“Copilot” is several different things, some free and some paid. Here’s what each one does for a small business, and what it costs.
Prices and features last verified . US prices, before tax. Microsoft can change them.
Copilot Chat
Free
Included with Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Standard and Premium
Your company files
No. It only sees what you paste or upload, plus your own inbox and calendar in Outlook.
Inside Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams
Limited. Copilot Chat in Outlook works with your own email; don’t count on the others.
Microsoft agents (Researcher, Analyst)
No
Does multi-step work for you
No
Good for:Drafting emails, letters, job ads and social posts; summarizing a document you paste in; research on the web with sources.
Copilot Business
Paid seat
$18 per person per month in the first year (Microsoft promotion through December 31, 2026), normally $21. Annual commitment. For businesses with up to 300 people.
Your company files
Yes: your email, meetings, chats, files and SharePoint, only what each person already has access to.
Inside Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams
Yes: meeting recaps, email catch-up, drafting from your files, Excel analysis in plain English.
Microsoft agents (Researcher, Analyst)
Yes, included. Researcher allows 25 deep-research questions per person per month.
Does multi-step work for you
Only with Cowork (next column), billed separately.
Good for:The owner, office manager, and anyone who spends the day in email, meetings, quotes and documents.
Copilot Cowork
Pay per task
Needs a paid seat. Every task is billed in Copilot Credits at $0.01 each.
Your company files
Yes, through the paid seat.
Inside Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams
Yes. It creates files, drafts emails, books meetings and files documents, and asks you to approve sensitive steps like sending an email.
Microsoft agents (Researcher, Analyst)
Through the paid seat.
Does multi-step work for you
Yes, including on a schedule, like a Monday-morning briefing.
Good for:Repeated multi-step chores. You set a monthly spending cap, so there are no surprise bills.
What a Cowork task costs
Microsoft doesn’t publish an exact price per task; it depends on how long the task runs. Rough estimates from Microsoft’s own examples:
Light, like a weekly status update: about $1.35 each time.
Medium, like preparing for a client meeting from past emails and files: about $5.
Heavy, like analyzing months of data: $15 or more.
A light task every week comes to a few dollars a month. You can cap spending per person or for the whole business.
Cowork needs a paid Copilot seat. Microsoft says Copilot Business has the same capabilities as its enterprise seat but hasn’t yet said explicitly that it includes Cowork, and an admin has to switch Cowork on.
Which one do I need?
Start with the free Copilot Chat. If you have Microsoft 365, you already have it.
Add paid seats for a few people, not everyone. The people with the most email, meetings and documents get the most out of it. A pilot of one to three seats, reviewed after two or three months, is usually the smart first step.
Add Cowork later, for the specific chores you want done for you, with a spending cap.
Staff without a paid seat can still use company agents your team sets up, paying per answer: about $0.12 for an answer that searches your company files.
Good to know
Microsoft renamed things in August 2026. “Microsoft 365 Copilot” is now Microsoft Copilot, and “Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat” is now Copilot Chat. You’ll still see the old names around.
Larger organizations pay $30 per person per month for the same features as Copilot Business.
Copilot Business billed monthly instead of yearly costs $25.20 per person per month, and it’s still a one-year commitment.
Copilot only sees what’s in Microsoft 365. Files kept on personal laptops, Dropbox or Google Drive are invisible to it.
No Microsoft 365? The free consumer Copilot app isn’t meant for business data. Your assessment will tell you whether switching is worth it.
Not sure which fits your business?
That’s what the assessment is for. We’ll look at how you work and tell you what’s worth paying for, and what isn’t.