# Copilot or Copilot Business: two contracts, and an open-source third

> The difference between Copilot and Copilot Business sits in the contract: who signs it, who owns the tenant, who can switch an agent off. Both run the same assistant inside Word, Excel, Outlook and Teams. Kortix is the open-source AI Operating System, and the third contract here.

URL: https://opensourcecopilotalternative.com/microsoft-copilot-vs-copilot-business

## Three contracts a buyer actually meets

Same assistant in the first two columns, and a different owner in each.

| | Kortix (open source) (recommended) | Copilot for one person | Microsoft Copilot Business |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Open source | Yes | No | No |
| Who signs it | Your company, in its own repo | One person’s Microsoft account | The company, in the Microsoft 365 admin center |
| Plan underneath | None required | Microsoft 365 Personal or Family | An eligible Microsoft 365 Business plan |
| Scale limit | Your own machines, self-hosted, no vendor cap | 1 to 6 people in a household | Up to 300 people per tenant |
| Who can switch an agent off | An admin, by changing a permission | The account holder | An admin, in the admin center |
| Where agent instructions live | Files in your git repo | Inside Microsoft’s service | Inside Microsoft’s service, grounded in the tenant |
| When the contract ends | You keep the repo | Access stops | Seats lapse, the tenant stays Microsoft’s |

## What the word Business adds to the same assistant

Microsoft Copilot is the assistant that drafts, summarizes and answers inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams. Microsoft Copilot Business is that same assistant, sold to smaller companies as an add-on to a Microsoft 365 Business plan, on an annual commitment, capped at 300 people per tenant ([Microsoft's Copilot Business FAQ](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/copilot/copilot-business-faq)). Microsoft says the two deliver the same capabilities. The differences land on the invoice and in the admin center.

Someone with administrator rights assigns the subscription person by person in the Microsoft 365 admin center, and the same person removes it. The commitment runs for a year, so the renewal date is set by the contract rather than by headcount. Microsoft's business pricing page lists the add-on at $18 per person per month paid yearly as a promotion running to 31 December 2026, against $21 at the standard rate ([Microsoft](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/copilot/pricing/business), checked October 2026).

One purchase rule does move this quarter. The offers that need a qualifying base subscription have carried "(add-on)" in their names since 16 October 2026, and they reach end of sale in the Cloud Solution Provider program on 1 December 2026. New offers arrive the same day without the base-plan requirement, on their own product and SKU identifiers and at the same prices ([Partner Center](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/partner-center/announcements/2026-october)). From December, then, a company can buy Copilot Business without owning Microsoft 365 first. What it still cannot buy is the tenant, the administration or the code.

## What Business leaves alone

Three things survive the upgrade. The assistant behaves the same way in the same applications. Grounding still runs through the company's own mail, files and meetings, scoped by the permissions each person already holds, and Microsoft states that Copilot follows the organization's existing Microsoft 365 security settings. And the second meter stays on the invoice.

That meter is the part a budget should read twice. Microsoft's pricing page separates everyday AI, included with the subscription, from advanced work billed as it is used. No contract clause fixes what that usage comes to: a subscription signed through a Cloud Solution Provider after 1 December 2026 arrives with usage billing already on, and with an allowance Microsoft presets for each person that an administrator can change ([Partner Center](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/partner-center/announcements/2026-october)). The seat price holds and a consumption line appears beside it.

The question the contract cannot answer is what the company keeps. Copilot's behavior is Microsoft's to change, and the record of what it did sits inside a service the company rents. A team can edit an agent's instructions and connectors through the studio or the admin center. Nobody on that team can open the software that runs the agent, fork it, or carry the working setup to another host when a price, a roadmap or a market decision moves.

## The governance question to answer before the invoice

Ask who can stop an agent, and where the record of what it did is kept. Those two answers decide more about a rollout than any feature matrix, and they are the answers a small company most often skips.

Kortix answers both in the repository. Per-resource permissions for people and agents. Roles, groups, and an audit trail. Every action is recorded. Reading, exporting and streaming the audit log depend on the plan.

Approval gates you set. Off until you set them. A connector rule can allow a call, hold it until a person approves, or block it outright, and the rule is a line in `kortix.yaml`, under `policies:`, matched against the connector call it names. A project policy sets one default; a rule tightens it for a single connector action. An administrator who wants an agent to stop sending mail changes the rule in the file that declares it.

## Running the layer on a system the company owns

In Kortix, the agent layer is a repository. Agents, skills, company memory, connectors and their permissions live in one git repo the company owns, so the working setup travels with the company. A company that wants the agent layer inside its own network has a path. Run it on Kortix Cloud, in your VPC, or on your own on-prem network. Self-host is free.

The concession is real, and it belongs in the comparison. A company whose work already happens in Word and Outlook pays less per person and administers less by staying with Microsoft. Copilot arrives already grounded in the tenant, inside permissions people hold, with nothing to host or patch. For that company, buying Business and stopping there is a defensible decision.

Ownership earns its price at the edges. It shows up when a price changes twice in one year, when a compliance team asks to read the instructions that govern an agent, or when a company wants the same agents to outlive a vendor relationship. In Kortix that answer is a repository: readable, diffable and portable.

Two related questions carry the rest of the decision. [Copilot and Copilot Studio](https://opensourcecopilotalternative.com/microsoft-copilot-vs-copilot-studio) answer the seat-or-meter half of it. [Managing a Copilot agent fleet](https://opensourcecopilotalternative.com/copilot-agent-management) covers the administration that begins once the agent count outgrows the people deploying them. The contract questions behind the July 2026 price promotion sit in [the Copilot add-on guide](https://opensourcecopilotalternative.com/microsoft-365-copilot-add-on), and [self-hosting](https://opensourcecopilotalternative.com/self-hosting) covers what running the stack yourself involves.

## The rules that decide what an agent may do

`kortix.yaml`

```yaml
policy:
  default_mode: risk
policies:
  - match: gmail.send_email
    action: require_approval
    conditions:
      - arg: to
        match: "*@example.com"
```

Source: https://kortix.com/docs/project/manifest

In the Kortix manifest reference, project policies set a default and then tighten it for one connector action, so the stop and the approval are lines in a file.

## Copilot contract questions, answered

The four questions buyers ask most, with Microsoft’s published answers dated October 2026.

### Is Copilot business better than Copilot?

The assistant is the same, so the purchase turns on whether you need a company administering it. Copilot Business puts that assistant under a company contract, with tenant-level assignment, an annual commitment and a ceiling of 300 people. A person working alone needs none of that.

### What are the differences between Copilot Basic and Copilot business?

Basic is Copilot Chat, included at no extra cost with an eligible Microsoft 365 plan and grounded on web data. Copilot Business is the paid per-person add-on that puts Copilot in the desktop apps and grounds it in the tenant’s mail, files and meetings.

### What is the difference between Copilot business and Copilot Studio?

Copilot Business buys an assistant for each person who holds a subscription. Copilot Studio is where a maker builds agents and pays for them in Copilot Credits. A Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription includes a Studio tier for internal agents, and the standalone product adds external publishing.

### Should I buy Microsoft 365 personal or business?

Buy Personal or Family when the work belongs to a person or a household. Microsoft sells Personal for one person and Family for one to six, with Copilot for the account holder only. Buy a Business plan when the company needs an admin center and per-person contracts.

## Keep the agents, and the record of what they did

One repo for the agents, their permissions and their memory, on infrastructure your company chooses.

[Try Kortix](https://kortix.com)