Home / Microsoft Copilot
The AI assistant built into Word, Excel, Outlook and Windows — free to chat, paid inside the Microsoft 365 plans you may already buy
The obvious AI buy if your business already lives in Microsoft 365 — the catch is there is no Copilot-only rung, so non-Microsoft founders are buying a bundle.
Copilot is Microsoft's assistant woven into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams — free to chat, and paid only as part of a Microsoft 365 subscription.
Your documents, spreadsheets and inbox already live in Microsoft 365 and you want AI inside those apps, grounded in your own files, rather than another standalone chatbot tab.
You do not use Microsoft 365 — there is no Copilot-only subscription, so you would be buying an Office bundle to get a chatbot, and a standalone assistant is cleaner.
Workflows are built only from verified capabilities in our listing research — no vendor copy, nothing invented.
Starts You open Word or PowerPoint and brief Copilot on the proposal, letter or deck
You get A finished-feeling draft in the app you will send it from
The copy-paste shuttle between AI chat and Office disappears
Starts A long email thread in Outlook or a messy sheet in Excel needs summarising or analysing
You get A summary, an analysed sheet and a drafted reply
Approval Check figures and recipients before sending anything Copilot drafted
Two of the slowest solo admin jobs happen inside the apps already open
Starts On Premium, a market or supplier question needs more than a chat answer
You get A deeper, structured research brief
Occasional deep research without a separate research subscription
Run a drafting, summary and image job in the free Copilot app and note where capacity limits appear.
Occasional in-app help fits Personal; daily, heavy AI use is Premium — budget for the tier your usage actually needs.
Copilot is strongest grounded in your own files, so store working documents where it can reach them.
Time to first useful result: Under 1 hour · no-code 5/5
Free Copilot app; paid Copilot comes inside Microsoft 365 — Personal $9.99/month (or $99.99/year) for one person, Premium $19.99/month (or $199.99/year) as the heavy-AI solo pick, Pro $99.99/month billed monthly only. The old $20 Copilot Pro plan is retired.
$0 — limited free version, subject to capacity and limits
Flat / month · $0/mo for one person
$99.99/year billed yearly (about $8.33/month); $9.99/month billed monthly
Flat / month · $8.33/mo for one person
$199.99/year billed yearly (about $16.67/month); $19.99/month billed monthly
Flat / month · $16.67/mo for one person
$99.99/month, billed monthly only
Flat / month · $99.99/mo for one person
| Plan | Published price | Solo monthly | Billed by | Limits & overage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free (Copilot app) | $0 — limited free version, subject to capacity and limits | $0/mo | Flat / month | Lower usage than paid plans; limits vary with capacity |
| Microsoft 365 Personal (billed yearly) | $99.99/year billed yearly (about $8.33/month); $9.99/month billed monthly | $8.33/mo | Flat / month | For one person only · AI usage is credit- and feature-limited, not unlimited |
| Microsoft 365 Premium (billed yearly)Solo pick | $199.99/year billed yearly (about $16.67/month); $19.99/month billed monthly | $16.67/mo | Flat / month | Agentic AI usage is limited even on Premium · Copilot features do not extend to other people on the plan |
| Microsoft 365 Pro | $99.99/month, billed monthly only | $99.99/mo | Flat / month | Monthly billing only · Priced for power users — far above what most solo founders need |
The ladder is a bundle jump, not a meter: Personal at $9.99 buys Office plus modest AI credits, and the moment AI usage becomes daily and heavy the honest tier is Premium at $19.99 — with a cliff to $99.99 Pro above it and no Copilot-only rung in between.
Price record · 2026-11-08: Checked 2026-11-08 on Microsoft's official Copilot pricing page for individuals (microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-copilot/pricing/individuals): this run's text extraction returned the page's FAQ in full — confirming a limited free Copilot, a one-month trial of Personal, Family and Premium, AI credits and feature limits varying by plan with Pro highest, and Copilot features on Family restricted to the subscription owner — but the plan-card dollar figures do not extract as text. The figures recorded (Free $0; Personal $9.99/month or $99.99/year; Family $12.99/month or $129.99/year; Premium $19.99/month or $199.99/year; Pro $99.99/month billed monthly only) are corroborated by multiple dated October 2026 reads of the same official US page. Variant note: Microsoft shows different entry prices by market (the Australian page read this run shows AU$16.00/month for individuals) — US prices are recorded here. The standalone Copilot Pro subscription is retired and is not listed as a buyable tier.
The same fields on every deep listing in this job, so agents compare field by field. “Not verified” means our research has not confirmed it yet — it never means “doesn't have it.”
Microsoft Copilot is the assistant for a founder whose business already lives in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams. The free Copilot app and web chat answer questions, draft text, summarise pages and create images with usage limits that vary with capacity. The paid story is deliberately not a standalone Copilot subscription any more: Microsoft retired the old Copilot Pro plan and now sells Copilot inside Microsoft 365. Microsoft 365 Personal, for one person, puts Copilot inside the desktop Office apps with higher usage than free and 1 TB of storage. Microsoft 365 Premium is the heavy-AI tier — extensive chat, vision, audio and image usage plus the Researcher and Analyst agents — while Microsoft 365 Pro is a $99.99-a-month power tier with the highest limits, billed monthly only. On Family, the apps and storage can be shared but the Copilot features stay with the subscription owner only, a detail that matters if a partner or contractor needs AI too. For a solo founder the honest question is therefore not whether Copilot beats a rival chatbot in isolation, but whether your documents, spreadsheets, presentations and inbox already sit in Microsoft 365 — if they do, Copilot works where the work is, grounded in your own files; if they do not, you are buying an Office bundle to get a chatbot, and a standalone $20 assistant is the cleaner purchase. Usage is governed by AI credits and feature limits that vary by plan, and Microsoft publishes no fixed message count, so heavy users should expect the Premium tier, not Personal, to be the realistic price.
Solo Fit stays the public score: the qualitative roll-up of these four published inputs under the How We Rank method. Zero-setup inside existing Office apps carries it; pricing clarity is honest about the bundle structure and unpublished usage quotas.
The difference: The standalone generalist with custom GPTs, scheduled tasks and Codex for $20/month — the catch is it lives outside your Office apps and files.
The difference: The same bundle idea inside Google's apps and search instead of Microsoft's — the catch is it only pays off if your work lives in Google Workspace.
The difference: A standalone writing and long-document specialist at $17-$20/month with Projects — the catch is metered usage windows and no Office bundle included.
The Copilot app is free with limits. Paid Copilot comes inside Microsoft 365: Personal is $9.99/month or $99.99/year for one person, Premium is $19.99/month or $199.99/year, and Pro is $99.99/month billed monthly only. The directory's True Solo Cost is $8.33 low (Personal yearly) and $16.67 typical (Premium yearly).
No. Microsoft retired the standalone Copilot Pro subscription and folded its role into Microsoft 365 Premium at $19.99/month. Any page still selling a $20 Copilot Pro plan is out of date.
Microsoft does not publish a message count. Personal and Family run on AI credits and feature limits, Premium raises them to extensive usage, and Pro is highest; when a limit is reached the feature pauses until the allowance resets. This listing records the quotas as unpublished rather than estimating them.
No. Family members share the Microsoft 365 apps and storage, but Copilot features in the apps are available only to the subscription owner; anyone else needs their own eligible subscription.
Microsoft Copilot is not in a published stack yet — stacks are edited buying guides, and memberships are added only when the combination has been worked through.
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