Microsoft Copilot is Microsoft’s artificial intelligence assistant, built into Windows, the Edge browser and the Microsoft 365 apps, and the short answer to the most common question about it is that the basic version is completely free. If you searched for “copliot”, you have arrived at the right place, because that common misspelling refers to this same assistant, and this guide explains what it actually does, where you can use it, what the free version covers and what you only get by paying. Copilot can answer questions, draft text, summarise documents, create images, help with spreadsheets and presentations, and even understand what is on your screen, yet many people who already have it on their computer have never opened it, because Microsoft’s naming and pricing have changed so often that working out what you own is genuinely confusing.
This beginner’s guide cuts through that confusion by starting with the basics and building up gradually, so that by the end you will know exactly which version of Copilot you can use for free, which features require a paid Microsoft 365 plan, and where the assistant is genuinely useful rather than merely decorative. The pricing and plan details below reflect Microsoft’s 2026 lineup, which is important because older articles still describe a standalone Copilot Pro subscription that no longer exists for new customers, and following outdated advice could easily lead you to pay for the wrong plan. Everything here is drawn from Microsoft’s own pricing pages and from pricing comparisons updated in October 2026, and where Microsoft’s plans differ by country or billing method, that is stated plainly rather than smoothed over.
What Is Microsoft Copilot?
Microsoft Copilot is a conversational artificial intelligence assistant that answers questions in plain language, creates text and images, searches the web for current information, and works inside the applications that millions of people already use every day. Unlike a traditional search engine, which returns a list of links for you to sort through yourself, Copilot reads your question, understands what you are asking, and produces a direct answer, often with sources you can check, and it can then refine that answer if you ask follow-up questions. It is built on OpenAI’s latest models, according to Microsoft’s own pricing and feature pages, which describe priority access to the latest OpenAI models, including GPT-5 generation models, for paying customers, while free users get standard model access with some limits. That connection to OpenAI is also why people sometimes ask whether Copilot is simply ChatGPT with a different name, a question this guide answers directly in the frequently asked questions at the end.
The reason Copilot feels different from other chatbots is that it lives where your work already happens, rather than requiring you to visit a separate website every time you need help. On a Windows 11 computer, Copilot appears as an app and, on many newer keyboards, as a dedicated Copilot key, while in the Edge browser it sits in a sidebar that can see the page you are reading and help with it directly. On your phone, Copilot works through its mobile apps for iOS and Android, and on the web it is available at copilot.microsoft.com for anyone with a Microsoft account, with no subscription required for basic chat. Microsoft also sells a class of hardware called Copilot Plus PCs, which are laptops designed with the processing power to run AI features on the device itself, but you do not need one of those machines to use Copilot, because the standard assistant runs perfectly well on an ordinary Windows computer, in a browser or on a phone.
Copilot Free vs Copilot Pro
The free version of Copilot costs nothing and covers a surprising amount, which is why most beginners should start there before spending any money at all. With a free Microsoft account, you get AI chat with live web search, image generation with a daily quota of fast generations before they slow down, voice interaction, and the Windows and Edge integrations, all without paying a subscription, according to pricing comparisons updated in October 2026. The limits of the free tier are real but reasonable for casual use: daily usage caps for heavy chatters, no priority access during busy periods, slower image generation once the daily quota is used, and no Copilot inside the desktop Office apps, which is the single biggest thing that separates free users from paying customers. For everyday questions, drafting help, quick summaries and occasional image creation, the free tier is genuinely capable, and many people will never need anything more.
The paid side of Copilot is where the confusion begins, because the plan most older articles recommend no longer exists in its original form. The standalone Copilot Pro subscription, which cost twenty dollars per month and offered priority model access, one hundred image generation boosts per day and integration with Microsoft 365 apps, stopped selling to new customers in October 2025, and support for existing subscribers ended on 1 August 2026, according to pricing comparisons updated in October 2026. Its features did not disappear, but they moved into a bundle: Microsoft 365 Premium, which costs $19.99 per month or $199.99 per year, includes the full Office apps, up to six terabytes of shared OneDrive storage, advanced Copilot chat and limited agentic AI usage, plus access to the Researcher and Analyst agents, although Copilot AI in the bundle applies to the account owner only. That makes Premium a better deal than the old Pro subscription if you already use Office, but a worse one if you only wanted a stronger chatbot, in which case simpler standalone AI subscriptions may suit you better.
