Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft Copilot is Microsoft’s family of AI assistants. The free Copilot app and website offer chat, writing, images and voice. Microsoft 365 plans add Copilot inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. For work and school accounts there is a free Copilot Chat and a paid Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on for businesses. The names are easy to confuse, so this page separates them.

Quick facts

• Made by: Microsoft
• Free plan: Yes. The consumer Copilot app is free with a personal Microsoft account.
• Paid plans: Microsoft 365 Personal, Family and Premium for individuals, and Microsoft 365 Copilot plans for organisations
• Works on: Web, Windows, the Edge browser, iOS and Android, plus inside Microsoft 365 apps
• Pricing last checked: October 2026, using several recent published sources. Prices vary by country, tax and billing term, so confirm on Microsoft’s official pages.

What Microsoft Copilot is best at

• Working inside Microsoft 365: drafting in Word, analysing in Excel, building slides in PowerPoint and summarising in Outlook and Teams.
• Everyday chat: a free assistant for questions, writing help and web-grounded answers.
• Work data, with controls: the paid business Copilot can use your organisation’s own content, within the access people already have.
• Images and voice: image creation and voice conversations in the consumer app.
• Windows and Edge: built-in access from the desktop and browser.

Plans and pricing

The standalone Copilot Pro subscription is no longer sold. Microsoft stopped new sales on 1 October 2025 and moved its features into Microsoft 365 Premium, and support for existing Copilot Pro subscriptions was reported to end on 1 August 2026. Business and enterprise Copilot plans need a base Microsoft 365 licence on top of the Copilot price, which is easy to miss when budgeting.

Best for

• People and teams who already use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams every day.
• Organisations that want AI inside the tools staff already have, with enterprise data protection.
• Anyone who wants a free general-purpose assistant built into Windows and Edge.

Less suited to

• Teams that do not use Microsoft 365, where the integration advantage disappears.
• Budget-conscious businesses that overlook the base licence cost on top of the Copilot add-on.
• Users who want a single clearly named product, because the Copilot branding covers several different offerings.

How to get started

1. Try the free Copilot app or website with a Microsoft account to see whether the style suits you.
2. If you use Microsoft 365 at home, check which Copilot features your plan already includes before paying for more.
3. At work, ask your IT team whether Copilot Chat or a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence is available to you.
4. Start with one real task, such as summarising a long email thread or drafting a document from your notes.
5. Check what the assistant can see in your account, and review privacy settings before using sensitive material.

Prompt ideas to copy

Summarise this email thread. List the decisions made, the open questions and who owns each next step.

Look at this table and tell me three trends worth highlighting. Suggest a chart for each and explain why it suits the data.

Draft a one-page proposal for [project] using the notes below. Keep the tone professional and list anything you think is missing.

Turn this document into a five-slide presentation outline, with a title and three short bullet points on each slide.

Limitations and things to watch

• The consumer Copilot and the business Microsoft 365 Copilot are different products with different data access and protections.
• Answers can be wrong or out of date, so check important facts and numbers, especially in Excel.
• Plan names, prices and usage limits change often, and differ by country.
• Work Copilot respects existing permissions, so messy access settings can expose information to people who should not see it.

Alternatives

Compare ChatGPT, Gemini for people who live in Google Workspace, and Claude. For coding, see GitHub Copilot.