The short answer
Microsoft Copilot is Microsoft's AI assistant, and it comes in two forms. Consumer Copilot is free with a personal Microsoft account, with more usage in Microsoft 365 Personal, Family, Premium and Pro. Microsoft 365 Copilot is the work version that uses your organisation's mail, meetings and files inside Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Since 18 August 2026 both run in one Copilot app, with personal and work data kept separate.
| Made by | Microsoft, United States |
|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes: Copilot Free for personal accounts, and Copilot Chat for work accounts |
| Models | Not named per personal plan; work version has Auto routing, Sonnet 5.5 in PowerPoint, and frontier models such as Astra and Fable |
| Best at | Work inside Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel and PowerPoint |
| Shows sources | Grounds answers in Bing web search and, at work, in your files and mail; ask it to list what it used |
| Team plans | Microsoft 365 Copilot Business and Microsoft 365 Copilot, with admin controls |
| Your data | Updated personal app documents no training switch; older app trained by default. Work and school accounts are not used for training. |
What Microsoft Copilot is in late 2026
Most confusion about Microsoft Copilot comes from one name covering two different products. The first is consumer Copilot, the free assistant you reach with a personal Microsoft account at copilot.com or in the Copilot app. The second is Microsoft 365 Copilot, the version organisations license for staff, which works inside Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel and PowerPoint and can read the files, mail and meetings you already have permission to see. They look similar on screen. What they know about you, what they can reach and how they treat your data are very different.
On 18 August 2026 Microsoft merged the two apps into one Copilot app on web, Windows, Mac, iOS and Android. You can sign in with a personal account, a work or school account, or both, and Microsoft says chats and data stay separate between the two account types. The same change retired Group Chats, AI podcasts and Deep Research from the consumer app. On the work side, Researcher replaces Deep Research for paying professional users.
On 25 September 2026 Microsoft announced the "new Copilot", built around three ideas. Home is the new start screen, where Chat (quick questions and drafts) sits next to Cowork (hand over a multi-step job and get a finished result back). Code builds small apps, trackers and dashboards from a plain description, using the same underlying technology as GitHub Copilot. Autopilot, previously called Scout, is an always-on agent with its own account, mailbox and files that keeps work moving between your check-ins. Most of this starts in Microsoft's Frontier early-access programme, so your organisation may not have it yet.
The difference between consumer Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot
| Consumer Copilot | Microsoft 365 Copilot (work) | |
|---|---|---|
| Who signs in | Personal Microsoft, Google or Apple account | Work or school account (Microsoft Entra ID) |
| Free option | Copilot Free: chat, images and file uploads within limits | Microsoft Copilot Chat, with enterprise data protection |
| Paid options | Microsoft 365 Personal, Family, Premium and Pro | Microsoft 365 Copilot Business and Microsoft 365 Copilot licences, plus usage-based billing |
| Sees your work files and mail | No | Yes, within your existing permissions |
| Training on your chats | Older app: on by default with a switch. Updated app: no training switch documented yet | Not used to train foundation models |
| Ads | Possible if you have no Microsoft 365 subscription | No |
The practical rule: if the work involves your employer's documents, customers or colleagues, use the work version your company provides. If your company has not bought Copilot licences, staff who sign in with their work account still get Copilot Chat with enterprise data protection, which is a far safer place for work questions than a personal account.
Which models Copilot uses
Here Microsoft is less open than OpenAI, Google or Anthropic. Its pricing page for individuals says Copilot brings together "AI models selected by Microsoft" and does not name them. Its privacy overview for the updated app says you can choose between leading AI models for different kinds of work, with features varying by subscription, but no Microsoft page lists which models each personal plan gets. Treat third-party articles that name specific models for consumer plans with caution: we could not find them on any Microsoft page.
The work version is clearer. Microsoft 365 Copilot has an Auto setting that routes each request to a suitable model based on accuracy, speed and cost. Microsoft's September announcement says frontier models such as Astra and Fable are available to organisations through usage-based billing. In October 2026 Copilot in PowerPoint moved to Sonnet 5.5 for stronger slide design, and since 6 October 2026 you can regenerate an answer on the web with Try Again or Switch Model from the More options menu at the end of a response. One detail for European organisations: Microsoft says Anthropic models are currently excluded from the EU Data Boundary.