Below Premium sit two cheaper Microsoft 365 plans that include a more basic level of Copilot, and understanding them prevents the common mistake of paying for more than you need. Microsoft 365 Personal costs $9.99 per month and Microsoft 365 Family costs $12.99 per month, shared across up to six people, and both now include basic Copilot chat inside the Office apps for the subscription owner, with AI credits and per-feature limits applying, but neither includes the Researcher and Analyst agents or image generation at the Premium level. At the very top of the consumer range sits Microsoft 365 Pro at $99.99 per month on monthly billing only, which offers the highest usage for agentic AI and every Copilot capability, but that plan is aimed at power users who run AI agents all day rather than at ordinary beginners. For businesses, the equivalent is Microsoft 365 Copilot at $30 per user per month as an annual add-on, with Business Standard with Copilot at $23.50 and Business Premium with Copilot at $32.00 per user per month paid yearly, according to Microsoft’s own business pricing page, and a discounted Copilot Business add-on at $18 per user per month is available until 31 December 2026.
Where You Can Use Copilot
Copilot is available in more places than most people realise, and knowing where to find it is half the battle for a beginner, because the assistant changes slightly depending on which device or app you open it in. The simplest entry point is the web, where anyone with a free Microsoft account can open Copilot in any modern browser and start chatting immediately, with no installation and no payment, and that web version is the best place to try the assistant for the first time. On Windows 11, Copilot is built into the operating system as an app, and many newer Windows keyboards include a dedicated Copilot key that opens the assistant instantly, which makes it feel less like a website and more like a genuine part of the computer. Mobile users can install the Copilot apps for iOS and Android, which bring chat, voice interaction and image generation to a phone, and those apps are particularly useful for quick questions when you are away from a desk.
The Edge browser deserves special attention, because it is where Copilot becomes more than a chatbot and starts to act like a research companion for whatever you are reading. In Edge, Copilot appears in a sidebar that can summarise the page you are viewing, answer questions about its contents, compare information across tabs and help you draft text based on what you have found, and Microsoft’s feature pages also describe a Copilot Mode in Edge that deepens that integration further. That sidebar approach is genuinely useful for students, researchers and anyone who spends their working day reading long documents online, because it removes the need to copy text back and forth between a browser and a separate AI app. One important distinction for beginners is that the consumer Copilot app is designed for personal Microsoft accounts, while work and school accounts use a separate business version with enterprise data protection, and the two are not interchangeable, so employees should use the version their organisation provides rather than signing into work systems with a personal account.
Copilot in Windows and Edge
Using Copilot in Windows is the most natural starting point for anyone with a Windows 11 computer, because the assistant is already there waiting to be opened, and it can help with both general questions and tasks specific to your machine. You can ask Copilot to draft an email, summarise a long document, explain a technical error message in plain language, brainstorm ideas for a presentation, or help you find a setting buried deep in Windows menus, and it will answer in conversational language rather than technical jargon. Voice interaction is available on mobile, desktop and web, according to Microsoft’s feature pages, which means you can also speak to Copilot rather than typing, a feature that is particularly helpful for accessibility or for hands-free use while cooking, driving or working. The assistant can also work with what is on your screen in supported scenarios, which makes it useful for explaining a confusing chart, summarising a dense article or helping you understand a form you need to complete.
Edge is where Copilot shows its greatest strength as a reading and research tool, because the sidebar integration means the assistant already knows what you are looking at when you ask a question. Imagine reading a long news article, a research paper or a product review, and being able to ask for a summary, a list of key points or an explanation of a difficult paragraph without leaving the page or copying anything, and that is exactly what the Edge sidebar provides. Copilot Mode in Edge extends this further, according to Microsoft’s feature listings, by making the assistant a more active browsing companion, and the combination of web search, page awareness and conversational follow-up makes Edge the best browser for anyone who wants to use Copilot seriously. Beginners should start by opening the sidebar on an article they are already reading and asking a simple question about it, because that single experience usually explains the value of Copilot far better than any list of features, and it costs nothing to try.
Copilot in Microsoft 365
Copilot inside Microsoft 365 is where the assistant stops being a general chatbot and becomes a genuine productivity tool, but it is also where the free version ends and a paid plan becomes necessary. In Word, Copilot can draft a document from a short prompt, rewrite a paragraph in a different tone, summarise a long report into key points and suggest edits to improve clarity, which is enormously helpful for anyone who writes regularly for work or study. In Excel, it can generate formulas from plain English descriptions, analyse datasets, create charts and surface insights that would otherwise require manual digging through rows of numbers, while in PowerPoint it can build a presentation outline from a document or a prompt and recommend images and layouts. In Outlook, Copilot drafts replies and summarises long email threads so you can catch up quickly, and in Teams it recaps meetings, highlights action items from chats and helps you follow conversations you missed, all according to Microsoft’s own descriptions of the service.
