Microsoft Copilot
Microsoft's assistant inside Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams and Windows, able to draft, summarise and answer from the files and messages already in your Microsoft 365 tenant.
What you'd use it for
Getting an answer grounded in an email, document or meeting your business already has in Microsoft 365, without exporting anything to a separate AI tool.
- Draft, summarise and rewrite text directly in Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint using the file already open
- Ask a chat question and get an answer grounded in your own emails, meetings, chats and documents, with a paid Copilot licence
- Summarise a Teams meeting into a recap with follow-up items
- Run pre-built agents (Researcher, Analyst, Facilitator) against your tenant's own data
- Use the free web-grounded Copilot Chat, or manually upload a file or paste on-screen content into it, without any paid licence
The verdict
Worth having if your business already lives inside Outlook, Teams and Excel, since it answers from material that's already there rather than requiring an upload step. But the free Copilot Chat most people try first is web-only; the version that actually reads your own files is a separate paid licence stacked on top of a Microsoft 365 subscription you must already hold. Its usefulness is capped by how tidy your existing SharePoint and OneDrive already are, and no tier fixes a mess it didn't cause.
What it costs
| Tier | Price | For | Includes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Copilot Chat | Included at no extra cost with an eligible Microsoft 365 subscription | Anyone already paying for Microsoft 365 who wants to try it before adding a licence. | Web-grounded chat. Chat grounded in your own work files requires a paid Copilot licence. |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot Business (add-on) | From $18.00 user/month, paid yearly (listed as reduced from $21.00) | A business that already has Microsoft 365 and wants Copilot on top of it. | AI chat over your work data, pre-built agents (Researcher, Analyst, Facilitator), analytics, choice of model. |
| Microsoft 365 Business Standard with Copilot | $23.50 user/month, paid yearly | Buying the suite and the assistant together rather than as two line items. | Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams, 1 TB storage, basic security. |
| Microsoft 365 Business Premium with Copilot | $32.00 user/month, paid yearly | Small businesses that need device management and advanced security alongside Copilot. | Everything in Standard with Copilot plus advanced security and device management. |
Read from Microsoft Copilot's own pricing page on 25 Sep 2026. Vendors change prices without notice.
What you need to start
- An eligible Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Business Premium subscription underneath the Copilot licence
- A Microsoft Entra account and a global admin able to assign the licence in the Microsoft 365 admin centre
- An annual commitment to get the listed price; monthly billing costs roughly 20 per cent more
Licence assignment in the admin centre takes minutes, but Copilot can take up to 24 hours to appear across the apps, and it isn't genuinely useful until your OneDrive and SharePoint are organised enough to search.
Your first run The first real result is asking Copilot Chat a question grounded in a document or email already in your tenant and getting an answer with a citation back to the source, available once a licence is assigned, though Copilot can take up to 24 hours to appear across the apps.
Where it breaks
The licensing is the hard part, not the price. Copilot requires a qualifying underlying subscription, the list of qualifying plans runs to several dozen entries, and "Copilot" is used for at least three different things: free web chat, work-grounded chat, and the in-app assistant. All published prices are annual-commitment figures; monthly billing costs roughly 20 per cent more. Copilot's usefulness also depends entirely on how well your SharePoint and OneDrive are organised — it surfaces the mess you already have.
Runs inside the Microsoft 365 apps on Windows, macOS, web and mobile, plus a standalone Copilot app and the Windows taskbar. It is an add-on licence, not a product you buy on its own — you need a qualifying Microsoft 365 or Office 365 plan underneath it.
First entry in this reference. There is no previous check to compare it against.
When not to use it
Not for a business that isn't already committed to Microsoft 365, since none of this works without an eligible subscription underneath it. Not for anyone whose SharePoint and OneDrive are disorganised, since Copilot surfaces that mess rather than fixing it, and not for someone chasing the cheapest assistant, since the listed prices require an annual commitment.
Buying this one is a licensing exercise before it is a product decision, which is unusual for a tool at this level of the market and worth knowing before you start.
The proposition is simple enough. If your business runs on Outlook, Teams and Excel, an assistant that can already see those things — this thread, that workbook, the meeting you missed — does not need to be the cleverest model available to be the most useful one. It is answering from your material without an upload step and without anyone copying confidential figures into a browser tab.
The three things called Copilot
- Copilot Chat, included free with most Microsoft 365 plans, which searches the web.
- Work-grounded chat, which searches your tenant and needs a paid licence.
- In-app Copilot, the thing in the Word ribbon that drafts and rewrites.
Marketing collapses all three into one name. The gap between the first and the second is where most of the disappointment comes from.
Before you buy
Copilot reads what your organisation has filed. A business with four years of documents dumped into one OneDrive folder gets a worse assistant than one with a tidy SharePoint, and no licence tier fixes that.
If you are not already committed to Microsoft, Google Gemini makes the same argument for Workspace, and ChatGPT makes no assumption about where your files live at all.
Alternatives
Assistants & chatAppsGoogle Gemini
Google's assistant, usable on its own and also inside Gmail, Docs, Sheets and Drive, so it can draft and summarise against files you already keep in Google.
Assistants & chatAppsChatGPT
OpenAI's assistant in a browser tab, a desktop app and a phone app, where you ask questions, draft text, and hand it files or spreadsheets to work through.
Assistants & chatModelClaude
Anthropic's AI assistant, available in a browser tab and — the part that matters here — as a desktop app that can read the files on your own machine and reach the systems you connect to it.
Get Microsoft Copilot
Buying the tool is not the hard part.
The ebook is about what to hand over, in what order, and how you find out when it goes wrong. One payment, no subscription.