Microsoft 365 Copilot
AI inside Word, Excel, Outlook and Teams, using your own company files
microsoft.com Paid Checked 29 August 2026
- Price
- We could not verify it — see the vendor page
- Trains on your data
- No
- Where data is processed
- Configurable
- Data processing agreement
- Available
- Setup
- Under an hour
- Skill needed
- Comfortable with software
What is Microsoft 365 Copilot?
Rather than a separate chat window, this sits in the Microsoft apps you already pay for and can see your organisation's own documents, emails and meetings through Microsoft Graph. That grounding in your real content is the whole proposition, and it is also the reason the data terms matter more here than anywhere else on this list.
The pitch is grounding: an assistant that has read your files is more useful than one that has read the internet. In practice that is true, and it is also the risk. Copilot respects existing permissions exactly — which means it will cheerfully surface the salary spreadsheet that someone shared with “everyone in the organisation” in 2021 and nobody has looked at since.
The permissions audit is the project. The licence is the easy part.
On the data question Microsoft is unusually plain, and the wording is quoted above. The part UK buyers miss is geography: the EU Data Boundary commitment that gets cited in every vendor comparison does not apply to the UK, because the UK is not in it.
What does Microsoft 365 Copilot cost in the UK?
We could not verify it — see the vendor page.
What to watch on the price
We are not quoting an entry price. Microsoft licenses Copilot as a per-user add-on whose price varies by the underlying Microsoft 365 plan and by agreement, so a single figure would mislead. The link goes to the vendor page.
Does Microsoft 365 Copilot train AI models on your data?
No
Microsoft states: "Prompts, responses, and data accessed through Microsoft Graph aren't used to train foundation LLMs, including those used by Microsoft Copilot." On location, read the next sentence carefully if you are in the UK: EU users are covered by the EU Data Boundary, and "Customers outside the EU may have their queries processed in the US, EU, or other regions." The UK is not in the EU Data Boundary. UK-specific residency needs the separate Advanced Data Residency add-on. Read on 29 August 2026.
The rest of the data position
- Where data is processed: Configurable
- Data processing agreement: Available
- Certifications the vendor claims: GDPR, ISO 27001, ISO 42001, HIPAA
What do people use Microsoft 365 Copilot for?
- Summarise a Teams meeting you missed, with the actions assigned
- Draft a reply in Outlook that reflects the thread and the attached quote
- Ask Excel a question about a sheet in English instead of writing a formula
What does Microsoft 365 Copilot connect to?
- Word
- Excel
- Outlook
- Teams
- PowerPoint
- SharePoint
- OneDrive
Where does Microsoft 365 Copilot fall short?
- The EU Data Boundary does not cover the UK — UK queries may be processed in the US unless you buy Advanced Data Residency
- Only as good as your file permissions: it surfaces anything a user can already open, which exposes years of sloppy SharePoint sharing
- Per-user licensing gets expensive quickly and is hard to justify for occasional users
Who is Microsoft 365 Copilot for?
A good fit for
- Businesses already on Microsoft 365
- Teams that live in Outlook
- Regulated sectors
Not for
- Organisations that have never audited SharePoint permissions — it will surface everything a user can already open
- UK buyers who assume the EU Data Boundary covers them. It does not, and UK-only residency is a paid add-on
The Torus verdict on Microsoft 365 Copilot
If you are already on Microsoft 365, this is the least disruptive way to put AI in front of staff, and the training commitment is the clearest of any tool here. Fix your SharePoint permissions before you turn it on, not after.
What are the alternatives to Microsoft 365 Copilot?
Others in writing, with what each one is for.
- ChatGPT See vendor pricing The general-purpose assistant most people mean when they say "AI"
- Claude from $20/mo A rival assistant that holds long documents better and hedges less
- Claude for Work Price on application Anthropic's assistant on a business plan, which is not trained on your data
- DeepL See vendor pricing Translation that reads like it was written by a person