Microsoft 365 Copilot vs Claude

Pick up to 4 tools and see their free plans, entry prices, platforms and limits in one table. Every fact comes from each vendor's own pages, checked 23 September 2026.

Compared on	Microsoft 365 Copilot From $21/user/mo Visit Remove	Claude Free plan · from $17/mo Visit Remove
What it is	AI assistant built into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams for business	Anthropic's AI assistant for writing, analysis, research and coding
Free plan	No	Chat on web, desktop and mobile with web search, file creation, code execution, memory, app connections and artifacts; less usage than Pro; no Claude Code or projects
Cheapest paid plan	$21/user/mo billed annually (Microsoft 365 Copilot Business (add-on))Microsoft 365 Copilot pricing	$17/mo billed annually (Pro)Claude pricing
What it covers	Add-on only for existing customers with an eligible Microsoft 365 Business plan, which is paid for separately. Monthly figure is the monthly-subscription price. A promotional price of $18.00 per user/month (paid yearly) is offered between July 1 and December 31, 2026.	Annual billing is $200 paid up front. Includes Claude Code.
Free trial	None stated	None stated
Platforms	Not stated	Web, iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, Chrome extension, API
Integrations (vendor's figure)	Not stated	Not stated
Open source	No	No
Good for	Summarising long email threads and Teams meetings for a small team Drafting proposals and reports in Word from existing files Getting a first-pass analysis of spreadsheet data in Excel	Drafting and editing long documents and emails Summarising and analysing uploaded files Researching a topic with web search
Watch out for	Copilot Business is an add-on: it needs a separate, eligible Microsoft 365 Business plan Business plans cover identity and access management for up to 300 users; larger organisations use the enterprise plan at $30.00 user/month paid yearly A monthly subscription costs 20% more per user than paying yearly ($25.20 vs $21.00 for the add-on)	Claude Code, projects and task scheduling are not in the Free plan Usage limits apply on Free and Pro; Max raises them 5x or 20x Enterprise adds usage billed at API rates on top of the seat price
Made by	Microsoft Corporation	Anthropic

Entry prices are the cheapest paid plan, as each vendor publishes it; “What it covers” says what that price is per (a user, a channel, a brand, a number of contacts). The sources are listed on each tool's page.

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