Microsoft Copilot Explained: What Is It Actually For?

“Copilot” is not one product but a family of Microsoft assistants: one for consumers, one for businesses and one for developers. This guide explains, as of October 22, 2026, what each one does, what it costs and which one actually applies to you.

One name, three products

Microsoft uses the Copilot name for almost all of its assistants. That is handy for the brand, much less so for you. Here are the three main ones:

	Consumer Copilot	Microsoft 365 Copilot	GitHub Copilot
Who it is for	Individuals	Businesses, public bodies, schools	Developers
Account	Personal Microsoft account	Work account	GitHub account
Where	Web, Windows, macOS, iPhone, Android	Web, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote	Code editors
Free?	Yes, limited	Copilot Chat included with some licenses	Yes, 2,000 completions a month
Paid	Through Microsoft 365, from $9.99 a month	Add-on license, price not surveyed	From $10 a month

Sources: Info Agent IA product pages and Microsoft Learn documentation, checked on October 22, 2026. US prices, before tax.

There are also more specialized Copilots, such as Security Copilot for cybersecurity or Copilot Studio, a tool for building your own agents with little code. They are sold separately and are irrelevant for most individuals.

Consumer Copilot: an assistant like ChatGPT

Microsoft Copilot is the former Bing Chat, launched in February 2023. It is a classic chat assistant: you ask a question, it answers using web search, creates images, reads the files you upload, talks to you out loud and remembers your preferences.

Here is how it compares with GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT, based on each company’s official pages:

Assistant	Free	Paid from	Web search	Agent mode	Voice	Images
Microsoft Copilot	Limited	$9.99/mo	Yes	—	Yes	Yes
GitHub Copilot	Limited	$10/mo	—	Yes	—	No
ChatGPT	Limited	$8/mo	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Microsoft does not say on its pages which AI model powers its consumer assistant. Also worth knowing: on August 18, 2026, the app was unified and some features were removed, including group chats, podcasts and Deep Research.

A concrete example: you are organizing a colleague’s farewell drinks. You ask Copilot for speech ideas, then for an invitation poster. The text and the image are ready in minutes, for you to tweak to your taste.

How much does it cost?

The free version is enough for occasional use. Beyond that, Microsoft bundles Copilot into its Microsoft 365 subscriptions. According to its plan comparison page as of October 22, 2026, in the US:

Subscription	Price	What you get
Microsoft 365 Personal	$9.99 a month or $99.99 a year	Copilot in the Office apps, more image creation
Microsoft 365 Family	$12.99 a month or $129.99 a year	Copilot for the subscription owner only
Microsoft 365 Premium	$19.99 a month or $199.99 a year	Highest usage, replaces Copilot Pro

Prices vary by country, so check Microsoft’s page for your region. Watch out with Family: other household members get Office, but not Copilot. To weigh these prices against ChatGPT or Claude, our analysis of which AI subscription is worth the money runs the numbers.

Microsoft 365 Copilot: the version for work

This is the Copilot people talk about at the office. According to Microsoft’s overview page, “What is Microsoft Copilot?” on Microsoft Learn, updated on October 20, 2026 and checked on October 22, 2026, there are several levels of access:

• Copilot Chat is included with eligible Microsoft 365 licenses. It answers from the web and only uses your organization’s content if you provide it.
• Microsoft 365 Copilot, basic access, gives standard use of Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.
• Microsoft 365 Copilot, Premium access, is an add-on license. It grounds its answers in the organization’s data (emails, files, meetings, calendars) and gives access to agents.
• Copilot Cowork and Copilot Code are billed by usage, on top of licenses.

One source of confusion: the work app is now also called Microsoft Copilot, at copilot.cloud.microsoft. It shares its name with the consumer assistant; what makes the difference is the account you sign in with, personal or work.

In practice, with Premium access you can ask “summarize this week’s emails about project X and draft the agenda for Monday’s meeting,” and Copilot pulls the relevant emails, files and meeting notes. It is powerful, but it assumes document permissions are set up properly in your company.

GitHub Copilot: the developer’s assistant

GitHub Copilot has nothing in common with the other two apart from the name and the parent company. It plugs into your code editor (VS Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains, Xcode, Neovim or Eclipse), suggests the next lines of code, answers questions about your code and offers an agent mode that can chain several actions.

According to GitHub as of October 22, 2026, the free tier gives you 2,000 completions a month and entry-level models. Individual plans range from $10 a month (Pro) to $100 (Max), and plans for organizations cost $19 (Business) or $39 (Enterprise) per user. Its chat mainly supports English.

Your data and privacy

The rules depend on which Copilot you use:

• Consumer Copilot: you can opt out of training under Profile, then Privacy, by turning off “Training on conversation activity” and “Training on voice conversations.” History is kept for 18 months by default. If you use Copilot without signing in, your chats are not used for training.
• Microsoft 365 Copilot: your organization’s admins have dedicated controls, on top of the protections described above.
• GitHub Copilot: since April 24, 2026, interaction data from Free, Pro and Pro+ accounts is used for training unless you opt out in the settings; Business and Enterprise accounts are excluded.

Which one applies to you?

Check yourself You are a teacher, you use Word at home with a personal account, and you want help preparing lessons. Which Copilot applies to you?

Consumer Copilot. Its free version already lets you ask for ideas or exercises. To use it directly inside Word with your personal account, you need Microsoft 365 Personal or higher. Microsoft 365 Copilot only applies if your school gives you a work account with the matching license.

Like any assistant, Copilot can produce a hallucination, meaning a wrong answer delivered with confidence. Check figures and sources before you reuse them.

For the most common head-to-head, see our ChatGPT vs Copilot comparison. If you would rather not pay, our guide to the best free AI can help. And for the big picture, read which AI is the best or try the AI assistants comparison tool.