Where Copilot is genuinely strong
Work that lives in Outlook, Teams and Office
No other assistant sits this close to where office work happens. With a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, you can ask what changed in a project across email, chat and files, get a recap of a Teams meeting you missed, or turn a Word document into a PowerPoint deck without copying anything. Since October 2026 meeting organisers can also turn on intelligent recap without keeping a transcript, which matters for teams with strict retention rules.
Spreadsheets you do not fully trust
Copilot in Excel added a clean data skill in October 2026. It scans a workbook for duplicates, inconsistent formatting and wrong data types, then suggests fixes that you approve one by one. Accounting skills for reconciliations and journal entries are rolling out worldwide in November, and the interactive canvas turns workbook data into a report that updates as the numbers change.
Handing over a whole job with Cowork
Cowork is Microsoft's answer to agents. You describe the outcome, such as a first draft of an RFP response, and it works through the steps and returns files. It now has a task catalog of suggested jobs for sales, marketing, customer service and finance, role-based plugins for Sales, Service, Education, Legal and Finance, and it can read and update OneNote notebooks and Planner tasks with your approval. On personal accounts, Cowork needs Microsoft 365 Premium or Pro.
Repeatable work with skills and projects
Skills save a set of instructions you reuse, so the tenth weekly report follows the same rules as the first. In PowerPoint you can now use Record a skill to capture a formatting task and run it again. Skills are expanding from Cowork to Copilot Chat in November 2026. Projects keep related chats, files, instructions and tasks together, so you stop re-explaining the same background.
Where it falls short
- Two products, one name. Advice online often mixes them up. A feature described for Microsoft 365 Copilot may not exist on your personal plan, and the reverse.
- Constant renaming and staged rollouts. Notebooks became Workspaces, Scout became Autopilot and Tasks moved into Cowork, all within a few months. Many features arrive first through the Frontier programme, so what you read about may not be in your tenant yet.
- Little model transparency on personal plans. Microsoft does not name the models behind each personal plan, which makes it hard to know why an answer was weak.
- Family plans share Office, not AI. On Microsoft 365 Family and Premium, Copilot features belong to the subscription owner only. Other members need their own eligible plan.
- Deep Research is gone for consumers. It was retired on 18 August 2026. For long, sourced research on a personal account, a dedicated research tool is a better fit. See our pick for research.
- Copilot only knows what you can see. The work version respects permissions, so if your SharePoint is messy or over-shared, Copilot will surface that mess. Tidy access before a rollout.
How to get better results from Copilot
- Check which account you are in. Look at the account picker before you paste anything. Work questions belong in the work account.
- Point it at the source. In the work version, name the file, meeting or email thread you mean. "Using the Q3 board deck and last Tuesday's meeting" beats "about Q3".
- Use Chat for questions and Cowork for jobs. If the answer is a finished file or several steps, start in Cowork rather than asking Chat to do everything in one reply.
- Start a project for anything recurring. Add the instructions and files once, then every new chat in that project starts with the right context.
- Turn your best prompt into a skill. Once a prompt works, save it as a skill so colleagues get the same result.
- Ask it to list what it relied on. Copilot grounds answers in Bing web results and, at work, in the files and mail you can access. Ask it to name the files, emails and pages it used, and open them before anything goes to a client or a board.
Our Copilot lessons walk through each of these with short exercises, and our kits bundle prompts by job.
Privacy settings and exactly where to find them
For personal accounts, the answer depends on which version of the app you have, because Microsoft released an updated Copilot app on 18 August 2026 and its support pages are split in two.
In the updated app, Microsoft's current privacy page for individuals lists these controls, all under Settings, then Personalization: Saved memories (turn it off, or select Manage to delete single memories or all of them), One shared experience (stops your Copilot chats personalising Bing, Edge and MSN, and the reverse), Web search, and Allow ads personalization. Ads matter here: if you use Copilot without a Microsoft 365 subscription you may see ads, and personalised ones can draw on your chat history and saved memories. Turning off memory does not delete what is already saved. To delete a chat, open it in the Chats list, select More, then Delete. That page does not list a switch for model training, and on Microsoft's own Q&A forum in October 2026 a user could not find one and Microsoft staff did not confirm how training works in the new app. Until Microsoft documents it, assume personal chats are not protected and keep work data out.
