Microsoft 365 Copilot gets a $30 price ahead of broad rollout

Microsoft announced a US$30-per-user monthly price for Microsoft 365 Copilot, giving businesses a figure to budget around while leaving the timing of its broad release open. At its Inspire conference on 18 July, the company also began rolling out Bing Chat Enterprise in preview, with separate pricing and a different role.

Illustrative file photo: a Microsoft office facade in 2015, not the July 2023 announcement. Photo: efes, 2015. Original photograph via Wikimedia Commons. CC0 1.0. Recompressed; responsive crops.

For businesses, the distinction is between a protected chatbot for web research that’s included with eligible subscriptions and a paid assistant that can work with information inside Microsoft 365.

The $30 sits on top of an existing plan

Microsoft’s pricing announcement names Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard and Business Premium customers. The charge is an add-on to the underlying subscription, as Reuters reports. Businesses would pay both charges.

For a business budgeting for 100 Copilot users, that announced rate would add US$3,000 a month before its existing Microsoft 365 costs. That’s a hypothetical budget while broad availability remains unannounced.

Microsoft says it’ll share more information about timing in the coming months. Its paid Early Access Program, expanded in May to an initial 600 enterprise customers, remains distinct from the wider release covered by the announced price. Having one of the named base plans doesn’t by itself establish access to that preview.

Protection and workplace access are separate features

Bing Chat Enterprise is starting its preview at no extra charge for the same four Microsoft 365 plans. Eligible employees can access it with their work accounts at Bing.com/chat or in the Microsoft Edge sidebar. A US$5-per-user monthly standalone version and access through Windows Copilot are planned for later.

Microsoft says chats in the enterprise service won’t be saved or used to train its models, and Microsoft staff won’t be able to view them.

The information each assistant draws on matters just as much as those protections. Bing Chat Enterprise is grounded in the web. Microsoft 365 Copilot can use both the web and workplace material in Microsoft Graph, including email, calendars, chats and documents. It operates inside apps such as Word, Excel and Teams.

Microsoft says Copilot follows existing user and group permissions. For an IT team, the practical implication is that preparing access to internal information is a separate job from enabling a protected web-chat experience. A company can assess the latter without treating it as a test of Copilot’s ability to find and use its own workplace records.

The Teams and image-search news have their own limits

A separate Teams announcement makes the access boundary clearer. New Copilot capabilities for Teams Phone and Teams chat are available to customers in the Microsoft 365 Copilot Early Access Program. Phone features include summaries and questions about a call, covering both internet calls and calls over the public telephone network. The chat assistant can pull together information from written conversations.

Meanwhile, Bing’s Visual Search is rolling out to consumers on desktop and mobile. Microsoft says bringing image search to Bing Chat Enterprise is still ahead.

Businesses therefore have a price for future Copilot planning and an enterprise web-chat preview to evaluate now. The Teams additions and image-search rollout shouldn’t be read as a single, generally available package.