Microsoft Copilot Pricing (2026): Every Plan, Add-on and Bundle Explained

We set up Microsoft 365 for home service companies and get the same question from every owner who has seen the Copilot button in Outlook: what does it cost to actually use it? The answer changed on October 1, 2025, when Copilot Pro became Microsoft 365 Premium, and again on July 1, 2026, when the base Microsoft 365 licenses went up, with Copilot Business launching at $21 between those dates on December 2, 2025. This is every Copilot price Microsoft printed on October 30, 2026, what each one includes, the five-seat math for a trade business, and the three things to check before you buy. Microsoft blocks most automated readers, so every page here was read in a real browser session and the screenshots are on file.

Copilot for one person

Two things to know before buying any of these. First, the AI credit number is gone. Microsoft's support page on usage, last updated October 2026, replaced the monthly credit count with a table of words: "Standard," "More usage," "Extensive" and "Highest usage" per feature per plan. There is no top-up for sale; when you hit a limit you are told to upgrade. Second, on Family, Premium and Pro the AI goes to the subscription owner only. "AI benefits are only available to the subscription owner and cannot be shared with others," the page says twice. A family plan does not give five people Copilot.

If you are still paying for Copilot Pro, Microsoft stopped selling it on October 1, 2025. Its blog said Premium "combines everything in our Microsoft 365 Family and Copilot Pro subscriptions" at $19.99, and the old Copilot Pro store page now redirects to Premium.

Copilot for a business

This is where the confusion lives, because the same product has three prices depending on how you buy it. All figures are per user per month, read October 30, 2026 from Microsoft's pricing, enterprise and business compare pages.

The promo footnote matters: the $18 price "is available between July 1, 2026, and December 31, 2026," needs an annual commitment, applies to the first year only, and is not available on trials. Microsoft's December 2025 launch post said the bundle discount ran "until June 30, 2026"; the bundle prices printed today still undercut the add-on, so that window was extended without an announcement we could find. No minimum seat count is printed anywhere. Every Copilot card says "Annual subscription, auto renews," even on the monthly-billing toggle, with a seven-day cancellation window for a prorated refund.

What the paid license adds over free Copilot Chat: Copilot inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Teams, chat grounded in your own mailbox and files through Microsoft Graph, model choice, the Researcher, Analyst and Facilitator agents, and Enterprise Data Protection. Copilot Chat on its own already includes "Copilot in Outlook and the Microsoft Copilot app," web-grounded chat, file uploads and Pages. Outlook's support hub confirms the free version can "Summarize my emails from the last week related to [project or customer name]" and "Setup an automatic reply for next Friday"; the add-on adds reasoning across your chats and documents. For a lot of two-person offices, free is enough.

One more line item hides in the FAQ. "More advanced AI experiences are billed based on usage," and the FAQ names Copilot Cowork, Code, Autopilot and the Work IQ APIs as the current ones. Those draw Copilot Credits on top of the license, controlled in Cost Management in the admin center. If nobody turns them on, nothing is charged.

The five-seat math for a contractor

Take a five-person plumbing company on Microsoft 365 Business Standard, which went from $12.50 to $14.00 on July 1, 2026. That is $70 a month paid yearly. Here are the three ways to put Copilot on every seat, from Microsoft's own prices:

Against the alternatives at the same seat count: ChatGPT Business is $100 a month on annual billing or $125 monthly, Claude Team is the same $100 or $125, and Google Workspace Business Standard is $70 a month with Gemini included. The Microsoft bundle at $117.50 includes the Office apps, email and 1 TB per user, so the fair comparison is the $47.50 difference over plain Business Standard versus a $100 ChatGPT or Claude bill on top of whatever email you already pay for. Our ChatGPT pricing and Claude pricing guides have the seat-level detail, and which AI platform for business covers how to choose.

Copilot Studio, Dynamics, Security Copilot and Teams Premium

Copilot Studio, the tool for building agents that face customers on a website or app, is sold "as tenant-wide Copilot Credit packs of 25,000 Copilot Credits each, priced at $200.00 /pack/month," or pay as you go at $0.01 per credit on an Azure subscription, with a pre-purchase option that saves "up to 20%." There is no per-message price any more. Internal agents that run inside Microsoft 365 are included with a paid Copilot license.

