can scale at their own pace. Flex Credits enable customers to access Workday AI agents and platform innovations through a single, transparent commercial model designed for the AI era. Here’s how Flex Credits work:

• Get started: With Flex Credits, you can test before you invest. Customers on the Flex Credit model receive complimentary credits to explore agents and Sana in production, and can test for free in non-production.
• Get scaling: When the customer is ready to scale, they have real usage data and support from Workday to take the guesswork out of how many credits to purchase. A Flex Credit subscription helps to keep costs predictable, with flexibility to add more credits as needed.
• Visibility into use: With the Platform Consumption Console (PCC), you get full visibility into your Flex Credit balance and usage, with proactive alerts when you’re approaching key thresholds so you know when to buy more credits.
• Credits shift with you: Workday Flex Credits are fungible and apply to any agent or innovation on the model. As AI strategy shifts—like expanding agent access to a new team or adding a new agent to their AI transformation plan—the customer can simply make the changes they want in the product and use the agents how they need.

Faster Innovation, On Your Terms

With Flex Credits, Workday customers will gain immediate access to new AI capabilities the moment they’re released, without separate procurement cycles. And because credits can flex as business needs evolve, spending better aligns to actual usage, helping organizations reduce underutilized spend and tie investment to value.

Flexible, Transparent, and Built for ROI

Your needs evolve. Your AI should too. That’s why Workday Flex Credits are designed to:

• Align to business priorities: Shift usage and turn capabilities on or off as your needs change.
• Simplify the buying experience: No separate procurement cycles.
• Maximize value: Costs align to real usage and value.
• Prove ROI: Dashboards provide visibility into which agents and teams are using credits and driving business impact.

And because credits can be used across both AI and platform innovations, you get one seamless system of AI—not a patchwork of bolt-ons.

The Future Is Here, and It’s Built for the Way You Work

Flex Credits are the foundation for a new era of enterprise AI, where your investment scales with the value it delivers. 

Your teams amplify their impact, your costs align to what AI actually delivers, and your people get to focus on what they do best—with more thinking, strategy, and impact. Work shifts from manual coordination to intelligent orchestration, with human judgment and agents working together as a single hybrid workforce.

Welcome to the new work day. AI-powered. Human-centric. Future-ready.