Microsoft Copilot Pricing 2026: Free Chat, 365 Premium, and Business Seats

Microsoft Copilot pricing is really three different products wearing one name. Verified July 10, 2026: the consumer Copilot app stays free, Microsoft 365 Premium costs $19.99 a month, and Microsoft 365 Copilot for work runs $18 to $30 a seat. The seat prices carry a catch no other AI vendor has. Copilot for business only works on top of a paid Microsoft 365 base plan, so the real cost is always two subscriptions added together.

Free Copilot: The Chat App Costs Nothing

Microsoft's consumer Copilot runs free on web, Windows, iOS, and Android. You get chat, image generation, and web-grounded answers with usage caps at peak times. Nothing here touches your Office files. That separation is the whole business model.

Microsoft 365 Premium at $19.99: Copilot Pro's Replacement

Microsoft retired the standalone Copilot Pro plan and folded its features into Microsoft 365 Premium at $19.99 a month. Existing Copilot Pro subscribers keep access only until August 1, 2026. Premium bundles the Office desktop apps, 1 TB of OneDrive storage, and Copilot inside Word, Excel, and Outlook. For individuals, that bundle beats the old $20 Copilot Pro on pure content.

Copilot Business: $18 Promo Now, $21 Later

Microsoft 365 Copilot Business serves organizations up to 300 users. The promotional rate is $18 per user a month on annual commitment, running through September 30, 2026. The standard price is $21, and a no-commitment monthly option costs $25.20. Business seats put Copilot inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams, with commercial data protection.

Budget for the promo ending. A 50-seat company signing at $18 today faces a 17% rise at renewal unless Microsoft extends the offer again.

Copilot Enterprise at $30: The Add-on That Needs a Foundation

Enterprise Copilot costs $30 per user a month on an annual commitment, for organizations of any size. A qualifying Microsoft 365 base plan is mandatory underneath it. Add the two together and the true cost lands between $34 and $43 per user a month, depending on the base plan. Microsoft is the only major AI vendor whose headline price is structurally impossible to pay on its own - the base-license asterisk deserves more attention than it gets.

Enterprise buyers do get the deepest product: Copilot across the full Office suite, Teams meeting summaries, and enterprise data grounding. Model quality moved up this year too - GPT-5.6 became the preferred model inside Microsoft 365 Copilot in July.

Three Billing Catches to Know

Microsoft Copilot pricing punishes skim-readers. The base-license requirement leads: every business seat price sits on top of an existing Microsoft 365 subscription. Second, the $18 Business rate is a promo with a September 30 expiry date, not the list price. Third, Copilot Pro is on a countdown - holdouts lose the plan on August 1 and need to pick Premium or drop to free.

Also worth knowing: there is no per-token Copilot API. Developers who want Microsoft-hosted models go through Azure AI Foundry instead, priced separately per model.

Which Copilot Plan Should You Pick

Microsoft Copilot pricing rewards matching the product to where you actually work. Casual users should stay on the free app. Individuals living in Word and Excel take Microsoft 365 Premium at $19.99 - the Office bundle makes it the strongest $20 plan for document-heavy work. Small companies grab the $18 Business promo before September 30. Enterprise seats only pay off for teams that run meetings, mail, and documents through Microsoft end to end.

Copilot competes hardest with standalone chat subscriptions, so compare before committing. Our full AI pricing guide lines up every provider, and the ChatGPT pricing and Claude pricing pages cover what $20 buys outside the Microsoft bundle.