Notion 3.7 (15 September) made that window more tempting: a skills library, Custom MCP connections, sub-agents and a proper model picker. Useful product. Also a FinOps problem if nobody owned usage before credits applied — and if nobody owns it now.
What Notion 3.7 actually shipped (in plain English)
Notion's 15 September 2026 release framed 3.7 around Agent skills for your whole team. Skills are reusable instructions that teach AI how your team works — a monthly business review in your format, a critique in your boss's voice. Create them in Notion Agent chat, run with /, set some to auto-run, and keep them in a skills library. Export as SKILL.md for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini or Grok so the same process travels with local agents.
The same release added Custom MCP connections (ask the agent to connect GitHub, Amplitude and other tools; confirmations before changes; beta on Business and Enterprise), Custom Agents that call sub-agents, post-meeting automation from transcripts, agents embedded in docs, a model picker with frontier models (Notion cites examples such as Opus 5, GPT-5.6 Sol and Kimi K3) plus speed/intelligence/cost indicators, Agent SDK public beta, a Developer Portal inside Notion, and AI Search billed as 50% faster on Business/Enterprise — plus a Notion Agents iOS app.
Separately, on 9 September, Notion shipped model controls: workspace owners choose which AI models are available in Notion Agent and Custom Agents separately, and set a default for Custom Agents (Settings → Notion AI → General → Model controls). Business and Enterprise only.
Skills and MCP raise what teams can automate. Workers and credits decide what that automation costs now the free beta has ended.
Workers vs Custom Agents (code runs vs AI reasoning)
Notion's Workers pricing help draws a clean line UK ops leads should keep:
| Layer | What it does | Cost shape |
|---|---|---|
| Custom Agents | AI decides what to do — reasoning, orchestration, frontier models | Already consume Notion credits per plan settings |
| Workers | Run code in the background — sync data, power tools for agents, handle webhooks | Were free in beta on Business/Enterprise (including Business trials); credits since 15 October 2026 |
Workers suit tasks that do not need AI reasoning. They are often paired with Custom Agents: the agent chooses; the Worker executes. The free beta applied only to Workers.
Run types Notion lists: scheduled syncs, agent-triggered tool calls, and webhooks — each sync, tool call or handled event counts as one run. One agent run can spawn several Worker runs. Third-party coverage from 2sync adds a practical constraint: Worker sync is one-way into Notion, and synced columns are read-only — fine for a dashboard or agent-readable mirror; the wrong tool if people edit the same records in both apps.
The bill: when credits started and how runs stack up
Notion's Workers help is explicit: during beta, Workers were free on Business and Enterprise; starting on 15 October 2026, they require Notion credits. Admins buy credits as an add-on. In the credits dashboard (Settings → Access & billing → Notion credits), Workers showed a Free badge during beta; since the free period ended, their usage counts against your balance. You can also track the last 30 days in the Notion CLI.
Notion's published benchmark: Workers typically cost about $0.0023 per run — roughly 4,348 runs per 1,000 monthly Notion credits ($10). Cheaper than Custom Agents because pricing follows work done, not AI decision-making. Credits per run can vary with runtime and processing; treat $0.0023 as Notion's typical figure, not a hard quote. USD list prices — UK invoices may differ; confirm with Notion.
Illustrative examples from Notion's own help (your mileage will vary):
| Pattern | Notion's illustration | Approx. monthly cost |
|---|---|---|
| Nightly Jira sync | 1 run/day | ~$0.07 |
| Hourly Zendesk sync | 24 runs/day | ~$1.66 |
| Salesforce every 15 minutes | 96 runs/day | ~$6.62 |
| High-volume Zendesk webhooks | ~5,000 events/day | ~$345 |
The scary number is rarely the nightly sync. It is the chatty webhook or the agent that fires five Worker tool calls on every inbound ticket. Frequency is a product decision wearing a finance hat.
Credits sit on Business and Enterprise only. Third-party snapshots (Breeze citing Notion) put Business seats around $20/member/month annual or $24 monthly (USD list), with monthly credits at $10 per 1,000 and annual credits at $13 per 1,000. Free and Plus cannot buy credits — so a Plus team "just trying Workers" is really an upgrade conversation, not a $10 add-on. Confirm live Notion pricing before you put numbers in a board paper.
Admin + FinOps checklist now credits apply
Steal this now that Workers draw on credits:
- Open the credits dashboard now. Note which Workers exist, who created them, and their usage over the last 30 days (CLI works too).
- Use the Workers admin tab (
Settings→ Workers): who can create/use Workers, pause all, disable or delete noisy ones. Default access is often owners-only — decide intentionally. - Set model controls. Restrict expensive frontier models in Notion Agent vs Custom Agents; set a sensible Custom Agent default.
- Separate Agent spend from Worker spend. An agent that "feels free" may already burn credits; Workers joined that meter on 15 October.
- Start slow, then throttle. Prefer hourly/daily syncs; batch updates; sync only needed fields; kill chatty webhooks and retry storms. Notion's high-volume Zendesk example (~$345/mo) is the cautionary tale.
- Pilot one sync and one agent-triggered tool path with a named owner; measure runs for two weeks; then set a monthly credit budget.
- Do not upgrade Plus for curiosity. Credits and Workers need Business or Enterprise. Size the workflow first.
- Brief finance that Notion AI is seats + credits — same FinOps story as usage-based Copilot Credits: fixed layer for everyday work, consumption layer for agentic and background automation, with a kill-switch. Confirm UK billing with Notion (USD list ≠ final invoice).
Why this matters for Clarity Growth
Clarity Growth helps UK SMEs and scale-ups select tools, implement them cleanly, and connect AI into real operations — websites, ecommerce, CRM, support and the messy middle where work actually happens. Notion 3.7's skills library and Custom MCP make Notion a stronger ops hub; the Workers credit switch on 15 October made it time to treat background automation like cloud spend, not a free side effect of the seat. The win is not "more agents in every doc." It is Notion wired into processes where data quality, permissions, a named owner and a credit budget already exist — without surprising the CFO two invoices later.
Sources
- Notion 3.7: Agent skills for your whole team — Notion Releases (15 September 2026)
- Control which AI models your agents can use — Notion Releases (9 September 2026)
- Understand pricing for Workers — Notion Help (Workers free in beta; credits from 15 October 2026; run examples and admin controls)
- Notion Workers sync: what it can and cannot do — 2sync (Simo Elalj) (updated 30 September 2026; one-way sync / read-only columns; Business/Enterprise; credits from 15 October)
- Notion AI pricing in 2026: plans, credits and Workers — Breeze (third-party snapshot of seat and credit USD list prices; confirm with Notion)