Copilot vs ChatGPT for a small business: UK plans, prices and how to choose

Copilot vs ChatGPT comes down to where your work happens. If your team lives in Outlook, Word, Excel and Teams, Microsoft Copilot is the natural fit, and you probably already have its free Copilot Chat. If you want the strongest general-purpose assistant for research, writing and analysis, whatever software you use, ChatGPT Business is usually the better buy. Either way, pay for a business plan, not a personal one.

Prices checked on 10 October 2026 against Microsoft's and OpenAI's UK pricing pages. Both change often, so check before you buy. This is general information, not legal or licensing advice. If an IT provider looks after your Microsoft 365, they're the right people to confirm what your licences include.

They're built on similar technology, and both can draft, summarise, analyse and answer questions. The difference is what they're attached to.

• Microsoft Copilot is part of Microsoft 365. It sits inside Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel and PowerPoint, signs in with your work account, and follows the permissions and retention rules your business already has. With the paid licence, it can search across the emails, meetings, chats and files you have access to.
• ChatGPT is a standalone workspace. It runs in a browser or app, alongside whatever software you use. It works on what you give it: typed questions, uploaded files, and any apps you connect, such as Google Workspace, Slack or Microsoft 365 on the Business plan.

A useful way to think about it: Copilot is an assistant that already knows where your Microsoft 365 files are. ChatGPT is a very capable colleague you brief each time.

A naming note: Microsoft is renaming "Microsoft 365 Copilot" to "Microsoft Copilot" and "Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat" to "Copilot Chat", so you'll see both names for a while.

Both have free options, and both have business plans. Here's what each tier is for.

Microsoft

• Copilot (free, personal account). A consumer chatbot on the web, in Windows and in Edge. Fine for general questions; not a business tool.
• Copilot Chat (included with eligible Microsoft 365 business plans). Signed in with a work account. Web-grounded chat, file uploads, image creation and enterprise data protection. In Outlook it can also answer questions across your inbox, calendar and meetings. It has standard rather than priority access, so it can be slower at busy times.
• Microsoft 365 Copilot Business (paid add-on, up to 300 users). Adds Copilot inside Teams and the Office apps, reasoning across your Microsoft 365 data, and ready-made agents such as Researcher and Analyst.

OpenAI

• ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus and Pro. Personal plans. Free and Go are ad-supported; Plus and Pro add more capable models and higher limits.
• ChatGPT Business (formerly Team). A shared workspace for 2 to 200 people, with admin controls, SAML single sign-on, and no training on your business data by default. Standard and Premium seats can be mixed.
• ChatGPT Enterprise. For larger firms, priced by OpenAI's sales team.

Claude, as a footnote. Anthropic's Claude is a third option worth knowing about, particularly for long documents and for connecting to other systems. Its Team plan covers 2 to 150 people, doesn't train on your data by default, and costs $20 per user a month billed annually ($25 monthly), plus tax.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Business is an add-on to a Microsoft 365 business plan (Business Basic, Standard or Premium, Apps for business or Teams Essentials):

• £16.10 per user a month on an annual commitment, or £19.32 a month on a monthly subscription, ex VAT.
• Microsoft is running a first-year promotion at £13.80 on annual plans, for existing business customers, from 1 July to 31 December 2026.
• Microsoft also sells bundles: Business Standard with Copilot at £18.10 and Business Premium with Copilot at £24.60 per user a month, paid yearly, ex VAT. Depending on your current plan, a bundle can work out cheaper than adding Copilot separately, so ask whoever manages your licences to compare.

ChatGPT lists these UK prices:

• Free: £0. Go: £7 a month. Plus: £20 a month. Pro: from £89 a month. These are personal plans, and the prices include VAT.
• Business: £15 per user a month billed annually, or £18 monthly, for a standard seat; £75 or £90 for a premium seat with about five times the usage. OpenAI's page doesn't say whether VAT is included, so check at checkout.

For a ten-person firm on Microsoft 365, that's £0 for Copilot Chat, roughly £1,930 a year for ten Copilot Business seats (standard annual price), or £1,800 a year for ten ChatGPT Business seats (annual, before any VAT). Few firms need everyone on a paid seat on day one.

Copilot earns its keep where the work already lives in Microsoft 365:

• Outlook: summarising long threads, drafting replies, and finding what was agreed. Copilot Chat in Outlook can already search your inbox and calendar without a paid licence.
• Teams: meeting recaps, action lists and "what did I miss?" summaries (paid licence).
• Word, PowerPoint and Excel: first drafts from existing documents, and explaining formulas or summarising a table.
• Across your files: with the paid licence, questions like "what's the latest on the Smith project?" can pull from emails, chats and documents together.

