Copilot: the licence is the easy part.
Copilot can read everything the person using it can read. In most small businesses that is far more than anyone intended, because SharePoint permissions were never designed. So before anyone buys a licence we check the data, the permissions and who would actually use it, then pilot with the people who will. This page explains the licence types and prices, and what readiness means in practice.
Who this is for
Businesses on Microsoft 365 that have been asked about Copilot by a director, a supplier or Microsoft itself, and want a straight answer on which licence, for whom, at what cost, and whether the data is safe to point it at. Also businesses that bought licences and found nobody uses them.
The licence types, and what each one actually is
Microsoft uses the word Copilot for several different things, and the confusion sells licences. Prices below are Microsoft's published UK prices, per user per month excluding VAT, on an annual commitment, checked on 10 September 2026. Microsoft changes them, so the date matters.
- Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat: included with eligible Microsoft 365 plans at no extra cost. A secure work chat assistant grounded in the web and in files you paste, upload or have open. It does not automatically read your mailbox or SharePoint. Most businesses should switch this on for everyone and stop there for most staff.
- Microsoft 365 Copilot Business (add-on): £13.80 at the promotional price until 31 December 2026, then £16.10. For businesses with up to 300 users on Business Basic, Standard, Premium or Apps for business. This is Copilot inside Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote with access to the user's mail, files and meetings. This is the one people mean when they say Copilot.
- Business Standard with Copilot (bundle): £18.10. Business Standard and Copilot Business in one licence for new or renewing customers.
- Business Premium with Copilot (bundle): £24.60. Business Premium and Copilot Business together. Premium is the plan we recommend as a security baseline anyway, so this is the bundle most of our clients would use.
- Microsoft 365 Copilot (enterprise add-on): £23.10 annual. For enterprise plans such as E3 and E5, or businesses over 300 users.
- Copilot Studio credits: £153.80 per pack of 25,000 credits per month, or pay as you go. Only needed if you build agents beyond what the licence includes, such as customer-facing bots. Most small businesses never need this.
Source: Microsoft 365 Copilot plans and pricing (UK), Licence options for Microsoft Copilot (Microsoft Learn)
Who should get the paid licence
The add-on roughly doubles the monthly cost of a Business Standard user. That is easy to justify for someone who lives in email, documents and meetings, and impossible to justify for someone who opens Outlook twice a day. Our rule of thumb: licence the people who write, summarise and sit in meetings for a living, which is usually the managers, sales, finance and anyone producing proposals or reports. Everyone else gets Copilot Chat, which is free and covers half of the everyday wins.
A 25-person business licensing ten people pays about £1,900 a year in licences at the standard price. It breaks even at roughly seventeen minutes saved per licensed person per week. That is achievable, but only if the data is in Microsoft 365, reasonably organised, and people are shown how to use it.
What readiness means: the five checks
Copilot answers from whatever the signed-in person can reach. If a junior can open the directors' folder because a SharePoint site was shared with Everyone in 2021, Copilot will cheerfully summarise the board pack for them. Readiness is making sure that cannot happen, and that the licences will be used.
- Data: are the business files in SharePoint and OneDrive, or still on a server, in Dropbox or in people's inboxes? Copilot cannot help with what it cannot see, and it should not see what has not been organised.
- Permissions: have the sharing reports been run and the oversharing fixed? Sites shared with Everyone, links that never expired, external guests nobody remembers. This is where most of the readiness work goes.
- Use cases: can you name five to ten people and the specific things they would do with it? If not, nobody is ready, whatever the licence count.
- People: is there a short training plan, a written rule set on what may and may not be pasted in, and a champion in the business who will keep it alive after week two?
- Pilot: have the measures been agreed before it starts, so at the end there is a decision rather than a feeling?
What is included
Licence review
What you are on today, who qualifies, which of the licence types above fits, and whether a bundle or the add-on is cheaper for you. Copilot Chat switched on for everyone as the first step.
Readiness assessment
The five checks above, run against your tenant: where the data is, the sharing reports, the oversharing, and a plain list of what needs fixing before Copilot is pointed at it.
Permissions and settings fixed
Oversharing closed down, sensitivity labels applied to the documents that matter, restricted search where a site is not ready, and the Copilot settings configured so it behaves the way the business expects.
A pilot that produces a decision
A named pilot group, the licences bought for them only, agreed measures, two short training sessions and a written prompt guide, and a decision meeting at the end with numbers.
Rollout
For the people the pilot proves it for: licences, training in their own work rather than a generic demo, and a champion inside the business. Everyone else stays on Copilot Chat.
Ongoing licence management
Licences reviewed each quarter with the rest of your Microsoft 365, so people who stopped using it stop being paid for, and the promotional price change at the end of 2026 does not arrive as a surprise.
What is not included, and why
- Copilot licences for everyone by default. We will not recommend a licence for someone who will not use it, and we will say when Copilot Chat is all a role needs.
- Custom agents and Copilot Studio. Possible, and quoted separately when a business has a real case for one, but not part of readiness.
- Moving your files into Microsoft 365. If the data is still on a server or in another cloud, that is a cloud migration project, which usually comes first.
What it costs
The readiness review and pilot are quoted as a fixed piece of work based on the size of the tenant and the pilot group. Licences are billed at Microsoft's price on your quotation and shown separately. Prices are available on request: get in touch or book a call and we will start by telling you which licence, if any, you need.
How it starts
- 1Free IT Health CheckA short online check that benchmarks your security and business risk and tells you where you stand.
- 2Discovery callAn engineer, not a salesperson. What you have, what is broken, what it would cost to fix, in writing.
- 3OnboardingEverything moves across on a plan, with no gap in cover and nothing lost.
Questions people ask before signing
Is Copilot included in Microsoft 365 Business Premium?
Copilot Chat is included. The full Copilot inside Word, Outlook and Teams is not; it is the Copilot Business add-on at £13.80 promotional or £16.10 standard per user per month, or the Business Premium with Copilot bundle at £24.60.
What is the difference between Copilot Chat and Copilot Business?
Copilot Chat is a secure chat assistant that works on the web and on what you give it. Copilot Business is the paid licence that works inside the Office apps and can read the user's mail, calendar, meetings and files. The second is where both the value and the risk are.
Can Copilot see files it should not?
It can see anything the signed-in person can see, which in most tenants is more than intended. That is the reason for the readiness review: run the sharing reports, close the oversharing, label the sensitive documents, and only then license people.
Does Microsoft train its models on our data?
No. Microsoft states that prompts, responses and data accessed through Microsoft 365 are not used to train the foundation models, and the enterprise data protection terms apply to both Copilot Chat and the paid licence.
How long does readiness take?
Two to four weeks for a typical 20 to 100 person tenant, most of it fixing permissions. The pilot then runs for four to six weeks with measures agreed up front.
Which licence should we buy?
For most businesses: Copilot Chat for everyone at no cost, and the Copilot Business add-on for the handful of people who write, summarise and sit in meetings all day. If you are renewing Business Premium anyway, the Premium with Copilot bundle is usually the cheapest way to licence those people.