In the older app, Microsoft documents two training switches, Training on conversation activity and Training on voice conversations. On copilot.com they sit under your profile icon, your profile name, then Privacy; in the Windows and Mac apps under your profile icon, then Settings, then Privacy. Microsoft's older privacy FAQ says training is on by default, that opting out covers future conversations only, and that users under 18, people signed in with work or school accounts, and users in Brazil, mainland China, Israel, Nigeria, South Korea and Vietnam are excluded from training.
Copilot inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote on a home plan works differently: Microsoft says those prompts, responses and file contents are not used to train its foundation models.
For organisations, Microsoft Copilot and Copilot Chat are covered by enterprise data protection under Microsoft's Data Protection Addendum and Product Terms. Prompts, responses and Microsoft Graph data are not used to train foundation models, and your sensitivity labels, retention policies and audit settings apply. Web searches go to Bing with user and tenant identifiers removed.
Which plan suits whom
- Trying it out: Copilot Free covers chat, image creation and file uploads within capacity limits, and you may see ads.
- Heavy personal use of Word and Excel: Microsoft 365 Personal adds higher usage and Copilot in the desktop Office apps.
- Agents on a personal account: Microsoft 365 Premium adds extensive usage and Cowork, and Code is due to enter preview for Premium and Pro later in 2026. Pro gives the highest usage.
- Any company on Microsoft 365: start with free Copilot Chat on work accounts, then license Microsoft 365 Copilot Business or Microsoft 365 Copilot for the people who live in Outlook, Teams and Excel. From 1 December 2026, new Business licences bought through Microsoft partners in the Cloud Solution Provider programme have usage-based billing switched on by default, with a default limit of 4,000 Copilot Credits per user per month that admins can change, and new Copilot purchases no longer need a qualifying Microsoft 365 base subscription. Set that limit before you roll out.
Not for you if your team works mainly in Google Workspace or you want to pick your model for each task: compare it first in Copilot vs Gemini and ChatGPT vs Copilot, or browse Copilot alternatives. Microsoft changes plans often, so check its official pricing page for current prices.
Prompts to copy
Catch up on a project
Using my email, Teams chats and files from the last two weeks about [project name], tell me what was decided, what is still open, and who is waiting on me. List each point with a link to the message or file it came from.
You get: A sourced catch-up with your open actions
Prepare for a meeting
I have a meeting with [person or team] about [topic] on [day]. Pull together the last three email threads and any shared files about this, summarise where things stand in five bullets, and suggest three questions I should ask.
You get: A one-screen briefing and smart questions
Clean a messy workbook
Check this workbook for duplicates, inconsistent formatting and wrong data types. List every issue you find with the sheet and cell range, suggest a fix for each, and do not change anything until I approve.
You get: A reviewable list of data problems and fixes
Explain the numbers
In this sheet, compare [month] with [previous month]. Tell me the three biggest changes, the likely reasons, and show the formulas or numbers you used so I can check them.
You get: The changes that matter, with working shown
Turn a document into slides
Create a 10-slide presentation from [file name] for [audience]. One idea per slide, no more than 25 words per slide, speaker notes for each slide, and a final slide with the decision we need.
You get: A draft deck with notes, ready to edit
Write a reply that says yes and no
Summarise this email thread in three lines and tell me what is being asked of me. Then draft a reply that agrees to [request A] but declines [request B], politely and in under 120 words.
You get: The ask in plain words and a ready reply
Hand a job to Cowork
Using [file names] as sources, draft a first response to this RFP: [paste requirements]. Create a Word document with one section per requirement, mark any requirement we cannot answer from the sources, and give me a list of open questions for the team.
You get: A structured first draft with gaps flagged
Build a reusable skill
Help me write a skill for our weekly status report. Ask me five questions about format, audience and tone first. Then write the instructions as a skill I can save, including what to pull from my email and Planner and how long each section should be.
You get: Skill instructions you can save and share