Why this isn't a "pick a plan" question
If you've used Claude, you're used to choosing your own plan and upgrading yourself the moment you hit a limit. Copilot doesn't work that way. It's licensed through your organisation's Microsoft 365 tenant, usually rolled out department by department rather than to everyone at once, and usually decided by IT or procurement rather than by you. So the useful skill here isn't choosing. It's figuring out what you've already got, and knowing exactly what to ask for if it isn't enough.
The tiers, decoded
- Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat. Included at no extra cost for anyone with an eligible Microsoft 365 work account. Web-grounded chat with citations, Copilot built into a handful of apps, and enterprise data protection, meaning your prompts and company data aren't used to train the models. Best for: everyday questions and drafting, the same way you'd use Claude's own chat. This is the one most people already have without realising it.
- Microsoft 365 Copilot (the paid add-on). Roughly $30/user/month on annual enterprise pricing. For smaller organisations, the Copilot Business add-on is $18/user/month on an annual plan, a promotional price for subscriptions bought until 31 December 2026; after that it is $21. Bundles with Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Business Premium run $23.50 to $32/user/month. Puts Copilot directly inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams, adds "Work IQ" grounding in your own mail, files and meetings, and unlocks pre-built agents such as Researcher, Analyst and Facilitator. Best for: anyone whose day-to-day work lives inside Office apps and who wants Copilot acting on the actual document or inbox in front of them, not just answering questions about it.
- Copilot Studio. For building custom agents and automations on top of Copilot, priced separately and based on usage capacity. IT and admin territory, not a personal choice; you'd request this through a project, not sign up for it yourself. Best for: a team that wants to build a repeatable, Copilot-powered workflow (an intake form, a report generator) rather than use Copilot chat by chat.
- The free consumer Copilot at copilot.microsoft.com or built into Windows is a different product entirely. It doesn't see your work files, mailbox, or calendar, and it isn't covered by your organisation's data protections. Best for: personal use outside of work. Don't confuse the two, and don't paste anything work-related into it.
These tiers aren't mutually exclusive. A team can have the full paid add-on for everyday work and a separate Copilot Studio project running underneath it for one specific workflow; the two are billed and managed separately, but nothing stops an organisation having both.
How to tell which one you have
- Copilot icon in Teams, or at copilot.cloud.microsoft, and nowhere else: you're on Copilot Chat.
- A Copilot pane shows up inside Word, Excel or Outlook while you're working: you have the full paid add-on.
- No Copilot anywhere: it may not be licensed for your role or department yet, or it's rolling out on a schedule you haven't reached.
What to actually do about it
Once you know where you stand, the next move depends on which of these you're in.
You have Copilot Chat, and it's not enough. You're hitting its limits because you want Copilot working inside a specific document, or reading your calendar and inbox directly rather than answering general questions. Go to IT or procurement and ask specifically whether the full Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on is licensed for your team, and if not, what the business case process looks like. Naming the specific capability you're missing (a Copilot pane in Word, Work IQ grounding in your inbox) gets a faster, more concrete answer than "can I get Copilot upgraded."
You have the full add-on, and you keep hitting the edge of what chat can do. If you find yourself wanting the same Copilot-powered task to run automatically, on a schedule, or triggered by an event rather than typed by hand each time, that's a Copilot Studio conversation, not a licence upgrade. Flag it to IT as a workflow-automation request, not a personal feature request; Copilot Studio projects are usually built and owned by IT or a specific team, not licensed to individuals.
Nothing shows up at all. Before assuming you need something new, check with IT or your manager whether Copilot is licensed for your role yet. Many organisations roll this out gradually by department, so "not yet" is a common, unremarkable answer, and it's worth asking again in a few months rather than assuming you've been left out.
A concrete ask beats a vague one in any of these three situations. Take the first: instead of writing to IT "can I get Copilot upgraded," try something like, "I want to use Copilot directly inside Word for drafting and review, and have it read my calendar so it can brief me before meetings. Is the full Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on licensed for my team, and if not, what's the process to request it?" That's specific enough for IT to act on in one reply, because they can check licensing against the exact capability you named rather than guessing what "upgraded" means. The same principle carries into the other two situations: naming the exact automation you want ("run this weekly without me typing it") routes you to Copilot Studio faster than "can Copilot do more," and naming your role and team when nothing shows up gets a faster, more specific answer than a general "is Copilot coming."
Try it
Open Teams or copilot.cloud.microsoft and look for Copilot. Then open a document in Word or a sheet in Excel and check whether a Copilot pane appears there too. Whichever combination you find tells you which tier you're on, and which of the three situations above applies to you.