# Microsoft 365 Copilot pricing vs. open source, per seat and per year

> Microsoft 365 Copilot costs $21 a seat a month on Business and $30 on Enterprise, and both prices sit on top of a Microsoft 365 plan a team already pays for. Kortix is the open-source AI Operating System, billed on credits instead of seats.

URL: https://opensourcecopilotalternative.com/microsoft-365-copilot-pricing

## What Microsoft charges for one Copilot seat

Microsoft 365 Copilot pricing comes as two seat prices. Which one a company can buy depends on its size. Microsoft 365 Copilot Business is [$21 per seat a month on an annual commitment](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/copilot/pricing/business), or $25.20 month to month. Microsoft currently shows a promotional $18 for the first year, on an offer it dates 1 July to 31 December 2026. The enterprise page lists [Microsoft 365 Copilot at $30 per seat a month, paid yearly](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/copilot/pricing/enterprise).

Microsoft also sells the same assistant inside two suites, and those prices read closer to what a small company actually pays. Microsoft 365 Business Standard with Copilot is $23.50 per seat a month paid yearly, or $28.20 monthly. Business Premium with Copilot is $32, or $38.40 monthly. A suite replaces the add-on. It is the one route where the Office apps and the assistant arrive on a single line.

Neither figure caps the bill. The business page separates everyday AI, included with the plan, from advanced AI billed by use. It names Copilot Cowork, Code, Autopilot and the Work IQ APIs as metered today. Those meters run on Copilot Credits, controlled through Cost Management in the admin center. A budget built from the seat price alone meets a second bill the first month a team hands real work to an agent.

## The base plan the add-on sits on

Microsoft's [plan-options article](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/copilot/microsoft-365-copilot-licensing) states the rule without decoration: "Microsoft Copilot is available with Microsoft 365 E7 or as an add-on for eligible commercial, US Government, and education subscription plans." The business page repeats it in its footnote, where the add-on "is available only to existing Microsoft 365 customers with an eligible Business plan". It adds that an annual commitment is required.

Eligible is a list, not a single plan. For Copilot Business the article names Microsoft 365 Business Premium, Business Standard, Business Basic, Microsoft 365 Apps for Business and Microsoft Teams Essentials. Copilot Business also has a ceiling. Microsoft describes it as an add-on for organizations with eligible Business plans, supports up to 300 seats per tenant, and points larger organizations to its enterprise plans.

Fifty seats through Microsoft's published numbers show the scale:

- Copilot Business add-on at $21: $1,050 a month, $12,600 a year, before the base plan.
- The same add-on at the promotional $18: $900 a month in year one.
- Copilot Business billed monthly at $25.20: $1,260 a month.
- Business Standard with Copilot at $23.50: $1,175 a month, $14,100 a year.
- Business Premium with Copilot at $32: $1,600 a month, $19,200 a year.
- Enterprise add-on at $30: $1,500 a month, $18,000 a year, before the base plan.

The add-on figures are floors. Each needs a qualifying Microsoft 365 plan underneath, and that plan's own price never appears on the Copilot pricing page. Whatever a team already pays for Business Basic, Apps for Business or Teams Essentials carries on top of the seat line.

## What the base tier changes inside the assistant

A Copilot seat is not a chat window bolted onto a suite. Microsoft's business page lists what the paid add-on unlocks: Work IQ, Copilot in Teams and in Word, Excel and PowerPoint, pre-built agents such as Researcher, Analyst and Facilitator, and Copilot Studio for internal agents at no extra cost to the people on the plan. Grounding arrives through Microsoft Graph, which the same page describes as adding context from emails, chats, documents and meetings.

Coverage inside those apps follows the plan underneath. The plan-options article adds that availability in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote depends on the market and the customer's plan. A team whose base plan stops at Teams Essentials buys a seat that drafts in fewer places than the same seat on Business Standard.

That is the part the headline price hides. A base tier fixes two things at once: the apps the assistant sits inside, and the volume of mail, files and meetings it can pull context from. The eligible list runs from Teams Essentials to Microsoft 365 E5. The identical $21 lands on a different bill and a different reach at every rung.

