Bottom line: Microsoft Copilot is Microsoft’s general-purpose AI assistant, free to use on the web, in Windows and in Edge, with paid tiers that put it inside Word, Excel, Outlook and Teams and ground its answers in your own organisation’s files, email and meetings. It is worth paying for if you already live in Microsoft 365, but as a standalone chatbot it is comparable to rather than better than ChatGPT or Gemini.
| What it is | A general-purpose AI assistant from Microsoft, at copilot.microsoft.com, in Windows, Edge, mobile and Mac apps, and inside the Microsoft 365 apps for paid users. It is not a coding tool – that is GitHub Copilot, a separate product. |
| Best for | People and organisations already standardised on Microsoft 365, where Copilot can read your own documents, email and meetings and act on them rather than answering from the open web alone. |
| Weakest at | Winning on merit as a general chatbot. Enterprise reporting through 2026 shows low voluntary uptake against ChatGPT and Gemini, with recurring complaints about arithmetic and table-handling errors and throttled access to the newest models on the free tier. |
| Pricing | Free tier with usage limits. Consumer AI features are now bundled into Microsoft 365 Premium (about US$19.99 a month), which replaced the standalone Copilot Pro. Businesses add Microsoft 365 Copilot to a qualifying Microsoft 365 plan from about US$21 per user a month paid yearly; enterprise agreements are quoted separately. |
| Our take | Buy it as an extension of Microsoft 365, not as your best chatbot. If your files, email and meetings do not already live in Microsoft 365, most of the value disappears and a free chatbot will serve you just as well. |
Independent review. No affiliate links. Last checked 23 August 2026.
Microsoft Copilot is a generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by Microsoft as Microsoft’s primary replacement for the discontinued Cortana. Based on the GPT-4 series of large language models, Copilot’s conversational interface style resembles that of ChatGPT. The chatbot can cite sources, create poems, generate songs, and use numerous languages and dialects.
Frequently asked questions
Is Microsoft Copilot free?
Yes. Anyone can use Copilot free at copilot.microsoft.com, in the Windows and Mac apps, in Microsoft Edge and on mobile. The free tier covers chat, web-grounded answers with citations, image generation and file summarising, but it applies daily usage limits and can throttle access to the newest models at busy times.
What is the difference between Microsoft Copilot and GitHub Copilot?
They are separate products that share a name. Microsoft Copilot is a general assistant for chat, research and Microsoft 365 documents, email and meetings. GitHub Copilot is a developer tool that suggests and edits code inside editors such as VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains and Xcode. They are licensed and billed separately.
Is Copilot Pro still available?
No. Microsoft retired the standalone Copilot Pro consumer subscription and folded its AI features into Microsoft 365 Premium, which costs about 19.99 US dollars a month and adds Copilot inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, higher usage limits and up to 6 TB of cloud storage. Microsoft’s own Copilot Pro links now point to the Microsoft 365 Premium page.
Does Microsoft Copilot use my conversations to train its models?
It depends on the account. For work accounts, Microsoft states that Microsoft 365 Copilot prompts, inputs and responses are never used to train its models. For consumer Copilot, conversation activity can be used for generative AI training unless you turn it off under Privacy in your Copilot profile settings. Signed-out users and several countries are excluded by default.
Is Microsoft Copilot better than ChatGPT?
Not on general chat quality, where the two are broadly comparable because Copilot runs on similar frontier models. Copilot’s real advantage is grounding: with a paid work licence it can answer using your own documents, email and meetings. If you do not need that, there is little reason to move across from ChatGPT or Gemini.
What languages does Microsoft Copilot support?
Copilot detects the language you write in and replies in it, covering dozens of languages and dialects for chat, translation and summarising. Feature availability varies by region and language – voice, image generation and some Microsoft 365 capabilities reach fewer languages than plain text chat does. Microsoft publishes a current list in its support documentation.
Do I need a Microsoft 365 subscription to use Copilot?
No, not for the free assistant on the web, in Windows, in Edge or on mobile. You do need a subscription for Copilot inside the Office apps: Microsoft 365 Premium for personal use, or the Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on attached to a qualifying business plan. The business add-on cannot be bought on its own.