Microsoft Foundry Agent Service
Microsoft's fully managed platform for building, deploying, and scaling AI agents inside Microsoft Foundry — with models from the Foundry catalog, built-in and MCP tools, and isolated Micro VM hosting for code-based agents.
Regional availability
- East US
- East US 2
- West US
- West US 3
- North Central US
- South Central US
- West Europe
- North Europe
- Sweden Central
- UK South
- France Central
- Switzerland North
- Japan East
- Australia East
- Canada Central
- Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty
Description
History and rebrand
The service debuted in November 2024 as Azure AI Agent Service — the Azure AI Foundry component responsible for agent runtime. It reached public preview in March 2025 and became generally available in late 2025. In April 2026, as part of a broader brand consolidation, Microsoft renamed the platform to Microsoft Foundry Agent Service, and Azure AI Foundry itself became Microsoft Foundry. Legacy endpoints (`*.services.ai.azure.com/api/projects/.../agents`) remain backward compatible.
Platform architecture
Foundry Agent Service supports three agent types: Prompt agents (no-code, configured in the portal or via SDK), Workflow agents (declarative YAML orchestrations with branching and human-in-the-loop), and Hosted agents — code-based agents built with any framework (Microsoft Agent Framework, LangGraph, custom code) and deployed as containers on isolated Micro VMs that scale per session.
Tools and protocols
Built-in tools include web search, file search, memory, code interpreter, and hosted MCP servers (including Azure DevOps MCP). Toolbox lets teams publish a tool set once and consume it from any MCP-compatible runtime. Agents authenticate through Microsoft Entra (managed identity, OAuth On-Behalf-Of). Publishing supports OpenResponses, Activity, and A2A (preview) protocols for agent-to-agent communication, while distribution targets Microsoft 365 Copilot, Teams, and the Entra Agent Registry.
MLOps LifecycleMLOps LifecycleFull model lifecycle: registry, feature store, prompt management, monitoring and human-in-the-loop.
Prompt Management
Monitoring
Human-in-the-Loop
Data & KnowledgeData & Knowledge ManagementData connectors, vector database integration, native vector search and data management (PII, provenance, synthetic data).
ApplicationsAI ApplicationsDomains and use cases this platform is best suited for — from RAG and fine-tuning to scientific research.
SecurityEnterprise SecurityCertifications, access controls and data-protection features essential for corporate deployments and cloud privacy compliance.
Developer EcosystemDeveloper EcosystemDeveloper resources: available SDKs, supported programming languages, and infrastructure features and model-deployment methods.
Pricing & Business ModelPricing & Business ModelBilling models (usage-based, provisioned throughput), resource limits and SLA parameters (uptime, support tiers).
Pricing models
Resource quotas
SLA & Support