"Copilot" is one word Microsoft has stretched across at least three very different products, and the price gap between them is enormous. If you just want the cheapest way to get a capable AI assistant in front of your people, the honest answer is that you may not need to pay anything at all. The trick is knowing which Copilot does what, and where the free line sits before you start spending.
This guide walks through the tiers an Australian business actually chooses between today, in AUD, and gives you a simple rule for when each one is worth it. One thing has changed since this article first ran: Copilot Pro, the cheap individual option people still search for, is no longer sold. Microsoft withdrew it from sale and support ends on 1 August 2026. All prices below were checked against Microsoft's Australian pricing pages in July 2026 — confirm at purchase, because Microsoft adjusts regional pricing and promotional windows regularly, and Microsoft's 1 July 2026 price change has now taken effect for some Australian plans.
Tier 1: free Copilot Chat (AU$0)
The cheapest Copilot is the free one, and most people don't realise it's already sitting in their browser. Copilot Chat — the consumer-facing chatbot at copilot.microsoft.com and built into Windows and Edge — costs nothing. You sign in with a personal Microsoft account and you get a genuinely useful GPT-class assistant for drafting, summarising, rewriting, brainstorming and general questions.
For a lot of small teams, this covers 80% of the "I just want AI to help me write this email" demand. It won't reach into your Outlook, your SharePoint or your Teams meetings — it has no knowledge of your business data — but as a standalone thinking-and-writing tool it's free and surprisingly capable. If your goal is simply "get Copilot," you can stop here at AU$0.
Tier 2: Microsoft 365 Premium (AU$33.00 per month, personal use)
This is the tier that changed. Copilot Pro used to sit here as the individual paid upgrade. Microsoft has retired it: it is no longer available for purchase, and existing subscribers can keep using it only until they cancel or until support ends on 1 August 2026. If you are searching for Copilot Pro pricing, that is why the numbers you find no longer match what Microsoft will sell you.
The consumer replacement is Microsoft 365 Premium at AU$33.00 per month or AU$329.00 per year (checked July 2026). Rather than being an add-on layered on top of a consumer Microsoft 365 subscription, it bundles the Office apps and Copilot into a single plan. For a sole trader, a contractor, or someone who lives in Word and Excel all day, that is the current route to AI inside the desktop apps without committing to the business stack. Microsoft's consumer pricing page does not state whether GST is included, so treat AU$33.00 as the headline figure and check the total at checkout.
The important caveat is unchanged from the Copilot Pro days. A consumer plan does not connect to your organisation's business data, and it is not covered by the enterprise data-protection commitments business buyers care about. It is a personal-productivity tool, not a business deployment — and for a business it is not even the cheapest option, as the next tier shows.
Tier 3: Microsoft 365 Copilot Business (AU$31.40 per user/month, under 300 seats)
Here is the part most price-shopping readers miss: for a business, the tenant-grounded product can cost less than the consumer one. Organisations under 300 seats buy the Microsoft 365 Copilot Business add-on at AU$31.40 per user per month ex GST on an annual commitment, or AU$37.68 on a monthly commitment. Microsoft is running a promotion between 1 July and 30 September 2026 that brings the annual rate down to AU$26.91 per user per month for the first year. Checked July 2026.
The catch is the prerequisite. It is an add-on, so every user needs a qualifying Microsoft 365 Business plan underneath it, and that base licence is a separate cost. Microsoft also sells the two bundled together: Business Standard with Copilot at AU$35.20 per user per month ex GST on an annual commitment, and Business Premium with Copilot at AU$47.90. If you are already paying for Business Standard or Premium, the add-on price is the number that matters; if you are starting from nothing, the bundle is the honest comparison.
Tier 4: Microsoft 365 Copilot (AU$44.90 per user/month, enterprise)
This is the one most people mean when they say "we're rolling out Copilot." For organisations on Microsoft 365 E3, E5 or E7, the Copilot add-on is AU$44.90 per user per month ex GST on an annual commitment (checked July 2026). It requires a qualifying Microsoft 365 plan as a prerequisite — you cannot buy it as a standalone.
What the paid tiers buy that the free one does not is tenant grounding. Through what Microsoft calls the Graph, Copilot reads (within each user's existing permissions) your emails, documents, chats, calendars and SharePoint content. That's what lets it summarise a Teams meeting you missed, draft a reply using the actual thread, build a deck from a Word doc, or answer "what did we agree with that supplier?" from your real files.
It also carries the enterprise data-protection posture — your prompts and tenant data aren't used to train the underlying models, and access respects your existing permissions. For most Australian organisations, that grounding and that data boundary are the whole point. If you don't need them, you're overpaying; if you do, nothing cheaper replicates it.
The AUD decision table
Here's the short version of who should pick what. Match yourself to the first row that fits:
- Free Copilot Chat — AU$0/user/mo: You want AI for writing, summarising and general questions, and you're fine that it can't see your business data. Best for: individuals, testing demand, light users.
- Microsoft 365 Premium — AU$33.00/month: You're a sole trader or an individual on consumer Microsoft 365 and you want AI inside desktop Word/Excel/PowerPoint/Outlook. This is what replaced Copilot Pro. No connection to org data or business data-protection.
- Microsoft 365 Copilot Business — AU$31.40/user/mo ex GST annual, or AU$26.91 if you buy before 30 September 2026: You're under 300 seats and need Copilot grounded in your own emails, files, Teams and calendars. Requires a qualifying M365 Business plan underneath.
- Microsoft 365 Copilot — AU$44.90/user/mo ex GST annual: Same grounded product for organisations on E3, E5 or E7.
- Mixed approach — varies: Most realistic for SMBs — free Chat for the whole organisation, paid seats for the handful of heavy users where the time saved clearly beats the per-seat cost.
Watch the 2026 pricing and promo windows
Two things move the numbers right now. First, Microsoft's price changes for some Australian Microsoft 365 plans took effect on 1 July 2026, so the underlying licence your Copilot sits on may have shifted. Second, there is a live promotion on the SMB Copilot add-on: AU$26.91 per user per month instead of AU$31.40, on an annual commitment, for orders placed between 1 July and 30 September 2026. That window is open as this article is updated and closes on 30 September, so if you are buying inside it, ask for the promotional rate by name rather than assuming it is applied.
All of the above is ex GST. Whether GST is a real cost depends on your input-credit position; for most registered businesses it washes out, but factor it in for budgeting if it doesn't for you.
What Frontrow would actually do
If a client asked Frontrow for the cheapest path, the answer wouldn't start with a purchase order. Switch on free Copilot Chat across the team for a fortnight and watch who genuinely uses it. AI adoption is wildly uneven — a few people lean on it daily and most try it twice. That free trial period tells you exactly where paid seats will earn out.
Then buy paid seats only for the proven heavy users whose time clearly clears the AU$31.40 or AU$44.90 bar — typically people drowning in meetings, email and document drafting. Skip the consumer plan for any genuine business: it costs more than the SMB add-on and does less. And before turning on any tenant-grounded Copilot, check your permissions and SharePoint sharing first — because a tool that reads your files within each user's access will surface whatever those users can already over-reach into. Cheap is good; cheap and exposed isn't.