Open-source Microsoft Copilot alternatives, sorted into three lanes.
"Microsoft Copilot" is not one product. GitHub Copilot writes code. Copilot Studio builds agents. Microsoft 365 Copilot — and its agent-management sibling, Copilot Cowork — runs agent work inside your tenant. Each lane has its own open-source alternatives, and most top-10 lists online conflate all three. This hub separates them, names each project's licence, and links every entry to its upstream repository.
Pick your lane
Replace GitHub Copilot
Autocomplete and in-editor chat. Open-source options include Continue.dev, Aider, Cline, Tabby, CodeGeeX and FauxPilot — most Apache-2.0 or MIT.
Replace Copilot Studio
Design conversational and tool-using agents. Options include Botpress, n8n, LangGraph, CrewAI and Rasa.
Replace M365 Copilot / Cowork
Run a workforce of agents over your files and tools, with review gates. Options include Kortix/Suna, OpenWork and OpenHands.
Why "open source" needs a licence check
Two families of licence hide behind the word "open". OSI-approved licences (MIT, Apache-2.0) let you use, modify and redistribute the software, including commercially. Source-available licences (Elastic 2.0, the Sustainable Use License) publish the source but restrict commercial redistribution or running it as a hosted service for third parties. Both give you the code; only the first is OSI-approved. Every table on this site names the licence and links to the upstream repo so you can verify before you standardise on it.
Copilot vs Cowork — the confusion that costs you
GitHub Copilot is a coding assistant. Copilot Cowork is Microsoft's agent-management layer, much closer to Anthropic's Claude Cowork than to GitHub Copilot. If your need is "an agent workforce that owns my files and tools, with an audit trail", you want lane C, not another coding autocomplete. See What is Microsoft Copilot? for the full disambiguation.