Microsoft Copilot

At a glance

Official website

https://copilot.microsoft.com

Category

AI Search Assistants

Free plan

$0; consumer Copilot on the web, in Windows, Edge, and mobile apps: chat, web-grounded answers with citations, image generation, file uploads, voice. Sign-in not required to start.

Free plan limits

Microsoft does not publish a number for the free limit — it is 'subject to available capacity and limits'; when a limit is hit, the user waits or upgrades. Free does NOT reach into the user's own emails, documents, or meetings, and does not work inside Word/Excel/PowerPoint/Outlook.

Paid plans from

From $9.99/month — Microsoft 365 Personal (Copilot in Office apps).

Best for

Windows and Edge users who want quick AI answers, images, and voice without installing anything new.

Microsoft Copilot review: what the free plan really gives you

Microsoft Copilot is the AI assistant built into Windows, Edge, and Microsoft's mobile apps, and also available free on the web at copilot.microsoft.com. It chats, answers questions grounded in live web results with clickable citations, generates images, accepts file uploads, and talks back by voice. For the hundreds of millions of people who already use Windows or Edge, it is the assistant that is already there: no new account to create if you have a Microsoft account, and according to Microsoft Support, you do not even need to sign in to start, though signing in raises your limits. That zero-friction start is its main advantage over every other tool in this hub.

The limits are the least specific of any tool on this site. Microsoft does not publish a number for the free limit — its own FAQ says only that the free version is offered subject to available capacity and limits — so this page will not quote a number that does not exist. In practice, when a limit is hit, you wait or you upgrade. Expect generous use on quiet days and a cap on busy ones, and do not plan a deadline around an exact number of prompts. A signed-in Microsoft account gets higher limits than an anonymous session, so signing in is worth doing.

The other boundary is about your own files. The free consumer Copilot does not reach into your emails, documents, or meetings, and it does not work inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or Outlook — that is the paid part. A separate free tier, Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, is included at no extra cost with an eligible Microsoft 365 work or school plan, but it is web-grounded chat only, with no access to organisational content. The consumer free tier is a personal assistant, not a business tool, and this page does not present it as one. No watermark is stated for chat or image output.

Against Perplexity, Copilot wins on convenience — it is already in your operating system and browser — and loses on research depth and on the clarity of its limits, since Perplexity publishes exactly how many deep searches you get. Against ChatGPT and Gemini, it wins on Windows integration and loses on feature breadth. It suits a Windows or Edge user who wants quick answers, image generation, and voice chat without installing anything or creating another account. Copilot inside Microsoft 365 apps for personal use starts at $9.99 a month for Microsoft 365 Personal, and business access starts from $21 per user a month billed annually.

Pros and cons

Alternatives to Microsoft Copilot

If Microsoft Copilot does not fit, these tools in the same category are also listed on AI Free List:

• Perplexity
• ChatGPT
• Google Gemini

Frequently asked questions