Microsoft

Microsoft Copilot

Provider

Microsoft

Price

$0-30/user/mo

Platforms

Web, Windows, iOS

Launched

Feb 2023

Updated June 2026

Microsoft Copilot is Microsoft’s family of AI assistants, and the most widely distributed AI on the planet—built into Windows, Edge, Bing, and the Microsoft 365 apps that more than a billion people already use for work. It began life as Bing Chat in February 2023, one of the first GPT-4-powered consumer chatbots, and was folded into a single “Copilot” brand from September 2023.

What makes Copilot different from ChatGPT or Gemini isn’t a single model—it’s the placement. Copilot is the AI that drafts in Word, builds slides in PowerPoint, writes formulas in Excel, clears your Outlook inbox, and summarises your Teams meetings, all grounded in your organisation’s data through the Microsoft Graph. As of 2026 it also runs on an unusually broad model lineup: OpenAI’s GPT-5.x, Anthropic’s Claude, and Microsoft’s own in-house MAI models, depending on the surface and the task.

This guide covers the whole picture: the consumer assistant, the paid Microsoft 365 tiers, the multi-model engine room, and where Copilot genuinely leads versus where it lags.

Quick stats

Two products, one brand. “Microsoft Copilot” is both a free consumer assistant (at copilot.microsoft.com) and Microsoft 365 Copilot, the paid, work-grounded version inside the Office apps. They share a brand and increasingly a design, but differ enormously in price, data access, and capability.

Pricing breakdown

Copilot’s pricing is genuinely confusing, because it spans consumer subscriptions, business add-ons, and enterprise suites—and because Microsoft reshuffled the consumer tiers in late 2025. All prices are in USD.

Copilot (Free) — $0

The free consumer assistant at copilot.microsoft.com and in the standalone Copilot apps is capable and improving fast. You get:

• Conversational chat with a model picker (GPT-5.2 and Microsoft’s MAI models)
• Web-grounded answers with citations
• Image generation
• Copilot Voice and Copilot Vision — talk to Copilot, or let it see your screen or camera
• Memory and personalisation
• Mico, Groups, Real Talk and Learn Live from the Fall 2025 release
• Copilot in Edge and on Windows

Important 2026 change: from 15 April 2026, free Copilot Chat was removed from Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote for unlicensed users at organisations with 2,000+ Microsoft 365 seats (smaller organisations keep reduced access, and Outlook is unaffected). Free Copilot otherwise remains available on the web and in Windows.

Microsoft 365 Premium (individual) — $19.99/month

For individuals, the standalone $20/month Copilot Pro was retired in late 2025 and its features rolled into Microsoft 365 Premium (existing Pro subscribers keep access until support ends 1 August 2026). Microsoft 365 Premium includes:

• Copilot inside the desktop Office apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote)
• Higher usage limits and priority access to the newest models
• Premium Office apps + 1TB OneDrive

Lower consumer tiers—Microsoft 365 Basic ($1.99), Personal ($9.99) and Family ($12.99)—include progressively more Copilot access, but Premium is the tier that unlocks the full individual Copilot experience.

Microsoft 365 Copilot (Business) — $18–21/user/month

The work-grounded version for organisations up to 300 users. Currently $18/user/month as a promotional annual rate (extended through 31 December 2026), rising to $21/user/month afterwards. It adds:

• Work grounding via the Microsoft Graph — Copilot can reason over your emails, files, chats and meetings
• Copilot across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams and Loop
• Enterprise data protection — your work data isn’t used to train models

Requires a qualifying Microsoft 365 Business base licence (Basic, Standard or Premium).

Microsoft 365 Copilot (Enterprise) — $30/user/month

The full enterprise tier, billed annually, requiring a Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard or Premium base licence. Everything in Business, plus:

• Researcher and Analyst — agentic reasoning agents for deep research and data analysis
• Copilot Studio agents — build and run custom agents (consumption-based billing)
• Advanced admin, security and compliance controls

The all-in cost is higher than it looks. Because every paid Copilot tier sits on top of a base Microsoft 365 licence, the real per-seat cost is often two to three times the add-on price alone.

