Microsoft Copilot vs ChatGPT (2026): Which Should You Use?
Short answer: ChatGPT wins as a standalone assistant, Copilot wins if you already pay for Microsoft 365. ChatGPT Plus costs $20/mo and carries the deeper model lineup. Copilot's old standalone plan is gone: Microsoft retired Copilot Pro on August 1, 2026, and now sells the AI inside Microsoft 365 Premium at $19.99/mo instead. Already paying Microsoft for Office? That bundle is close to free money. If not, ChatGPT is the simpler buy.
For the rest of this cluster, see Claude vs ChatGPT, Claude vs Gemini, Gemini vs ChatGPT and Perplexity vs ChatGPT. For getting ChatGPT's paid tier without paying full price, see how to get ChatGPT Plus for free.
Quick comparison
| Dimension | Microsoft Copilot | ChatGPT |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Microsoft | OpenAI |
| Free tier | Yes, capacity-limited, no card required | Yes, unlimited text chats, subject to abuse guardrails |
| Standalone AI plan | None: Copilot Pro was retired August 1, 2026 | Go and Plus |
| Cheapest paid door | Microsoft 365 Personal $9.99/mo | Go $8/mo |
| Mainstream consumer plan | Microsoft 365 Premium $19.99/mo | Plus $20/mo |
| Heaviest consumer tier | Microsoft 365 Pro $99.99/mo | Pro from $100/mo (20x tier paused for new signups) |
| Business AI add-on | Microsoft 365 Copilot from $21/user/mo, paid yearly | ChatGPT Business, contact sales |
| Native office apps | Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams | None (browser, desktop and mobile apps only) |
| Storage bundled | 1TB to 6TB, by plan | No |
| Coding agent | No dedicated agent on consumer plans | Codex, usage scales by tier |
What each product actually is
Microsoft Copilot is not one product anymore, it is Microsoft's AI layered across two different doors. The free Copilot app at copilot.microsoft.com answers chat questions with no Microsoft 365 subscription required, though Microsoft caps it "subject to available capacity and limits" rather than promising unlimited use. The deeper version lives inside Microsoft 365: buy Personal, Family, Premium or the new Pro tier, and Copilot appears directly in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams instead of a separate chat window. Businesses buy Copilot as an add-on to an existing Microsoft 365 plan, or as a bundled Business Standard or Business Premium subscription that already includes it.
ChatGPT is OpenAI's assistant, sold as its own product with no office suite attached. The free tier gives unlimited GPT-5.6 Luna text chats with limited image generation, uploads and voice. Paid tiers add GPT-6 reasoning models, deep research, memory, Projects, scheduled tasks, custom GPTs and Codex access, scaling up through Go, Plus and two separate Pro tiers. Where Copilot's value depends on whether you already pay Microsoft for something else, ChatGPT stands or falls on the assistant alone.
Pricing: verified on both vendors' pages
Microsoft Copilot and Microsoft 365, verified on microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-copilot/pricing/individuals and support.microsoft.com, September 2026:
| Plan | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Copilot (free) | $0 | Chat at copilot.microsoft.com, capacity-limited, no Microsoft 365 needed |
| Copilot Pro | Retired August 1, 2026 | No longer sold; existing subscribers keep access until they cancel |
| Microsoft 365 Personal | $9.99/mo ($99.99/yr) | 1TB storage, Word/Excel/PowerPoint/Outlook, Copilot chat above the free tier |
| Microsoft 365 Family | $12.99/mo ($129.99/yr) | Up to 6 people, 6TB total storage, Copilot for the subscription owner only |
| Microsoft 365 Premium | $19.99/mo ($199.99/yr) | Everything in Family plus extensive Copilot usage and visual AI |
| Microsoft 365 Pro | $99.99/mo, monthly only | Highest Copilot usage limits and agentic AI access on the consumer lineup |
For businesses, Microsoft sells Copilot as an add-on to an existing plan starting at $21/user/mo paid yearly (a promotional $18/user/mo was live on the pricing page at the time of writing), or bundled into Business Standard with Copilot at $23.50/user/mo and Business Premium with Copilot at $32.00/user/mo, both paid yearly.
