Microsoft Copilot is free in Windows 11. The Microsoft 365 Copilot upgrade costs $30/month and adds AI inside Word, Excel, Teams and Outlook. We tested both tiers extensively. Honest verdict.
Microsoft Copilot is a confusing product name covering several distinct tiers. Copilot free is built into Windows 11 and Edge browser — a general-purpose AI assistant powered by GPT-4 equivalent models, similar to a free ChatGPT alternative with web search. Microsoft 365 Copilot at $30 per user per month is the enterprise product — AI embedded inside Word for document drafting, Excel for data analysis and formula generation, Teams for meeting summarisation and action item extraction, Outlook for email drafting and summarisation, and PowerPoint for presentation generation from documents. The April 2026 update added Copilot Cowork to compete with Anthropic's Cowork product — AI that can execute multi-step workflows across Microsoft applications autonomously. These are genuinely different products sharing the same name.
Teams meeting summarisation is the most consistently useful Microsoft 365 Copilot feature in production use. After a one-hour meeting Teams Copilot produces a structured summary with action items, decisions made and follow-up tasks assigned to specific people — accurately and reliably. This is the feature that justifies the $30 per month subscription for organisations running many meetings. Excel Copilot for formula generation and data analysis is useful for non-technical users who struggle with Excel formulas but disappoints power users who find the natural language interface slower than writing formulas directly. Word Copilot for document drafting produces generic output that requires significant editing — comparable to using a slightly integrated ChatGPT rather than a meaningfully better writing experience. Outlook email drafting is the weakest feature — the suggestions frequently miss tone and context.
Copilot free: included with Windows 11 and Microsoft Edge. Provides GPT-4 quality responses with web search at no cost — a genuine ChatGPT alternative for Windows users. Microsoft 365 Copilot: $30 per user per month added to existing Microsoft 365 Business subscription. The most expensive single AI tool upgrade in this comparison. Copilot Plus PCs: Microsoft hardware with on-device AI including Recall for screenshot-based memory. This is hardware-level integration not a software subscription. The $30 per month per user pricing for M365 Copilot means a team of 20 pays $600 per month — a significant cost that requires clear ROI from Teams summarisation and other features to justify.
Microsoft Copilot wins on Microsoft 365 integration — Teams meeting summaries, Word document assistance and Excel help inside tools your organisation already uses. Claude wins on AI capability, reasoning quality and coding — Anthropic's constitutional AI approach produces more reliable and nuanced outputs. For organisations standardised on Microsoft 365 where the integration value is the primary consideration Copilot is the natural choice. For technical teams and knowledge workers who need the highest AI capability Claude or Claude Code is the stronger product. The honest positioning in 2026: Copilot is a Microsoft 365 productivity enhancement, not a frontier AI model competing with Claude Opus 4.6 and GPT-5.4 on capability benchmarks.