The honest limit. Copilot can only see what's in Microsoft 365, and only what each person already has permission to open. Your job management system, accounts package or CRM are invisible to it unless they're connected. And because it respects existing permissions, untidy sharing becomes a real issue: if an old "everyone" share holds the payroll export, Copilot will find it for whoever asks. Tidying file permissions is the job to do before switching the paid version on, and it's exactly what IT providers are set up to do.

ChatGPT is the stronger all-rounder when the task isn't tied to one app:

• Research: working through a question with web search, then summarising the sources.
• Writing: marketing copy, tender responses, policies, job adverts and difficult emails, with a lot of control over tone.
• Analysis: uploading a spreadsheet or PDF and asking questions about it, including charts and calculations.
• Mixed software: it doesn't care whether you're on Microsoft 365, Google Workspace or something else, and the Business plan can connect to several of them.

The honest limit. ChatGPT knows nothing about your business unless someone uploads, pastes or connects it, which makes it easy for staff to paste in things they shouldn't. It also sits outside your Microsoft 365 retention and permissions, so it's one more system for whoever manages your IT to look after.

On business plans, neither trains its models on your data by default. The bigger risk is staff using personal accounts.

• Copilot Chat and paid Copilot, signed in with a work account: covered by Microsoft's Data Protection Addendum, with Microsoft acting as your processor. Prompts and responses aren't used to train foundation models, and your sensitivity labels, retention and audit settings apply. Web searches go to Bing, which Microsoft handles under separate terms.
• ChatGPT Business and Enterprise: no training on business data by default, admin controls and single sign-on. Workspace admins should switch off any connected apps you don't use.
• Personal plans (free Copilot, ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus and Pro): no business contract, and chats may be used for training unless each person switches it off. Keep client and personal data out.

So Copilot isn't automatically "more secure". It's the easiest safe default for a Microsoft 365 business, because it adds no new supplier or contract. We've covered plan-by-plan data handling, what never to paste, and UK GDPR in our free AI policy template, so we won't repeat it here.

Most of the work here is licensing and settings, not the AI itself.

• Who buys it. If an IT provider manages your Microsoft 365, they normally buy and assign licences for you, including Copilot. Start the conversation with them: they'll know which base plan you're on, whether a bundle is cheaper, and what's covered by your contract.
• Who gets a seat. Copilot licences are assigned per person, so you can start with the three or four people who write the most emails and documents. ChatGPT Business needs at least two seats.
• Sign-in. Make sure everyone uses their work account. Your IT provider can stop personal Microsoft accounts signing in to Copilot at work, and can set up single sign-on for ChatGPT Business.
• Permissions. Before switching on paid Copilot, review who can see what in SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams.
• Commitment. Annual prices are cheaper but lock you in for a year; a monthly pilot costs more per seat but is easier to stop.

• You're on Microsoft 365 and haven't used AI much: start with Copilot Chat. It costs nothing extra and is covered by your existing Microsoft contract.
• Your team spends its day in Outlook and Teams: pilot paid Copilot Business with a handful of heavy users for a month, once permissions are tidy.
• You're on Google Workspace or a mix of tools: ChatGPT Business, or Gemini, which is included in many Google Workspace plans.
• Your work is mostly research, writing and one-off analysis: ChatGPT Business.
• Staff are already paying for ChatGPT Plus themselves: move them onto a business plan you control, whichever brand it is.
• You can't decide: plenty of firms use Copilot Chat for everyone and a few ChatGPT Business seats for the people who write and research most. That's a perfectly sensible setup.

The question that matters more than the brand: what do you want it to do, and where does the information for that job live? An assistant that can't see the data won't help, however clever it is.

1. Pick one approved tool and say so. Banning AI doesn't stop people using it; giving them a safe option does.
2. Write a one-page policy covering what can and can't go in. Our free AI policy template has a version you can copy.
3. Ask your IT provider to set it up: work-account sign-in only, personal accounts blocked where possible, file permissions reviewed, and unused connections switched off.
4. Pilot with a small group for four weeks on real tasks, such as meeting notes, first-draft proposals and email triage.
5. Measure, then decide: time saved on two or three named tasks, and whether people still use it in week four, tells you who needs a paid seat.

Copilot and ChatGPT are general assistants. Out of the box, neither knows how you price a job, which supplier rates are current, what's in your job management system, or how your monthly report is put together. Copilot sees Microsoft 365. ChatGPT sees what you give it.

For most firms that's fine: drafting, summarising and research are the quick wins. It stops being enough for repeated, data-heavy work, such as quoting from your own rates or producing the same report every month. That needs the assistant connected to your data, or a small tool built around your process. For example, a UK specialist supplier we worked with went from about 1–2 hours to about 5 minutes per quote with a quoting tool built around its own pricing.

Ready-made connectors are improving month by month, so check those first. Bespoke work only makes sense when they don't fit.

If you've chosen your assistant and want it to work from your own systems, such as your accounts, CRM or job records, our free guide walks through it step by step for Copilot, ChatGPT and Claude: connect ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot to your business, safely.

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