Microsoft Copilot Review 2026: Is It Worth £20/Month for Microsoft 365 Users?
Microsoft Copilot is the most useful AI assistant for businesses already running on Microsoft 365. The deep integration with Word, Excel, Outlook, and Teams means AI assistance where you already work, without copy-pasting between tools. At £25/user/month for the business version, it's expensive — but for the right business, the time savings are real.
Microsoft Copilot is a different product to ChatGPT, even though both are powered by similar underlying AI. The distinction matters: ChatGPT is a standalone AI assistant you interact with separately; Copilot is embedded directly into the Microsoft 365 apps your business may already live in. That integration is what makes it worth evaluating on its own terms.
What Microsoft Copilot Does Well
Integration Where You Already Work
This is Copilot’s core advantage. Rather than switching to a separate AI tool, drafting something, and copying it back into Word or Outlook, Copilot is inside the app:
- Word: “Draft a proposal based on the brief in this document” — it reads the document and drafts
- Excel: “What were our top-performing months, and why?” — analyses your data in plain English
- Outlook: “Summarise this email thread and what action is needed” — catches you up instantly
- PowerPoint: “Create a 10-slide deck from this report” — generates slides with relevant content
- Teams: “What did I miss in yesterday’s meeting?” — summarises the transcript
The time saved from not context-switching between tools compounds significantly for teams using Microsoft 365 heavily.
Email Thread Summarisation
The most immediately useful feature for most office workers: Copilot in Outlook can collapse a 30-email thread into a three-sentence summary with action points. For anyone dealing with high email volume — particularly consultants, account managers, or executives — this is genuinely time-saving every day.
Meeting Summaries
Copilot in Teams can transcribe and summarise meetings automatically. At the end of a call, you get a summary with key decisions, action items, and who said what. No more manually writing up notes or chasing people to confirm actions.
Access to Your Business Data
Unlike standalone AI tools, Copilot can access your actual business data — SharePoint documents, OneDrive files, Teams conversations, emails — subject to your existing permissions. Ask “what’s our current pricing for Project X?” and Copilot searches your documents for the answer. This is what makes it more than just a writing assistant.
Security and Compliance
Microsoft 365 Copilot processes data within your Microsoft 365 compliance boundary. Your business data doesn’t leave Microsoft’s infrastructure for AI training. For businesses with data handling requirements — particularly regulated sectors — this matters more than it might seem.
Where Copilot Falls Short
Price
At £25/user/month on top of your existing Microsoft 365 subscription, Copilot adds significant cost. For a 10-person business, that’s £250/month (£3,000/year) just for the AI layer. ChatGPT Plus at £16/month per user is substantially cheaper, though less integrated.
The ROI calculation needs to be honest: if Copilot saves each user one hour per day, the maths work easily. If it saves 15 minutes a week, it doesn’t.
Quality Varies by Task
Copilot’s output quality is strong for summarisation, drafting, and analysis, but can be inconsistent. Generated PowerPoint slides often need significant editing. Excel analysis is impressive for simple questions and less reliable for complex modelling. Word drafts are a solid starting point, not finished products.
Requires Microsoft 365 Business Plans
Microsoft 365 Copilot requires Microsoft 365 Business Standard or higher — it doesn’t work with the basic Microsoft 365 apps-only plans. Check your current plan before evaluating.
Learning Curve
Getting the most from Copilot requires learning to prompt it effectively. The “write me an email” prompt produces mediocre results; “write a concise, friendly follow-up email to a client who hasn’t responded to our quote, referencing our call last Tuesday” produces something much more useful. This takes some adjustment from teams used to traditional Office features.
Pricing
| Plan | Monthly | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Copilot (free) | £0 | Chat only, no Microsoft 365 integration |
| Copilot Pro | £20/user/mo | Individual — adds Microsoft 365 app integration |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot | £25/user/mo | Business — requires Microsoft 365 Business Standard+ |
Microsoft 365 Copilot requires an existing qualifying Microsoft 365 subscription.
Microsoft Copilot vs ChatGPT Plus
| Copilot | ChatGPT Plus | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | £25/user/mo (business) | £16/mo |
| Microsoft 365 integration | ✅ Deep | ❌ |
| Image generation | ✅ (via Designer) | ✅ DALL-E 3 |
| Data analysis | ✅ Excel integration | ✅ Advanced Data Analysis |
| Company data access | ✅ Your M365 data | ❌ (upload only) |
| Best for | M365-heavy businesses | Standalone AI use |
If your business runs on Microsoft 365, Copilot and ChatGPT complement each other well: Copilot for in-app tasks and your company data, ChatGPT for more general research and writing tasks. They’re not mutually exclusive.
Verdict
✅ Pros
- Deep integration into Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams, and PowerPoint
- Email thread and meeting summarisation saves real time
- Access to your actual business data in SharePoint and OneDrive
- Data stays within Microsoft's compliance boundary
- Catches you up on missed meetings and emails instantly
❌ Cons
- £25/user/month is expensive — ROI needs to be real
- Output quality inconsistent, especially for PowerPoint and complex Excel
- Requires Microsoft 365 Business Standard or higher
- Learning curve to prompt effectively
Microsoft Copilot is the right AI tool for businesses where Microsoft 365 is already the working environment. The integration is genuine and the productivity gains are real for high email-volume, meeting-heavy teams. For businesses that don’t live in Microsoft 365, or where the per-user cost is hard to justify, ChatGPT Plus is more versatile for less money.