Microsoft Copilot for business – what it does, what it costs and who it pays for

The name “Copilot” covers several different products, and confusing them is the most common cause of poor purchasing decisions. Since the second half of 2026, Microsoft has called the app for employees simply Microsoft Copilot. The licences still carry their full names: Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot Business.

The most important difference is about data. The free Copilot Chat answers based on the internet and whatever you paste into the conversation. The paid Copilot draws on your emails, files, meetings and chats in Microsoft 365 by itself.

The table below sorts the versions by who needs them. Prices are Microsoft’s list prices in US dollars with annual billing, as of October 2026.

Copilot works inside the programs where employees already spend their day. There is no need to copy text into a separate window or learn a new tool. Below are the most common uses, illustrated by a hypothetical trading company with 120 employees.

The common thread: Copilot prepares the first version, and a person checks it and makes the decision. Microsoft itself warns that AI responses are not always factually accurate. That is why an employee always verifies figures, names and commitments to customers. Our case study of a law firm that uses Copilot to analyse contracts shows how this works in practice.

Licences are bought per person as an add-on to a Microsoft 365 plan. Microsoft does not require a minimum number of licences or that Copilot be given to entire departments. Copilot Business works with the Business Basic, Business Standard and Business Premium plans, so there is no need to change your base plan.

Example: a company gives Copilot to 30 people. On the Copilot Business plan, that is 30 × USD 21 × 12 months = USD 7,560 a year. At the promotional price of USD 18, valid until the end of 2026, it comes to USD 6,480. On the USD 30 plan, the same group would cost USD 10,800 a year.

The licence is not the only cost. The items listed below rarely appear in a quotation, yet they decide whether Copilot is still being used after the first month.

The simplest way is to compare the monthly cost of a licence with the cost of an hour’s work by the person who will get it. For simplicity, assume an exchange rate of PLN 4 to the dollar – use the current rate in your own calculation. A monthly licence on the Business plan then costs 21 × 4 = PLN 84.

If the full cost of an hour of a salesperson’s work is PLN 70, the licence pays for itself once it saves 84 ÷ 70 = 1.2 hours a month. For a manager whose hour costs PLN 120, 0.7 hours is enough. Saving one quarter of an hour a day gives an employee back about 5 hours a month.

This calculation shows a threshold, not a promise. Time saved only has value if it is used for other work. So after three months, ask users which tasks Copilot has actually made quicker for them, and compare their answers with the usage report.

Copilot gives most to people who read, write and attend a lot of meetings. It gives less to people who work mainly in the ERP system, on the production floor or in the warehouse. For them, the free Copilot Chat is often enough.

A good approach is a starter group drawn from several departments, with a few people from each. Each person should have one or two specific tasks for which they are expected to use Copilot. The list below sets out the selection criteria.

Both tools use modern AI models. In Copilot, an administrator can also switch on models from Anthropic, the Claude family. So the difference rarely lies in the quality of the model itself; it usually comes down to access to data and where the employee works.

Copilot works in Outlook, Teams and Word and draws on company files by itself while respecting permissions. ChatGPT business plans can also connect to company sources, but this needs separate configuration and work in a separate window. Check the prices of ChatGPT business plans in OpenAI’s current price list.

A practical rule: if your company runs on Microsoft 365, start with Copilot. Consider ChatGPT or Claude for small teams with tasks that need different features, or for companies that do not use Microsoft 365.

Copilot only shows data that the user has at least read access to. That sounds safe, but in many companies permissions have built up over years. A payroll folder shared with “the whole company” five years ago suddenly becomes easy to find with a single question.

According to Microsoft, Copilot data is not used to train models and is covered by the same commitments as the rest of Microsoft 365, including the GDPR and the EU Data Boundary. The exception: Anthropic models process data outside that boundary. In the EU they are switched off by default, but Microsoft has added a separate setting for Copilot in Word, Excel and PowerPoint, so the administrator should check both. Before you assign the first licences, go through the points below with your administrator.

Assigning licences takes an administrator a few minutes. A rollout after which people genuinely use Copilot takes longer. The steps below reduce the risk of paying for licences that nobody uses.

The most common mistakes are the reverse of these steps: licences for everyone without choosing who gets them, launching without a permissions review, a single generic training session and nobody checking the results. Each of these lowers employees’ trust in the tool, and that is hard to rebuild later.

An honest analysis sometimes concludes that Copilot is not the best use of money right now. This applies especially to the situations listed below.

In such cases, start with the free Copilot Chat and rules for using AI. Return to the licence decision once you have removed the main obstacle.