Dynamics 365 Sales is $65 for Professional, $105 for Enterprise, which "Includes Copilot in Dynamics 365 and agentic capabilities," and $150 for Premium with 1,000 Copilot Credits a month. Security Copilot bills by Security Compute Unit at $4 per provisioned SCU per hour and $6 per overage SCU, minimum one; E5 and E7 customers get 400 SCUs a month per 1,000 licenses. Teams Premium is $10 and includes intelligent recap, which is also part of the Copilot license. Copilot+ PC is hardware, not a subscription, with devices from $854.99.

GitHub Copilot for developers

GitHub replaced "premium requests" with GitHub AI Credits at $0.01 each, so the plans now print a credit allowance instead of a request count. Read October 30, 2026.

The model list on the plans page includes Claude, Grok 4.7 and others, so the GitHub seat is the cheapest way to get several frontier models under one bill if you have a developer on staff. For the contractor who wants a quote tool or a website chatbot built, the relevant price is the one your developer pays, which is $10 to $39.

Three things to check before you buy

Training. For work accounts, prompts, responses and data accessed through Microsoft Graph "aren't used to train foundation models," and that applies to free Copilot Chat as well as the paid license. Prompts and responses are logged and discoverable under your retention policies, which is a feature for a business and a surprise for anyone who thought the chat was private.

The renewal date. The July 1, 2026 price increase hit "at their next renewal after July 1, 2026," and it did not touch the Copilot SKUs or consumer prices. If your Business Standard bill went up this year, that is the reason rather than Copilot.

Excel on a personal plan. The consumer product pages footnote that Copilot in Excel "requires AutoSave to be enabled, meaning the file must be saved to OneDrive; it doesn't function with unsaved files." If your estimates live in a local spreadsheet, move it before you pay.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Microsoft Copilot cost?

As of October 30, 2026, the Copilot app is free, Microsoft 365 Personal is $9.99 a month, Family $12.99, Premium $19.99 and Pro $99.99. For business, Copilot Chat is free with any Microsoft 365 work license, the Copilot Business add-on is $21 per user per month ($18 first-year promo through December 31, 2026), the enterprise add-on is $30, and the Business Standard with Copilot bundle is $23.50.

Is Copilot Pro still available?

No. Microsoft stopped selling Copilot Pro on October 1, 2025 and replaced it with Microsoft 365 Premium at $19.99 a month or $199.99 a year, which includes the Family apps and storage plus extensive Copilot usage and the Researcher and Analyst agents.

Is Copilot free with Microsoft 365?

Copilot Chat is, on any work license from Business Basic at $7 up, and it includes Copilot in Outlook and the Copilot app. Copilot inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Teams needs the paid add-on at $21 or $30, or a bundle at $23.50 or $32. Consumer Personal and Family plans include Copilot in the apps at a lower usage level than Premium.

What is the difference between Copilot Business and Microsoft 365 Copilot?

The same features at two prices. Copilot Business is $21 ($25.20 monthly) and requires a Business plan, which caps at 300 users. Microsoft 365 Copilot is $30 ($31.50 monthly) and works on enterprise E3 and E5 plans as well. Both are annual commitments.

Is there a minimum number of Copilot seats?

No minimum is printed on any Microsoft page as of October 30, 2026. One seat is fine. Every Copilot business SKU is an annual subscription with a seven-day cancellation window for a prorated refund.

How much does Copilot Studio cost?

$200 a month per pack of 25,000 Copilot Credits, or $0.01 per credit pay as you go on an Azure subscription, with a pre-purchase discount of up to 20 percent. Internal agents built with a paid Microsoft 365 Copilot license cost nothing extra.

Does Microsoft train on Copilot data?

Not for work accounts. Microsoft Learn states that prompts and responses along with Graph data "aren't used to train foundation models," under Enterprise Data Protection, which covers both free Copilot Chat and the paid license. Prompts and responses are logged and subject to your retention and eDiscovery policies.