ChatGPT, verified on openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-go and help.openai.com/en/articles/9793128, September 2026:
| Plan | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Unlimited GPT-5.6 Luna text chats, limited uploads, image generation and voice |
| Go | $8/mo | More messages, uploads, image generation, voice and memory than Free |
| Plus | $20/mo | GPT-6 reasoning models, expanded deep research, memory, Projects, scheduled tasks, custom GPTs |
| Pro (5x) | $100/mo | 5x Plus usage, Pro reasoning, maximum Codex tasks, unlimited image creation |
| Pro (20x) | $200/mo | 20x Plus usage; OpenAI paused new signups and upgrades to this tier on September 10, 2026 |
Copilot Pro's retirement is the story here. Microsoft sold Copilot Pro at the same price as ChatGPT Plus for two years, then killed it and pushed individual buyers into Microsoft 365 Premium, a plan priced close to that but that only makes sense if you also want the Office apps and cloud storage that come with it.
Round by round
Cheapest way to try either product: ChatGPT wins. Go's $8/mo undercuts every Copilot-attached plan; the cheapest Microsoft 365 tier that touches Copilot chat, Personal, still costs more and buys you Office apps you may not need.
Free tier for daily use: ChatGPT wins. ChatGPT's free plan promises unlimited text chats, capped only by abuse guardrails. Microsoft's free Copilot is explicitly "subject to available capacity," language that leaves room for throttling at peak times that ChatGPT's free tier does not carry.
Value if you already pay for Microsoft 365: Copilot wins. Anyone already on Family or Premium is paying for Copilot chat whether they use it or not, so upgrading to Premium for the AI features costs less than adding a separate ChatGPT subscription on top.
Model depth and dedicated features: ChatGPT wins. Codex, custom GPTs, scheduled tasks and two tiers of Pro usage give ChatGPT a feature set built around the assistant itself. Copilot's roadmap is tied to shipping inside Office apps, not to standalone assistant features.
Working inside documents you already have open: Copilot wins. Copilot sits inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, so it edits the file in front of you without a copy-paste step. ChatGPT can read an uploaded document, but it is not wired into the app you are typing in.
Business rollout: depends on your stack. Microsoft 365 Copilot bundles into Business Standard and Business Premium plans many companies already buy, at $23.50 to $32.00/user/mo. ChatGPT Business exists but is quote-only on the public pricing page, so a Microsoft shop can price Copilot today in a way it cannot price ChatGPT Business without a sales call.
The Copilot Pro retirement, explained
Buyers searching this comparison are often trying to figure out why the Copilot Pro plan they remember does not show up on Microsoft's pricing page anymore. It does not, because Microsoft stopped selling it. Support for existing Copilot Pro subscriptions ends August 1, 2026, and Microsoft's own guidance points departing subscribers to Microsoft 365 Premium instead. That plan is not a like-for-like swap: it adds the full Office app suite and up to 6TB of storage that Copilot Pro never included, so a former Copilot Pro subscriber who only wanted the chat assistant is now paying about the same for a bigger, more complicated product. Anyone who wants Copilot without Office apps is left with the capacity-limited free tier as the only option Microsoft still sells on its own.
Strengths and real limits
Copilot's real strengths: it is already paid for if you own Microsoft 365 Family or Premium, it edits inside Word, Excel and Outlook natively, and Business plans bundle it with security features many IT teams already need. Copilot's real limit: there is no standalone paid tier anymore, so getting serious Copilot access without wanting Office apps is no longer possible; the free version can be capacity-limited at peak times.
ChatGPT's real strengths: the cheapest paid entry point of the two, an unlimited free-chat tier, and a feature set (Codex, custom GPTs, scheduled tasks, two Pro usage tiers) built specifically around the assistant. ChatGPT's real limit: it does not live inside your documents the way Copilot does, and OpenAI's own help center confirms the top Pro tier, $200/mo, was paused for new signups on September 10, 2026, so the heaviest usage tier is not guaranteed to be purchasable when you check.