E7 Frontier Suite — $99/user/month

Launched 1 May 2026, the M365 E7 Frontier Suite bundles Microsoft 365 E5, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and Agent 365 (Microsoft’s agent management layer) into a single SKU—aimed at organisations going all-in on agentic AI.

Models powering Copilot

Copilot’s most distinctive feature in 2026 is that it’s no longer a single-model product. Microsoft has assembled a multi-model engine that mixes OpenAI, Anthropic, and its own models—and routes between them.

OpenAI GPT-5.x

OpenAI remains the backbone. The consumer Copilot Chat model picker offers GPT-5.2 across Android, Windows, iOS, Mac and Web, while GPT-5.5 and GPT-5.5 Reasoning are rolling out across Microsoft 365 Copilot—in Copilot Chat, Word, Excel and PowerPoint—and in Copilot Studio.

Anthropic Claude

In a notable break from OpenAI exclusivity, Microsoft added Anthropic’s Claude to Copilot. Claude Sonnet handles general queries and Opus handles structured, deep-reasoning tasks, available in features such as Edit with Copilot and Researcher. Anthropic became a Microsoft subprocessor on 7 January 2026, and from 3 April 2026 admins can set Anthropic models as the default in Microsoft 365 apps—though for customers in the EU Data Boundary and the UK, Claude is disabled by default because Anthropic processes data on AWS/GCP infrastructure in the US.

Microsoft even has the two vendors collaborate: in the Researcher agent, GPT writes the draft and Claude reviews it.

Microsoft’s in-house MAI models

Microsoft is increasingly building its own. The MAI family debuted in August 2025 with MAI-1 (a mixture-of-experts foundation model trained on ~15,000 NVIDIA H100s) and MAI-Voice-1 (a fast, expressive speech model that powers Copilot’s voice and podcast features). At Build 2026, Microsoft announced a wave of new MAI models for coding, reasoning, image and voice—including MAI-Thinking-1 (private preview) and MAI-Code-1-Flash (which powers the separate GitHub Copilot coding product).

The strategic signal is clear: Microsoft wants to be a full-stack AI provider, not solely dependent on OpenAI.

Features deep dive

Copilot in the Microsoft 365 apps

This is the heart of the paid product. Copilot is embedded directly into the Office apps:

• Word — draft, rewrite, summarise and edit grounded in your files
• Excel — generate formulas, analyse data, surface trends
• PowerPoint — build decks from a prompt or a document
• Outlook — summarise threads, draft replies, triage your inbox
• Teams — real-time meeting summaries, action items and recap
• OneNote and Loop — notes and collaborative workspaces

A new Microsoft 365 Copilot design rolled out on 28 May 2026, cutting load times by over 50% and improving complex-prompt response times by ~10%. Microsoft reports in-app usage rose 27% in Word, 33% in Excel, 43% in PowerPoint and 30% in Outlook after the redesign.

Researcher and Analyst

Microsoft 365 Copilot’s two flagship reasoning agents: Researcher runs multi-step, multi-source investigations across the web and your work data (the closest equivalent to ChatGPT’s Deep Research), while Analyst acts like a data scientist, running Python to interrogate spreadsheets and produce analysis.

Copilot Chat, Pages and Notebooks

Copilot Chat is the conversational hub—web-grounded for free users, and work-grounded (via the Graph) for paid users. It’s expanding into Teams chats, channels, calling and meetings. Copilot Pages turns AI output into a live, collaborative canvas, and Copilot Notebooks brings references, Pages and chats into one side-by-side view.

Voice, Vision and the Fall 2025 release

Copilot’s consumer experience leapt forward at the Copilot Fall Release on 22–23 October 2025, which added:

• Mico — an optional, expressive avatar for voice conversations
• Real Talk — Copilot can push back and challenge your assumptions rather than simply agreeing
• Groups — up to 32 people chatting with Copilot together, with vote tallying and task splitting
• Learn Live — a voice-first Socratic tutoring mode
• Memory, Edge Actions, Connectors and Copilot for health

Copilot Vision lets the assistant see your screen or camera and reason about what’s there; Copilot Voice offers real-time, natural conversation powered by MAI-Voice-1.