## A bill with no prerequisite underneath it

Kortix is the open-source AI Operating System, and nothing in its pricing waits on another vendor's plan. "Open source. Read it, fork it, audit it." A project keeps its agents, skills, memory and connectors in one git repo the team owns, so what a seat buys elsewhere sits in the repository here as a file.

Pricing runs on credits. "The paid plan is credits: 25 tiers from $50 a month (5,000 credits) to $50,000 a month (5,000,000 credits), at 100 credits per dollar." A credit buys agent-computer time, billed per second and free while a computer is stopped. "Members are free, and the account shares one credit pool." A quiet month therefore costs less than an idle seat, and a hire adds no line to the invoice.

Placement becomes a choice rather than a vendor's decision. "Run it on Kortix Cloud, in your VPC, or on your own on-prem network. Self-host is free." For an assistant reading a company's own files, that beats a per-seat rate: the work runs next to the data, and the connectors that reach it are broad. "3,000+ apps in a click, plus MCP, OpenAPI, Postman, GraphQL and raw HTTP."

## Microsoft 365 Copilot and Kortix, line by line

Three ways to put an assistant in front of a team, priced the way each vendor prices it.

| | Kortix (recommended) | Microsoft 365 Copilot Business | Microsoft 365 Copilot Enterprise |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Open source | Yes | No | No |
| Seat price | Free tier, then credits from $50 a month | $21 a seat a month, yearly | $30 a seat a month, yearly |
| Priced per | Credits shared by the whole account | Seat | Seat |
| Base plan needed | None | Eligible Microsoft 365 Business plan | Eligible Microsoft 365 enterprise plan |
| Apps and reach | 3,000+ app connectors, MCP, OpenAPI, Postman, GraphQL | Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams | Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams |
| Advanced AI | Model usage on your keys, or credits | Copilot Credits, billed by use | Copilot Credits, billed by use |
| Where it runs | Kortix Cloud, your VPC, your network | Microsoft commercial or sovereign cloud | Microsoft commercial or sovereign cloud |
| Cheapest way in | Free tier, 500 credits a month | Copilot Chat, no seat needed | Copilot Chat, no seat needed |

Microsoft prices read from its two Copilot pricing pages and its Copilot plan-options article on 21 October 2026; Kortix prices read from kortix.com/pricing the same day.

## What a Kortix project is, in its own manifest

`kortix.yaml`

```yaml
# Kortix project manifest. Source of truth for project-wide config that
# lives in git alongside the code. `kortix_version` pins the schema so
#   agents/<name>.md          one file per agent (`agents.<name>.file`)
#   skills/<name>/SKILL.md    skills, loaded by every harness
#   memory/                   the project brain (the `kortix-memory` skill)
```

Source: https://github.com/kortix-ai/suna/blob/main/packages/starter/templates/base/kortix.yaml

The header of the public starter manifest, where a project's config, agents and skills are declared in git.

## Buying a Copilot seat, in practice

The four questions that decide the annual figure.

### Is Microsoft 365 Copilot sold on its own?

No. Microsoft sells it as an add-on to an eligible Microsoft 365 plan, or inside a plan that bundles it, such as Microsoft 365 E7. The business page states the add-on is available only to existing Microsoft 365 customers with an eligible Business plan.

### Is there a cheaper Copilot for small teams?

The Business add-on is the cheaper tier, at $21 a seat a month paid yearly against $30 on the enterprise add-on. Below both sits Copilot Chat, which Microsoft includes at no additional cost with eligible Microsoft 365 plans and which needs no Copilot seat.

### Does Copilot Studio cost extra?

Not for people on a Microsoft 365 Copilot plan. Copilot Studio included with that plan lets them build and use internal agents at no additional cost, while the standalone Copilot Studio plan is a separate purchase for publishing agents to external channels.

### Can Microsoft 365 Copilot be self-hosted?

Microsoft's pricing pages place Copilot in its commercial cloud and in select sovereign cloud environments, and list no self-hosted option. The self-hosted route in the comparison is Kortix.

## Price the work, not the headcount

Start on the free tier and move to credits when the agents run longer than a month of chat.

[Try Kortix](https://kortix.com) · [See the credit tiers](https://kortix.com/pricing)