Who should pick what
Pick Copilot if:
- You already pay for Microsoft 365 Family or Premium and the Copilot usage is effectively already bought
- You spend most of your day inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint or Outlook and want AI edits in place
- Your company already runs Business Standard or Business Premium and can add Copilot at a published per-seat price
Pick ChatGPT if:
- You want the cheapest possible paid entry point, or a free tier without a capacity caveat
- You use Codex, custom GPTs or scheduled tasks, none of which Copilot's consumer plans offer
- You are not a Microsoft 365 subscriber and do not want to become one just to get AI chat
Run both if: your company already licenses Microsoft 365 Business Premium for security and email, and your own workflow leans on ChatGPT's coding or research tools that Copilot's consumer plans still lack. The two are not mutually exclusive; their mainstream plans sit within a dollar of each other, which is exactly where most individual buyers are actually deciding.
Dupple data: Toolradar tracks 1,467 AI assistant tools as of September 2026, per its live best AI assistants ranking, with 199 of them ranked in the category and 44% (87 of 199) offering a free plan. Both ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot sit inside that tracked set alongside Claude, Gemini and Perplexity, so neither is a fringe choice, they are two of the handful of assistants most buyers actually shortlist. See Toolradar's Microsoft Copilot alternatives and our own best AI chatbots, best free AI chatbots, best ChatGPT alternatives and best AI assistant roundups for the wider field.
Methodology
Every price above was read on the vendor's own pages in September 2026: microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-copilot/pricing/individuals, microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-copilot/pricing, support.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-copilot/about-microsoft-copilot-pro, openai.com/index/introducing-chatgpt-go and help.openai.com/en/articles/9793128-about-chatgpt-pro-tiers. The Toolradar figure comes from a live query against our own catalog of 1,467 tracked AI assistant tools, run the day this page was written. This page carries no paid placement or partner relationship with Microsoft or OpenAI; both products are ranked on what their own pricing pages state today.
FAQ
Is Microsoft Copilot free?
Yes, for basic chat at copilot.microsoft.com, with no Microsoft 365 subscription required. Microsoft describes it as "subject to available capacity and limits," so usage can be throttled at busy times, unlike ChatGPT's unlimited free text-chat tier.
Is Copilot Pro still available?
No. Microsoft stopped selling Copilot Pro; existing subscribers keep access until they cancel, and support ends August 1, 2026. Microsoft points departing subscribers to Microsoft 365 Premium at $19.99/mo, the plan that now bundles Office apps and storage on top of the AI features Copilot Pro used to sell alone.
How much does ChatGPT cost compared to Copilot?
ChatGPT's paid tiers run Go at $8/mo, Plus at $20/mo, and two Pro tiers at $100/mo and $200/mo. Copilot has no standalone paid plan anymore: its cheapest AI-focused door is Microsoft 365 Personal at $9.99/mo, and its mainstream tier, Premium, costs about the same as Plus.
Is Copilot as good as ChatGPT?
For editing inside Word, Excel or Outlook, Copilot is the more convenient tool because it works in the document itself. For a dedicated assistant with Codex, custom GPTs and scheduled tasks, ChatGPT's feature set goes further, and Copilot's consumer plans do not currently match it.
Which is better for Microsoft 365 users?
Copilot, if the alternative is paying twice. Anyone already on Microsoft 365 Family can upgrade to Premium and get Copilot access that would otherwise mean adding a separate ChatGPT subscription on top of an Office bill already being paid.
Can I still buy Copilot Pro somewhere?
No. Microsoft's own support page confirms Copilot Pro is no longer available for new purchase and that support for existing subscriptions ends August 1, 2026. There is no workaround; Microsoft 365 Premium and the free capacity-limited Copilot app are the only individual doors left.
Is ChatGPT Pro worth $100 or $200 a month?
For most people, no: Plus covers everyday use. The lower Pro tier unlocks 5x the usage of Plus, and the higher one unlocks 20x, but OpenAI paused new signups and upgrades to that higher tier on September 10, 2026, so it may not be purchasable when you check, even if you want it.
Cite this: Dupple, "Microsoft Copilot vs ChatGPT (2026): Which Should You Use?", September 2026.
Copilot's AI is now a Microsoft 365 feature, not a product of its own. Decide based on whether you want to pay for Office too, not just for chat. Start your free 14-day Dupple X trial →
