If you're pricing up Microsoft Copilot for your team, here's the figure you actually came for: the paid Copilot add-on for business starts at around $18 per user per month, on top of a Microsoft 365 plan you're probably already paying for. The rest is working out which licence you need, what it gets you, and whether it earns that back. This breaks it down plan by plan.
The short answer: what does Microsoft Copilot cost?
There are three routes, and which one you take depends on what you already pay Microsoft. If your business has eligible Microsoft 365 subscriptions, a basic Copilot Chat comes free. To get the full Copilot that works inside your apps, you add Microsoft 365 Copilot Business from around $18 per user per month, on top of your existing Microsoft 365 Business subscription. Or, if you are buying Microsoft 365 and Copilot together from scratch, bundled options run from about $23.50 to $32 per user per month. Those are Microsoft's US list prices on an annual commitment. UK and European pricing shows in your local currency on Microsoft's pricing page, and it is worth checking, because Microsoft adjusted these figures in mid-2026. Now the detail.
Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat: the free tier
If your organisation already holds an eligible Microsoft 365 business or enterprise subscription, Copilot Chat is included at no extra cost. It gives your people a secure AI chat for everyday questions and drafting, protected so your prompts are not used to train the models. The catch is what it does not do. Copilot Chat works from the open web and whatever you paste into it, but it does not reach into your own files, emails and meetings the way the paid version does. Think of it as a useful starting point, and a way to let people get comfortable with AI, rather than the full product.
Microsoft 365 Copilot Business: the paid add-on (from about $18 per user per month)
This is the one most small and mid-sized businesses actually mean when they ask about Copilot pricing. For around $18 per user per month on an annual commitment, or about $25 if you want to pay monthly and stay flexible, it adds Copilot inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams, working on your own company content. That is the version that summarises your actual meetings, drafts from your own documents, and answers questions using files you already have access to. It also includes the newer pre-built agents, such as a Researcher and an Analyst, that handle deeper tasks. One thing to budget for: it is an add-on, so it needs a Microsoft 365 Business subscription underneath it. If your team is already on one, you are only adding the Copilot fee; if not, that base subscription is a separate cost.
Buying Microsoft 365 and Copilot together
If you are starting fresh, or you would rather have one line on the invoice, Microsoft sells its business plans with Copilot already included. Business Standard with Copilot is about $23.50 per user per month, and Business Premium with Copilot is about $32, the difference being that Premium adds more advanced security and device management on top. For a team that does not yet have Microsoft 365 at all, buying the bundle can work out simpler than piecing together a base subscription plus the add-on, though it is worth comparing both once you know how many people need the full Copilot and how many just need the apps.
What about enterprise pricing?
Larger organisations running the enterprise plans, Microsoft 365 E3 or E5, buy Copilot the same way: as a per-user add-on layered on top of the plan they already hold. The exact enterprise price sits on Microsoft's pricing page, and in practice most enterprises have a rate negotiated through their Microsoft account team or a licensing partner, so the list price is a starting point rather than the final bill. If you are at that scale, the thing to focus on is not the sticker price but how many of your people will actually use it, which is where the money is won or lost.
GitHub Copilot: a different product for developers
Worth clearing up, because it causes confusion on invoices. GitHub Copilot is a separate product for writing code, not the Copilot in your Office apps. It has its own plans: a free tier, a Pro plan at $10 per user per month, and Business and Enterprise tiers for organisations that want central licence and policy control. You can see the current figures on GitHub's plans page. If your Copilot question is really about your development team, that is the pricing to look at. And for completeness, Copilot Pro is the individual consumer plan for personal use, not something a business buys per seat.
The cost most teams forget to budget for
Here is the part the pricing pages skip. The licence fee is the easy, visible number. The expensive mistake is paying it and getting little back, which happens when people are handed Copilot and left to work it out alone. An unused seat costs exactly the same as a used one. So what actually decides your return is not the monthly fee, it is how many of your people use Copilot well enough to save meaningful time. A little structured onboarding is what closes that gap, and it is cheap next to a year of licences nobody touched. That is what Readynez's Unlimited AI and Copilot Training is built for, in person or live online, so the money you spend on seats turns into time your team gets back.
So how do you work out your real cost?
Four quick steps. First, decide who really needs the full Copilot, which is rarely everyone; the people who live in Outlook, Teams and documents all day get the most from it. Second, check what Microsoft 365 plan those people are already on, since that is the prerequisite and part of the true cost. Third, choose annual for the lower rate or monthly for flexibility. Fourth, set aside a small amount for getting people confident. As a rough shape, twenty people already on Microsoft 365 Business, each adding the Copilot Business fee, comes to roughly $360 per month before training, and that is the honest all-in cost to plan around, not the headline price alone.
The bottom line
Microsoft Copilot pricing only looks complicated because several products share the name. Separate them and it is simple: Copilot Chat is free with eligible Microsoft 365 subscriptions, the full in-app Copilot is a per-user add-on from around $18 a month that sits on top of a Microsoft 365 Business plan, and developers have their own GitHub Copilot plans. Work out who needs it, check what they already pay for, and budget a little to make sure it gets used. Do that and the price is easy to justify.