Agents and Copilot Studio

For builders, Copilot Studio is the low-code platform for creating custom agents. In 2026 it gained computer-using agents (generally available May 2026) that operate websites and desktop apps through their UI, a new orchestration layer (~20% better task accuracy at ~50% lower token cost), workflows, and real-time voice. At Build 2026 Microsoft introduced Microsoft IQ and Work IQ—a grounding layer that gives agents both world knowledge and enterprise context.

Windows and Edge integration

No competitor matches Copilot’s OS-level reach. It’s built into Windows 11 (with a dedicated Copilot key on new keyboards, “Hey Copilot” wake word, and Copilot Vision for the desktop) and into Microsoft Edge as Copilot Mode, where it can take actions across your tabs.

Strengths

Unmatched distribution and integration — Copilot is where you already work. For the billion-plus people in Word, Excel, Outlook and Teams, the AI is one click away and grounded in their actual files and emails.

Multi-model flexibility — Uniquely, Copilot lets organisations choose between GPT-5.x, Claude and MAI models, and even has them collaborate. No other major assistant offers this breadth of underlying models.

Enterprise-grade data governance — Work data is grounded via the Microsoft Graph, isn’t used for training, and is covered by the EU Data Boundary and Microsoft’s enterprise compliance stack—a major draw for regulated industries.

Agent platform maturity — Copilot Studio, Agent Builder and the new Microsoft IQ layer make Copilot one of the most complete platforms for building and governing business agents.

Capable, fast-improving free tier — Free Copilot now includes Voice, Vision, memory, image generation and a model picker, and the 2026 redesign made it markedly faster.

Windows-native reach — OS-level integration (Copilot key, Vision, Edge actions) that web-first assistants simply can’t replicate.

Limitations

Confusing tiers and add-on pricing — Free vs Premium vs Business vs Enterprise vs E7, each requiring a base licence, makes Copilot’s true cost hard to work out. The all-in per-seat cost is often 2–3× the headline add-on.

Best value only inside the Microsoft ecosystem — If you don’t live in Microsoft 365 and Windows, much of Copilot’s advantage evaporates, and a standalone assistant may serve you better.

Staged, sometimes slow rollouts — Features arrive in waves by market and licence, and consumer features often trail ChatGPT’s. UK and EU users in particular face opt-in restrictions (e.g. Claude off by default).

Low paid conversion and “shelfware” risk — Only ~3.3% of Microsoft’s commercial M365 subscribers pay for the Copilot add-on, and analysts have flagged adoption-vs-usage questions at some organisations.

Free in-app Office access narrowed — From 15 April 2026, free Copilot Chat was removed from Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote for unlicensed users at large organisations (2,000+ seats).

Who should use Microsoft Copilot?

Great for:

• Microsoft 365 organisations — If your company runs on Office and Teams, Copilot’s grounded, in-app assistance is hard to beat
• Windows power users — OS-level integration, Vision and Edge actions
• Regulated enterprises — Data governance, EU Data Boundary and compliance maturity
• Agent builders — Copilot Studio and Microsoft IQ for custom business agents
• Individuals already paying for Microsoft 365 — Premium adds the full Copilot experience to apps you already use

Look elsewhere if:

• You’re not in the Microsoft ecosystem — ChatGPT or Gemini may be simpler and more capable as standalone assistants
• You want the newest consumer features first — ChatGPT typically ships consumer-facing features earlier
• You want one flat, simple price — Copilot’s licensing is the most complex in the category

Historical timeline

Privacy and data handling

Copilot’s data story splits sharply between consumer and work use.

Microsoft 365 Copilot (work): Prompts and responses grounded in your organisation’s data are not used to train foundation models, stay within Microsoft’s compliance boundary, and inherit your existing Microsoft 365 permissions, sensitivity labels and data-loss-prevention policies. Microsoft offers the EU Data Boundary for European customers. Because Anthropic’s Claude runs on non-Microsoft infrastructure (AWS/GCP, largely in the US), Claude is off by default for EU Data Boundary and UK tenants and must be explicitly enabled.

Consumer Copilot (free / Microsoft 365 Premium): Consumer interactions can be used to improve the service, with opt-out controls in settings; memory and personalisation are user-managed.

