Microsoft 365 Copilot in the UK costs £16.10 per user a month on Copilot Business or £23.10 on enterprise plans, with Copilot Chat included and agents billed in Copilot Credits. What each option covers, who needs which, and the costs that sit outside the licence.
The question we get most about Copilot isn't whether it works. It's what it costs, and which licence people actually need. Microsoft's pricing has changed several times in the last year, and it now has two layers: a per-user licence for everyday Copilot, and Copilot Credits for agents and heavier, metered work.
Here are the UK list prices as Microsoft's own pages showed them in November 2026, what each option gives you, and the costs that sit outside the licence. Prices are before VAT and on annual terms unless stated.
Is Microsoft Copilot free?
Partly. Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is included for anyone signed in with an eligible Microsoft 365 subscription. It gives secure, web-grounded chat and can work with files a person uploads. It does not sit inside Word, Excel, Outlook and Teams working across your mail, meetings and files. That's the paid licence.
Some features in Copilot Chat are metered, such as using agents, and they draw on Copilot Credits. So free gets people started, but it isn't the same product.
Microsoft 365 Copilot Business: £16.10 per user a month
Copilot Business is for organisations on Microsoft 365 Business plans, up to 300 users. It adds Copilot inside the Office apps and Teams, grounded in your organisation's data through Microsoft Graph.
The list price is £16.10 per user a month on an annual commitment. Microsoft is running an offer at £13.80 per user a month on annual terms until 31 December 2026, for the first year. Paying monthly costs £19.32 per user. If you're already on Business Standard or Business Premium, Microsoft also sells bundles with Copilot included at £18.10 and £24.60 per user a month.
Microsoft 365 Copilot for enterprise plans: £23.10 per user a month
Organisations on enterprise plans such as E3 or E5, or with more than 300 users, buy the enterprise add-on at £23.10 per user a month on an annual commitment. Functionally it is the same Copilot. The difference is the plan it sits on and the commercial terms.
Copilot Credits: what agents cost
Agents are where the second layer comes in. Copilot Studio, Cowork, Code and Autopilot are billed on usage, measured in Copilot Credits. You can buy a capacity pack at £153.80 a month for 25,000 credits shared across the tenant, pay as you go through an Azure subscription, or pre-purchase credits at a discount of up to 20%.
Users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence can build and use internal agents in Copilot Studio without extra licences, but agents published to customers or external channels, and agents that run in the background, consume credits. Our post on Copilot Studio Auto or a pinned model explains how model choice affects how fast credits go.
Who in your business actually needs a licence?
Not everyone, at least not on day one. The people who get most from the full licence spend their day in email, meetings and documents: managers, finance, sales, operations leads, anyone writing reports or proposals. People who mainly work in one line-of-business system usually get less.
A sensible start is a group of 10 to 20 people across two or three teams, with a clear list of tasks you expect Copilot to help with and a way to measure it after 8 to 12 weeks. Copilot Chat covers everyone else in the meantime.
The costs that sit outside the licence
- Fixing oversharing first. Copilot can only see what a user can already see, which means it surfaces files people never knew they had access to. Tidying SharePoint and Teams permissions is the most common piece of work before rollout. See Copilot readiness and oversharing.
- Copilot in Power BI. This is a separate route. Copilot in Power BI and Fabric runs on Fabric capacity, F2 or above, not on the Microsoft 365 licence. It consumes capacity units as people use it. Our Fabric cost guide has the UK capacity prices.
- Data that Copilot can trust. Copilot is only as good as the data it reads. If your numbers live in spreadsheets with three versions of the truth, Copilot will find all three. A governed semantic model fixes that for anything numeric.
- Training and adoption. The difference between a licence that gets used and one that doesn't is usually a few hours of role-specific training and a champion in each team.
A worked example
A 60-person business on Microsoft 365 Business Premium starts with 15 Copilot Business licences. At £16.10 that's £241.50 a month, or £2,898 a year. On the annual offer before 31 December, it's £207 a month for the first year. Add one Copilot Studio capacity pack at £153.80 a month if it wants a customer-facing agent. Copilot Chat stays free for the other 45 people.
That's the licence. Budget separately for permissions tidy-up, training and any data work, and set a review date to decide who gets licences next based on what was used.
Where we help
We help businesses get the data side right so Copilot gives answers people can act on: semantic models, Fabric, and the governance around them. If you want a view of what Copilot would cost and what needs fixing first, get in touch or see our Microsoft AI and Copilot work.
Sources: Microsoft UK pricing pages for Microsoft 365 Copilot Business, Microsoft 365 Copilot enterprise and Copilot Studio, read 14 November 2026. Microsoft's checkout price governs and offers can change.
Related reading
- Copilot readiness: fix oversharing in SharePoint before you roll out Microsoft 365 Copilot
- Copilot Studio Auto or a pinned model? What the GPT-5 Auto retirement means
- How much does Microsoft Fabric cost? UK prices in 2026
- Agentic AI ROI: decide what you are measuring before you build an agent
Simon Devine
Managing Director
Part of the Hopton Analytics team, delivering governed analytics programmes for UK mid-market organisations.