The important thing for beginners to understand is that these Office integrations are not part of the free Copilot tier, and accessing them means choosing the right paid plan rather than simply signing in. Basic Copilot chat inside Office apps comes with Microsoft 365 Personal at $9.99 per month and Family at $12.99 per month for the subscription owner, with AI credits and per-feature limits, while the full advanced experience, including the Researcher and Analyst agents and higher usage limits, requires Microsoft 365 Premium at $19.99 per month, according to pricing comparisons updated in October 2026. For businesses, Microsoft 365 Copilot adds work-data grounding, so the assistant can draw on emails, files, Teams chats and calendar information through Microsoft Graph, along with enterprise data protection and compliance controls, and Microsoft’s pages describe pre-built agents including Researcher, Analyst and Facilitator, plus the ability to build custom agents with Agent Builder and Copilot Studio. That business version is a different product from the consumer assistant in important ways, particularly around data protection, and organisations should evaluate it on its own terms rather than assuming the free consumer app will meet workplace requirements.
Privacy, Limits and What It Can’t Do
Every AI assistant has limits, and understanding Copilot’s limits before you rely on it is just as important as knowing its features, because over-trusting an AI tool is the most common beginner mistake. The free tier’s limits are the most visible: daily usage caps for heavy users, no priority access during busy periods, slower image generation once the daily quota is used, and no Copilot inside the desktop Office apps, which means free users get a capable chatbot but not a full productivity suite. More fundamentally, Copilot, like every large language model, can make mistakes, invent plausible-sounding details and present outdated information with great confidence, so important facts, especially medical, legal or financial information, should always be verified against a reliable source before acting on them. The assistant is also only as current as its web search allows, and while it can search the live web, it may still miss very recent developments or confuse similar topics, which is why treating its answers as a starting point rather than a final authority is the right approach.
Privacy is the other area where beginners should be careful, and the rules differ sharply between the consumer and business versions of Copilot. With the business version, Microsoft provides enterprise data protection, which keeps prompts and responses within the Microsoft 365 service boundary, applies existing security and compliance controls, and ensures that prompts and responses are not used to train the underlying language models, according to Microsoft’s own documentation. The consumer version does not carry those same enterprise guarantees, so as a general rule you should avoid sharing highly sensitive personal information, such as passwords, financial details or private health information, with any free AI chatbot, including Copilot. One final source of confusion is worth clearing up: GitHub Copilot is a completely separate product, a coding assistant for software developers with its own free tier and paid plans, and it has nothing to do with the Microsoft Copilot assistant described in this guide, despite sharing the Copilot name. Knowing that distinction will save you from following the wrong pricing pages or tutorials when you search for help online.
Conclusion
Microsoft Copilot is best understood as two products sharing one name: a free, capable AI assistant that anyone can use in Windows, Edge, on the web and on mobile, and a paid productivity layer that brings the assistant inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams. For most beginners, the free version is the right place to start, because it handles everyday questions, drafting, summaries and image creation without costing anything, and it gives you a genuine sense of whether an AI assistant fits into your daily routine. If you find yourself wanting Copilot inside Office documents, or needing higher usage limits and the Researcher and Analyst agents, then Microsoft 365 Premium at $19.99 per month is the plan that replaces the retired Copilot Pro subscription, while Personal at $9.99 and Family at $12.99 offer a cheaper first step with basic Office integration. Businesses, meanwhile, should look at the Microsoft 365 Copilot plans, where work-data grounding and enterprise data protection change the calculation entirely.
The most important lesson for a beginner is not which plan to buy but how to use the assistant wisely, by asking clear questions, checking important answers against reliable sources, and keeping sensitive information out of free AI tools. Copilot’s greatest strength is that it meets you where you already work, whether that is a Windows desktop, the Edge browser or a Word document, and that convenience is what separates it from chatbots that require you to visit a separate website. Its greatest weakness is the same as every AI assistant’s weakness, which is that confident answers are not always correct answers, and that limitation will not disappear no matter which plan you choose. Start free, learn what the assistant does well, upgrade only when a specific feature justifies the cost, and you will get the best of what Copilot offers without paying for promises you do not need.
