The Copilot System: Explained by Microsoft
Published by Microsoft 365Watch on YouTube
Microsoft Copilot
AI inside Word, Excel, Outlook and Teams
- Microsoft Corporation · United States
- Since 2023
- 9 languages
Key takeaways
from our research
Excel analysis in plain English is the strongest single feature in the category
Teams meeting recaps with decisions, owners and timestamps are genuinely time-saving
$30/user/mo on top of Microsoft 365 — the most expensive per-seat option here
Only as good as your tenant hygiene: it surfaces whatever the user can already access
Our verdict
Updated Aug 25, 2026Fact-checked Jul 22, 2026
Copilot is bought for two features and they are both very good: Excel and Teams. Asking Excel in plain English to pivot, clean and chart a messy sheet is the single most convincing demo in this entire category, and Teams meeting recaps — decisions, owners, actions, with timestamps — quietly remove a job nobody wanted.
Everything else is a fair-to-good implementation of things rivals do better. The standalone Copilot chat is the weakest of the five products here, and Word drafting is competent rather than special. What makes it worth $30 per seat is not the model, it is that the model sits inside the documents and meetings your organisation already runs on, with permissions inherited from Microsoft 365 rather than reinvented.
The caveats are real and worth stating. It only works well if your tenant's data is in decent shape — Copilot surfaces whatever the user can already access, so sloppy SharePoint permissions become visible fast. $30 per user per month on top of existing Microsoft 365 licensing is the most expensive per-seat option here, and reviewers consistently report that value depends heavily on how much your team lives in Excel and Teams versus a browser.
Our guidance: on Microsoft 365, run a 25-seat pilot with your heaviest Excel and Teams users before committing to the whole company. Off Microsoft 365, there is no reason to consider it.
Written by Maya Krishnan · Edited by Daniel Ross
Ratings
Loved by 67% of reviewers
First-party reviews, individually moderated before publication.
Pros & cons
Where Microsoft Copilot shines — and where it doesn't
What users love
- Excel analysis43
- Teams meeting recaps38
Where it falls short
- Per-seat cost34
- Weak standalone chat22
Themes generated from 3 verified reviews, updated monthly
Head to head
Microsoft Copilot vs Gemini at a glance
Microsoft CopilotRating
4.0(3)
4.2(3)
Starting price
$20/mo
$19.99/mo
Free trial
Yes
Yes
Free plan
Yes
Yes
Alternatives
Top Microsoft Copilot alternatives
The closest fits based on category, feature overlap, and reviewer demand.
Videos
Watch Microsoft Copilot in action
Product walkthroughs published on Microsoft Copilot's own YouTube channel — so you see the real interface, not a reenactment.
Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat - Customer service agent demo
Published by Microsoft 365Watch on YouTube
Capabilities
Key features
What Microsoft Copilot does — and doesn't — cover, checked against the category feature vocabulary.
Platform
- Included:Developer APIThe same models available programmatically for building your own applications.
Reasoning & Modes
- Included:Custom assistants & agentsSave a reusable assistant with its own instructions, files and tools.
- Included:Extended reasoning modeA slower mode that thinks through multi-step problems before answering, for maths, analysis and planning.
- Included:Long context windowAccepts book-length input in a single conversation without losing earlier detail.
- Included:Persistent memoryRemembers your preferences and context across separate conversations.
Knowledge & Sources
- Included:App connectorsConnects to Drive, SharePoint, email or a code host so the assistant can use your own data.
- Included:File & document analysisReads uploaded PDFs, spreadsheets and images and answers questions about them.
- Not included:Inline source citationsLinks each claim back to the page it came from so answers can be checked.
- Included:Live web searchSearches the web during an answer rather than relying on training data alone.
Multimodal
- Included:Code execution & data analysisRuns code in a sandbox to analyse data, make charts and verify its own answers.
- Included:Image generationCreates and edits images from a text description inside the same conversation.
- Included:Voice conversationReal-time spoken conversation with interruption, not just dictation.
Team & Governance
- Included:No training on your dataBusiness tiers exclude your conversations from model training by default.
- Included:Team admin & SSOCentral billing, seat management and single sign-on for organisations.
Pricing
Microsoft Copilot pricing
Microsoft Copilot's paid plans start at $20/user/month — right at the $19.99 median of the 5 AI Assistants tools we track. A free plan is available, and you can test it on a 30-day free trial.
Value for money 4.2/5Copilot Free
$0
Free forever
- Web and mobile chat
- Image generation
- Limited access to advanced models
- Windows integration
- No access to work data
Copilot Pro
$20/mo
per month
- Everything in Free
- Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook for personal accounts
- Priority model access at peak times
- Higher image generation limits
- Copilot GPT builder
Most popularVisit website
Microsoft 365 Copilot
$30/mo
per user, per month (billed annually)
or $31.50/mo billed monthly
- Copilot across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams
- Grounding in your organisation's files and messages
- Teams meeting recaps and action items
- Copilot Studio agent building
- Enterprise data protection and audit logging
Enterprise agreement
Custom
Tailored pricing for larger teams
- Volume licensing
- Data residency commitments
- Dedicated onboarding and adoption support
- Advanced compliance controls
- Integration with Purview and Entra
Pricing fact-checked August 25, 2026 · source: vendor pricing page · see the full breakdown
Ecosystem
Integrates with 6+ tools
- Microsoft Word
- Microsoft Excel
- Microsoft Teams
- Outlook
- SharePoint
- Power Automate
Fit check
Will Microsoft Copilot fit your team?
Support
- Email support
- Live chat
- Phone support
- Knowledge base
- Community forum
Training
- Live online
- Webinars
- Documentation
- Video tutorials
- In person
Deployment
- Web
- iOS
- Android
- Windows
- macOS
Typical users
- Mid-size companies
- Enterprises
Reviews
What real users say
First-party, moderated reviews — never scraped, never paid for.
Hannah G.Validated Reviewer
Customer Success Lead · Financial services · 11–50 employees
4.5
July 7, 2026
“Excel alone justified the seats for finance”
Used daily for 6–12 months
Our finance team used to spend Monday mornings reshaping exports by hand. They now describe what they want and check the result. That is four people getting half a day back every week, which pays for a lot of $30 seats.
Aisha M.Validated Reviewer
Business Analyst · Healthcare · 1,000+ employees
4.0
May 29, 2026
“It found every permissions mistake we had made”
Used weekly for 6–12 months
Nobody warned us that an assistant with access to everything a user can see would immediately demonstrate how much that actually was. We spent six weeks fixing SharePoint permissions before the rollout was safe. Worth doing anyway, but budget for it.
Ethan K.
Account Executive · SaaS · 11–50 employees
3.5
April 16, 2026
“Expensive for what most of our team uses”
Used weekly for 6–12 months
Rolled out broadly, then measured. Heavy Excel and Teams users love it; everyone else opens it once a fortnight. We cut the licence count by half and gave the rest ChatGPT for a third of the price.
Sources & methodology
Product information sourced from Microsoft Corporation's public content (United States); pricing verified August 25, 2026. Reviews are first-party and moderated. How we test and rate tools
- Founded 1975
- 9 languages supported
- microsoft.com
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