Insights
Comparison

Microsoft Copilot or ChatGPT for your business?

Both are business AI assistants with data protection. The difference is where they work and what they can see. A comparison as of October 2026, ending with when each one fits.

Published

A wide screen with a dashboard on a desk in the Elusive office, a team member looking at it
The question is not which tool is smartest, but where your work lives.

If your business runs on Microsoft 365, Microsoft Copilot is the obvious candidate: it works in Word, Excel, Outlook and Teams and, with a licence, can use your mail, files and meetings. ChatGPT Business is a separate workspace you connect to the tools you already have, Microsoft or not. Neither is better in general. It depends on where your work lives, and what you want to do with it first. The facts below come from the official pages of Microsoft and OpenAI, as of October 2026.

Side by side

  • What it is

    Microsoft Copilot
    An add-on to a Microsoft 365 subscription; until recently called Microsoft 365 Copilot
    ChatGPT Business
    A business ChatGPT workspace; called ChatGPT Team until 29 August 2025

  • Where you use it

    Microsoft Copilot
    In Word, Excel, Outlook and Teams, and in the Copilot app
    ChatGPT Business
    In ChatGPT, connected to other tools

  • Your own data

    Microsoft Copilot
    Through Microsoft Graph: email, files, meetings, calendars and teams
    ChatGPT Business
    Through connections with Google Workspace, Slack, GitHub, Microsoft 365 and more

  • Training on your data

    Microsoft Copilot
    Prompts, responses and data accessed through Microsoft Graph are not used to train foundation models
    ChatGPT Business
    No training on your business data by default

  • Minimum

    Microsoft Copilot
    An eligible Microsoft 365 subscription; Copilot Business for up to 300 users
    ChatGPT Business
    At least 2 seats

  • Price (as of October 2026)

    Microsoft Copilot
    Copilot Business (Dutch price page): € 18.20 per user per month paid yearly, € 21.84 paid monthly, excluding VAT. Offer until 31 December 2026: € 15.60 in the first year, paid yearly
    ChatGPT Business
    $20 per user per month billed annually, $25 billed monthly

Start with what you already have

If you have an eligible Microsoft 365 subscription, you already have Copilot Chat: according to Microsoft the web chat is included at no extra cost. That chat works with results from the internet. Chatting over your own work data, such as your mailbox and SharePoint, needs a Copilot licence. That allows a cheap first step: let the team work with Copilot Chat for a few weeks, then see for whom the licence is worth it.

Where Copilot is strong

  • Work that already happens in Microsoft 365: drafting an email in Outlook, rewriting or summarising a document in Word, analysing data in Excel.
  • Summarising and transcribing Teams meetings, with action items.
  • Answers from your own mail, files and calendar, without connecting anything.
  • Management in the same environment as the rest of your Microsoft licences.

Where ChatGPT Business is strong

  • A separate workspace not tied to one vendor: you connect Google Workspace, Slack, GitHub or Microsoft 365.
  • Features such as GPTs, Projects, Deep Research and ChatGPT Agent in the standard licence, according to OpenAI's help centre.
  • A team that partly works outside Microsoft, for example in Google Workspace.

What neither does for you

Both tools help an employee who is doing the work themselves: writing, summarising, searching. They do not carry out work in your own systems with nobody at the keyboard, such as taking a phone call and putting the appointment in your calendar, or processing an order in your ERP. For that you build an application of your own; see an AI tool or custom AI.

When each one fits

  • Microsoft Copilot fits if your business runs on Microsoft 365 and you mainly want to work faster in Outlook, Teams, Word and Excel, with your own mail and files as the source.
  • ChatGPT Business fits if your team works across several environments, or in Google Workspace, and you want one assistant connected to those tools.
  • If in doubt, start with Copilot Chat if you already have it, or with a small team on ChatGPT Business, and measure for a few weeks before giving everyone a licence.
  • If you want the team to really learn to work with it, training per tool helps more than the licence alone.

Frequently asked

Is Copilot Chat free?

According to Microsoft the web chat is included at no extra cost with an eligible Microsoft 365 subscription. Chat over your work data through Microsoft Graph needs a Copilot licence.

Do Microsoft or OpenAI train on our business data?

According to Microsoft, prompts, responses and data accessed through Microsoft Graph are not used to train foundation models. OpenAI says of ChatGPT Business: no training on your business data by default.

Can our data stay in Europe?

OpenAI offers storing data at rest in Europe to new ChatGPT Enterprise and Edu customers; for ChatGPT Business the page does not say so. For Microsoft Copilot we did not check this for this article.

Can we use both?

You can, but it costs two licences per person. It is usually better to pick one first, roll it out properly, and only then see whether a second adds anything.

Sources

Read next

Book an intro call