Windows Copilot vs Microsoft 365 Copilot: What’s the Difference?

The naming is genuinely confusing, and Microsoft has reshuffled it more than once. This guide untangles every "Copilot" you are likely to meet on Windows in 2026, says who each is for, and flags what changed — including the retirement of the old Copilot Pro subscription.

First, what "Windows Copilot" actually means now

"Windows Copilot" was originally the name of a sidebar that Microsoft docked to the edge of the Windows 11 desktop. That docked sidebar has come and gone; today the assistant ships as the Microsoft Copilot app and as taskbar entry points rather than a fixed panel. You open it with the dedicated Copilot key on newer keyboards, with Windows + C, or by saying "Hey, Copilot" once that wake word is enabled in Settings.

Whatever the wrapper, the engine is the same free Microsoft Copilot assistant you can also open at copilot.microsoft.com or in Microsoft Edge. So when people say "Windows Copilot" in 2026, they almost always mean the free consumer Copilot, running on Windows. That is the thing we compare against Microsoft 365 Copilot below.

The three Copilots that matter for most people

1. Microsoft Copilot — the free consumer assistant

This is the assistant most Windows users actually touch. It is free with a Microsoft account and is aimed at personal tasks: draft an email, summarise a web page, brainstorm, explain something, or generate an image. It draws on the public internet and on what you type into the prompt — nothing more.

You will find the same consumer Copilot in several places, which adds to the confusion:

• On the Windows 11 taskbar and via the Copilot app.
• On the web at copilot.microsoft.com.
• Inside Microsoft Edge and when you search with Bing.
• On your phone, through the Microsoft Copilot mobile app.

Crucially, this free Copilot has no view of your work data. It cannot read your company mailbox or open a document from your employer's SharePoint. That is by design — and it is exactly why you should never paste confidential or proprietary work material into it.

2. Microsoft 365 Premium — the consumer plan (this replaced Copilot Pro)

Here is the big 2026 change. Microsoft retired the standalone Copilot Pro subscription — the old consumer add-on that put Copilot inside the Office apps and gave priority access to the newest models. Copilot Pro is no longer sold, and existing subscriptions ran only until support ended on 1 August 2026 — the dates are confirmed on Microsoft's own Copilot Pro support page. If you are reading a 2025 article that tells you to "buy Copilot Pro," it is out of date.

For individuals, its replacement is Microsoft 365 Premium — a consumer subscription that bundles the Microsoft 365 desktop apps together with Copilot inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote, plus higher usage limits and priority access to newer models. For personal use it is billed at a monthly or annual subscription (or US$199.99 per year), and — as Microsoft's introduction to Microsoft 365 Premium puts it — covers up to six people.

Worth knowing: a basic level of Copilot is already included at no extra cost in Microsoft 365 Personal and Family. So a lot of home users don't need to pay anything extra to try Copilot in their Office apps — Premium is the step up for heavier use and the highest limits.

This tier is still a consumer product. It personalises around your personal files and OneDrive, not a company tenant. It does not connect to an employer's Microsoft Graph, and it is not the thing IT departments roll out. That is the next one.

3. Microsoft 365 Copilot — the work assistant, licensed per user

Microsoft 365 Copilot (note the "365") is the paid, organisation-grade product. Your employer buys it as a per-user licence — US$30 per user per month, billed annually — and assigns it to you. Once you have it, Copilot appears inside your work apps — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams — and, critically, it is grounded on your organisation's data through Microsoft Graph.

In practice that means it can, within the limits of what your own account may already access:

• Find and summarise information across your Outlook mail and SharePoint or OneDrive documents.
• Summarise a long Word document, or a Teams meeting you attended.
• Turn notes into a Word draft, a PowerPoint deck, or an Outlook email.
• Answer questions about company knowledge, such as a policy document, using Copilot Search.
• Run and build Copilot agents that automate work tasks.

Licensed users sign in with a work or school (Microsoft Entra) account and can flip a Work IQ toggle: on, and Copilot answers from your work data; off, and it answers from the web. Because it honours your existing permissions, Microsoft 365 Copilot cannot surface files you were never allowed to open — it inherits, rather than bypasses, your access rights. Microsoft's What is Microsoft 365 Copilot? overview states the rule plainly: Copilot only shows the data that users have permission to access.

Side by side

Which one do you actually have?

If you are not sure which Copilot is in front of you, walk through this:

1. Did your employer give you a licence? If IT assigned you Microsoft 365 Copilot, you'll see Copilot buttons inside your work Word, Excel, Outlook and Teams, and you sign in with a work or school account. That's the paid work assistant.
2. Are you signed in with a personal Microsoft account? Then the taskbar Copilot is the free consumer assistant. It's fine for general tasks, but it can't see any work data.
3. Do you pay for Microsoft 365 at home? Copilot in your Office apps comes from Microsoft 365 Personal, Family, or the Premium plan — not from a work licence.
4. Open Copilot and check the sign-in. On a work-managed PC, Copilot may ask you to pick Work or Personal. "Work" routes you to Microsoft 365 Copilot and your organisation's data; "Personal" is the free web assistant.

So which should you choose?

• Just want a helpful assistant on Windows? The free Microsoft Copilot is plenty. Turn on "Hey, Copilot" if you like voice, and keep confidential material out of it.
• Heavy home user who lives in Office? Look at Microsoft 365 Premium (or check whether the Copilot already included in Microsoft 365 Personal/Family is enough before you pay more).
• Doing knowledge work and want AI over your real work content? That's Microsoft 365 Copilot — and it's a decision for your organisation, not something you buy for yourself in most cases.

If your PC is a Copilot+ device, there's a whole other layer of on-device AI — Recall, Studio Effects, Click to Do — that is separate from all of this. We cover that in Windows 11 AI features explained and in what a Copilot+ PC actually is. And if you'd rather keep AI off the cloud entirely, see running local AI models on Windows.