Microsoft 365 Copilot inherits Microsoft’s enterprise certifications (SOC 2, ISO 27001, and the broader Microsoft compliance portfolio). Check the Microsoft Trust Center for current audit reports.

Microsoft Copilot vs alternatives

Quick comparison

Where Copilot wins

• In-app, work-grounded assistance across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams
• Model choice — GPT, Claude and MAI under one roof
• Windows + Edge OS-level integration
• Enterprise governance — Graph permissions, EU Data Boundary, compliance

Where competitors win

• ChatGPT — larger consumer ecosystem, earlier consumer features, persistent memory leader
• Gemini — huge context windows and seamless Google Workspace integration
• Claude — stronger long-form writing and coding; in fact Microsoft now routes some Copilot tasks to Claude

Getting started

Free consumer Copilot

1. Go to copilot.microsoft.com or download the Copilot app
2. Sign in with a Microsoft account
3. Start chatting—pick a model, use Voice, or turn on Vision

Mobile and desktop

• iOS / Android: search “Microsoft Copilot” in the App Store or Google Play
• Windows: built in—press the Copilot key or search “Copilot”
• macOS: download the Copilot app from Microsoft

Microsoft 365 Copilot (work)

Microsoft 365 Copilot is an add-on licence purchased through your Microsoft 365 admin centre, on top of a qualifying base plan. Admins control model defaults (including Anthropic) and data policies.

Frequently asked questions

Is Microsoft Copilot free?

Yes. The consumer Copilot at copilot.microsoft.com is free, including chat, web search, image generation, Voice and Vision. The paid Microsoft 365 Copilot tiers add work grounding inside the Office apps.

What’s the difference between Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot?

“Copilot” is the free consumer assistant. “Microsoft 365 Copilot” is the paid, work-grounded version embedded in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams, grounded in your company data via the Microsoft Graph.

What happened to Copilot Pro?

The standalone $20/month Copilot Pro was retired in late 2025 and its features rolled into Microsoft 365 Premium ($19.99/month). Existing Pro subscribers keep access until support ends 1 August 2026.

Which AI model does Copilot use?

It depends on the surface. Consumer Copilot Chat uses GPT-5.2 and Microsoft’s MAI models; Microsoft 365 Copilot is rolling out GPT-5.5 and can also use Anthropic’s Claude (Sonnet and Opus) where admins enable it.

Can I use Claude in Copilot?

Yes, in Microsoft 365 Copilot, where an admin has enabled Anthropic models. Note that Claude is off by default for UK and EU Data Boundary tenants and must be turned on.

Does Microsoft Copilot train on my data?

Microsoft 365 work data is not used to train foundation models. Consumer interactions may be used to improve the service, with opt-out controls in settings.

How much does Microsoft 365 Copilot cost per user?

$30/user/month (Enterprise, annual) or $18–21/user/month (Business, up to 300 users), each on top of a qualifying Microsoft 365 base licence.

Verdict

Microsoft Copilot isn’t trying to win the standalone-chatbot race—it’s playing a different game. By embedding AI into the Windows desktop and the Microsoft 365 apps that run most of the working world, and grounding it in each organisation’s own data, Copilot has become the default enterprise AI by sheer distribution. Its 2026 multi-model strategy—GPT-5.x, Claude and Microsoft’s own MAI models under one roof—is a genuine differentiator no rival matches.

Free tier: Surprisingly capable, with Voice, Vision, memory and a model picker—well worth using, especially on Windows.

Microsoft 365 Premium ($19.99/month): The right individual tier now that Copilot Pro is gone, adding Copilot to the desktop Office apps.

Microsoft 365 Copilot ($18–30/user/month): Compelling for organisations already standardised on Microsoft 365, where work grounding and governance justify the (genuinely complex) cost.

The honest caveats: the pricing is the most confusing in the category, the best of Copilot only materialises inside the Microsoft ecosystem, and consumer features can trail ChatGPT. But for the hundreds of millions of people whose work already lives in Microsoft 365, Copilot is the AI assistant of least resistance—and increasingly, of real substance.

Official links