Microsoft 365 Copilot, what does it actually cost?

Microsoft has launched so many Copilot products that even IT professionals are confused. I count over 9 products with "Copilot" in the name, and they have wildly different prices, requirements and target audiences. Let me cut through the noise:

• •Copilot Chat: Free, web-based AI chat in all Microsoft 365 licenses including F1 and F3, with commercial data protection. Answers questions based on web data, no access to your company data. The full Microsoft 365 Copilot (tenant-grounding) requires a baseline license from Business Standard upwards.
• •Microsoft 365 Copilot: $30/user/mo add-on (enterprise). AI assistant in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams. Copilot accesses the data the individual user has rights to via Microsoft Graph, not the entire organization's data. This is the one everyone's talking about.
• •Microsoft 365 Copilot Business: $21/user/mo (SMB up to 300 users, launched 2 December 2025). Same functionality as standard M365 Copilot but priced for the SMB segment. Requires Business Basic, Standard or Premium as baseline. Promo price $18 until 30 June 2026.
• •Copilot Pro: ~~$20/mo for individuals~~. Retired 6 October 2025, replaced by Microsoft 365 Premium ($19.99/mo personal subscription with Copilot built in). No business relevance.
• •Copilot Studio: Platform for building custom AI agents. From $200/mo.
• •Security Copilot: AI for security analysis. Consumption-based pricing (SCUs).
• •Copilot for Sales: ~~$20/user/mo standalone~~. End-of-sale Q4 2025. Sales, Service and Finance Copilot roles rolled into Microsoft 365 Copilot ($30) via Agent Store. Note: feature parity is not 1:1.
• •GitHub Copilot: $10-39/user/mo. AI coding assistant for developers.
• •Windows Copilot: Free in Windows 11. Basic AI features in the operating system.

Most organizations only need to care about the first two. The rest are niche products.

This is the difference most people misunderstand, and it's crucial. The deciding factor is data access.

Copilot Chat (free) answers questions based on public web data. Think of it as a ChatGPT that lives in your Teams and browser. It's fine for general questions, but it has no idea about your SharePoint files, emails or Teams messages.

Microsoft 365 Copilot ($30/mo) has access, via Microsoft Graph, to the data the individual user has rights to. Not the entire organization's data; Copilot respects the same permissions the user already has. It can summarize emails, find information in SharePoint documents, draft content based on existing files, and analyze data in your Excel spreadsheets.

The technical term is "tenant grounding". Microsoft 365 Copilot grounds its answers in your company data. That's the difference between a generic AI and an AI that knows your business. And that's why it costs $30/mo.

This surprises a lot of people: you can't just buy Microsoft 365 Copilot. It requires a qualifying baseline license.

• •Business Standard ($14/mo)
• •Business Premium ($22/mo)
• •E3 ($39/mo)
• •E5 ($60/mo)

Included in: E7 Frontier ($99/mo), here Copilot is included together with Agent 365 and Entra Suite.

So the real price? Business Standard + Copilot = $44/mo. E3 + Copilot = $69/mo. E7 with everything included = $99/mo.

My recommendation is clear: start with Copilot Chat (free). Use it for a month. See if your people actually use it. Then make the decision.

• •You have many knowledge workers who use Office daily
• •You're drowning in emails and meetings (Copilot's meeting summaries are genuinely useful)
• •You want to automate routine tasks like report drafts and data analysis

• •You primarily have frontline workers
• •Your data isn't structured in Microsoft 365 (if everything sits on file servers, Copilot can't see it)
• •You have under 10 users

$30/user/mo is a lot of money. I recommend starting with a pilot group of 5-10 power users. Measure the actual time savings. Only roll out to the rest when you can see ROI.

The full overview, clip it and save it:

• •Copilot Chat: Free (all plans)
• •Microsoft 365 Copilot: $30/user/mo enterprise (requires baseline license)
• •Microsoft 365 Copilot Business: $21/user/mo (SMB up to 300 users, $18 promo until 30 Jun 2026)
• •Copilot Pro: Retired 10/2025 (replaced by M365 Premium $19.99/mo)
• •Copilot Studio: From $200/mo
• •Security Copilot: Consumption-based (SCUs)
• •Copilot for Sales: Retired 10/2025 (rolled into M365 Copilot)
• •GitHub Copilot Business: $19/user/mo
• •GitHub Copilot Enterprise: $39/user/mo
• •Windows Copilot: Free (Windows 11)