Microsoft Copilot
Six products, one name
"Copilot" is not a product, it is a brand covering at least six of them, priced between free and $99 per user per month. Getting the wrong one is the most expensive mistake in this category. Here is the map, with current prices.
Reviewed 17 August 2026. Prices are US list, ex-tax, and change often — verify on official pages.
The map
Which Copilot do you actually mean?
Prices are US list, ex-tax, checked 17 August 2026.
| Product | What it is | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Copilot (free) | The consumer assistant. Web, Windows and Mac apps, mobile, and via WhatsApp and Telegram. Chat, web search with citations, image generation, Copilot Vision, voice. | $0 |
| Retired. The old $20/month standalone consumer tier, absorbed into Microsoft 365 Premium. | — | |
| Microsoft 365 Personal | Office apps plus Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, at higher usage than free. | $9.99/mo, $99.99/yr |
| Microsoft 365 Family | As Personal, for up to six people — but see the warning below. | $12.99/mo, $129.99/yr |
| Microsoft 365 Premium | The de facto Copilot Pro successor. Extensive AI usage, the Researcher and Analyst agents, 1 TB storage. | $19.99/mo, $199.99/yr |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot (enterprise) | Copilot grounded in your tenant data through the Microsoft Graph, with 100+ connectors, Copilot Notebooks, agents and admin analytics. | $30/user/mo annual; $31.50 monthly |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot Business | The same capabilities for smaller organisations. Hard cap of 300 seats per tenant. | $21 list; $18 promotional until 30 Sep 2026 |
| Copilot Studio | Low-code platform for building and governing custom agents. Requires an Azure subscription. | $200 per pack/month for 25,000 credits, or pay-as-you-go |
| GitHub Copilot | A separate product line for developers. Separate licence, separate bill. | Free; Pro $10; Pro+ $39; Max $100; Business $19/seat; Enterprise $39/seat |
AI benefits go to the subscription owner only
On both Microsoft 365 Family and Microsoft 365 Premium, the Copilot allowance belongs to the person who owns the subscription. The other five people on a Family plan get the Office apps and the storage, but not the AI. This is the single most common surprise in Microsoft's consumer line-up, and it is easy to miss on the comparison page.
Capability
What Copilot can actually do on your machine
The gap between Copilot Vision and Copilot Actions is the thing to understand here.
Copilot Vision
Analyses your screen, a specific app window, or your camera, and explains what it sees. It is genuinely useful and it is free, with higher limits on paid consumer plans. But it explicitly does not click, type or scroll for you — a very widely held misconception. It is also unavailable to commercial Entra ID users.
Copilot Actions on Windows
This one does click, type and scroll, using vision and reasoning to update documents, organise files and send email. The caveats are substantial: disabled by default, Windows Insiders and Copilot Labs only, and local file access is limited to Documents, Downloads, Desktop and Pictures unless you explicitly widen it. It runs under separate agent accounts in an isolated Agent Workspace with revocable access.
Microsoft 365 agents
Researcher for multi-step research across your work data and the web, Analyst for data analysis, plus People, App Builder, Workflows, Workforce Insights and Learning agents. All included with a Copilot licence. Since July 2026 you can schedule recurring prompts to them. Researcher and Analyst also reach consumers through Microsoft 365 Premium.
Microsoft documents cross-prompt-injection risk for Copilot Actions in its own Windows security guidance, where malicious content in a document or webpage can override the agent's instructions. That is Microsoft's own warning, not a critic's.
The honest part
Where Copilot struggles
Well-documented, and mostly not about the technology.
| Issue | Detail |
|---|---|
| Adoption is weak | Fewer than 4.5% of Microsoft's 450 million commercial Microsoft 365 subscribers pay for Copilot, and consumer Copilot has flatlined at roughly 20 million weekly active users against ChatGPT's far larger base. Reported by Fortune in May 2026. |
| Feature churn | Group Chat, Podcasts and consumer Deep Research were all discontinued in August 2026. The =COPILOT() Excel function is being retired on 14 September 2026, roughly a year after launch and before it ever fully shipped — users must move to the Copilot side pane. |
| The unremovable button | A floating Copilot button in Excel that users could not remove drew sustained criticism in 2026, including reports of it blocking scroll bars. |
| Cost justification | $30/user/month is roughly $360 per user per year. For organisations where only a minority of staff open Copilot weekly, that arithmetic is the recurring objection. |
| Permission sprawl | Copilot surfaces whatever a user technically has access to. In tenants with years of loose SharePoint permissions, that exposes documents people did not realise they could reach. The problem predates Copilot; Copilot makes it visible. |
| Regional gating | Anthropic models in Copilot are off by default in the EU, EFTA and UK, and unavailable in GCC High, DoD and sovereign clouds. |
FAQ
Microsoft Copilot FAQ
What happened to Copilot Pro?
It was retired and folded into Microsoft 365 Premium at $19.99/month, which bundles the Office apps, Copilot across them, the Researcher and Analyst agents and 1 TB of storage. If you see Copilot Pro listed at $20/month anywhere, that page is out of date.
Does Microsoft 365 Family give everyone Copilot?
No. On Family and on Premium, the AI benefits apply to the subscription owner only. The other household members get the Office applications and storage but not the Copilot allowance.
Is there a Copilot desktop app for Mac?
Yes, in the Apple App Store, alongside the Windows app in the Microsoft Store. The Mac app is essentially the chat client plus Copilot Vision — there is no macOS equivalent of Copilot Actions, and we found no announcement of one.
Can Copilot control my computer?
Only through Copilot Actions, only on Windows, and only if you turn it on — it is disabled by default and limited to Windows Insiders and Copilot Labs. Copilot Vision, which many people confuse with this, only observes and explains; it cannot click or type.
Is GitHub Copilot included with Microsoft 365 Copilot?
No. They are separate products with separate licences and separate bills. Buying one gives you nothing of the other. GitHub Copilot is grounded in your repositories; Microsoft 365 Copilot is grounded in your Microsoft Graph.
Why is Copilot Business cheaper than Microsoft 365 Copilot?
It is the same capability set aimed at smaller organisations, with a hard cap of 300 seats per tenant and a requirement for an underlying Microsoft 365 Business plan. Note the $18 rate is promotional and reverts to $21 after 30 September 2026.
Is Microsoft raising prices?
It already did. Suite prices rose on 1 July 2026 — Office 365 E3 from $23 to $26, Microsoft 365 E5 from $57 to $60, Business Basic from $6 to $7, Business Standard from $12.50 to $14. Standalone Copilot SKUs were explicitly excluded from that increase, and existing customers hold current pricing until renewal.
Sources
Where these facts came from
Every price and capability on this page traces to an official page or named press report. Checked 17 August 2026.