Is Microsoft Copilot free?
Yes, Microsoft Copilot is free for basic use, because basic AI chat works in Windows, Edge, on the web and in the mobile apps at no cost, requiring only a free Microsoft account. The free tier covers chat with live web search, image generation with a daily quota of fast generations, voice interaction and the Windows and Edge integrations, which is enough for everyday questions, drafting help, quick summaries and occasional creative work. You only need to pay if you want Copilot inside the desktop Office apps, higher usage limits, priority access during busy periods or the advanced Researcher and Analyst agents, and that payment now takes the form of a Microsoft 365 bundle rather than a standalone subscription. That distinction is the key to understanding Copilot pricing in 2026, because many older guides still describe the retired Copilot Pro plan as if it were available, when in fact Microsoft now points individuals to Microsoft 365 Premium for the full experience.
The free tier does have limits that are worth knowing before you rely on it for heavy work, including daily usage caps, slower image generation once the daily quota is exhausted, no priority during peak times and no Copilot inside the desktop versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. Those limits are deliberately designed to separate casual users from power users, and they work well for most people, because occasional use rarely approaches the caps, while daily professional use quickly reveals whether an upgrade is worthwhile. The practical advice is therefore simple: start with the free version, use it for a few weeks, and only consider paying when you hit a specific limit that frustrates you, because paying in advance for capacity you may never use is the most common waste of money in AI subscriptions.
Is Copilot the same as ChatGPT?
No, Copilot is not the same as ChatGPT, although the two assistants are related, and understanding the relationship explains why they sometimes give similar answers. Both are built on OpenAI’s language model technology, and Microsoft’s feature pages describe priority access to the latest OpenAI models for paying Copilot customers, which is why the two products can feel alike when answering general knowledge questions. The difference lies in what each product is designed to do: ChatGPT is OpenAI’s own standalone chatbot, available through its own website and apps, while Copilot is Microsoft’s assistant, woven into Windows, Edge and the Microsoft 365 apps, with access to your documents, emails and meetings when you have the appropriate plan. That integration is Copilot’s defining advantage, because it can help with the work you are already doing in Microsoft’s software, whereas ChatGPT works best as a general-purpose conversational tool that you visit separately.
The choice between them therefore depends on where you spend your working day and what you need the assistant to do, rather than on which one is objectively smarter. If you live inside Microsoft’s ecosystem, using Windows, Edge, Word, Excel and Teams every day, then Copilot’s ability to summarise your documents, draft your emails and recap your meetings makes it the more useful tool, even if its raw chat abilities are similar to ChatGPT’s. If you rarely use Microsoft software, or if you want the widest range of standalone AI features and third-party integrations, then ChatGPT may suit you better, and many people happily use both, choosing Copilot for work inside Office and ChatGPT for general exploration. Neither choice is wrong, and the free tiers of both products mean you can compare them directly at no cost before committing to either one.
Which devices support Copilot?
Copilot supports a wide range of devices, because Microsoft has built it into Windows, the web, mobile platforms and the Edge browser rather than limiting it to a single piece of hardware. On desktop, any Windows 11 computer can run the Copilot app, and many newer Windows keyboards include a dedicated Copilot key for instant access, while the web version at copilot.microsoft.com works in any modern browser on Windows, Mac or Linux, provided you sign in with a Microsoft account. Mobile users can install the Copilot apps for iOS and Android, which bring chat, voice interaction and image generation to phones and tablets, and those apps are particularly useful for quick questions, photo-based queries and hands-free use. The Edge browser, available on desktop and mobile, adds the sidebar integration that lets Copilot see and summarise the page you are reading, which makes it the best browser for anyone who wants to use the assistant seriously.
There are, however, some distinctions worth noting, because not every device gets the full Copilot experience, and the most advanced features require specific hardware or plans. Copilot Plus PCs are a class of Windows laptops with dedicated AI processing hardware that can run certain AI features on the device itself, but you do not need one of these machines to use the standard Copilot assistant, which runs in the cloud on ordinary hardware. Similarly, Copilot inside the desktop Office apps requires a paid Microsoft 365 plan, regardless of which device you own, while the business version of Copilot with work-data grounding requires an organisational Microsoft 365 licence and is managed by your employer’s IT team. For most beginners, the practical answer is reassuringly simple: if you have a Windows computer, a phone or just a web browser, you can start using Copilot today for free, and the only question is which version and plan match the way you actually work.
