Microsoft Copilot
Microsoft's AI layer — free Copilot chat to paid seats inside Word, Excel, and Teams.
Two different products wear the Copilot name. The free consumer Copilot is a capable ChatGPT rival across web, Windows, and mobile. Microsoft 365 Copilot — $30 per user per month on top of a qualifying Microsoft 365 license — embeds assistance in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams and ships prebuilt agents like Researcher and Analyst. The consumer Copilot Pro tier was retired; Microsoft 365 Premium at $19.99/mo is now the individual paid path. Anthropic's Claude models now supplement OpenAI's inside the enterprise product.
Best for
Organizations already paying for Microsoft 365 E3/E5 or Business plans, where email, meetings, and documents live in Outlook, Teams, and SharePoint. The seat only pays for itself when Copilot draws on tenant data daily — meeting recaps, mail triage, document drafts.
ChatGPT and Gemini answer from what you paste; Microsoft 365 Copilot answers from what your organization already stores — mail, calendars, files, chats — with tenant permissions enforced. Against Google's Gemini for Workspace, which bundles AI into Workspace plans, Microsoft charges separately but reaches far deeper into the enterprise install base. No competitor can put an assistant in front of hundreds of millions of Office users by flipping a licensing switch.
Core features
Productivity integration
Drafts, rewrites, and summarizes directly inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams, grounded in tenant content via Microsoft Graph.
Business workflows
Meeting recaps, mail triage, and document generation, plus prebuilt agents — Researcher, Analyst, Facilitator — for multi-step work.
Enterprise controls
Admin-center management, usage analytics, and inheritance of Microsoft 365 security, compliance, and data-residency commitments.
Pros
- + Reaches the enterprise desktop by default — a licensing flip covers users who would never install a separate AI app
- + Grounded in tenant data via Microsoft Graph, so answers can draw on your actual mail, meetings, and documents
- + Slots into existing Microsoft admin, compliance, and data-governance machinery, shortening security review
Watchouts
- - Nearly worthless outside the Microsoft stack — value collapses if your documents and communication live in Google or Slack
- - SKU sprawl (Copilot, Copilot Chat, M365 Copilot, Copilot Studio) makes the real per-seat cost hard to pin down before procurement
Power List links
People behind Microsoft Copilot
Alternatives
Frequently asked
What is Microsoft Copilot?
Microsoft's AI layer — free Copilot chat to paid seats inside Word, Excel, and Teams.
Who builds Microsoft Copilot?
Microsoft Copilot is built by Microsoft, a publicly traded company (MSFT).
How much does Microsoft Copilot cost?
Microsoft Copilot uses freemium. Current tiers: Free · $19.99/mo M365 Premium · $30/user/mo M365 Copilot. Check the official site before buying — AI pricing changes often.