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ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot for everyday use and work?

By Official AppDuo editorial team · Updated

ChatGPT logoChatGPT7.5/10Freemium · $8.00/moMicrosoft Copilot logoMicrosoft Copilot6.8/10Freemium · $9.99/mo

Quick verdict

Both run on the web, iOS, Android, Windows and macOS and both have a free tier, so the real difference is what you pay for: ChatGPT sells the AI assistant on its own in several tiers, while Copilot comes bundled into Microsoft 365 with Office and storage.

ChatGPT: Free gives unlimited text chats (subject to abuse guardrails), and paid plans run from Go at $8 to Pro at $500 a month on the US App Store, with custom GPTs, Codex and scheduled tasks. But Free and Go may show ads, allowances are described without numbers, and OpenAI has a 2023 data exposure and a 15 million euro Italian fine on record, which it said it would appeal.

Microsoft Copilot: free with a Microsoft account, and from Microsoft 365 Personal ($9.99/month on Microsoft's US pricing page) it sits inside the Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook desktop apps, with a one-month trial. But Microsoft publishes no usage numbers, only the owner of a Family plan gets the AI features, and the privacy statement allows data to be used for model training and relevant advertising.

Head-to-head

ChatGPT leads on 1, Microsoft Copilot on 1, 7 even

FeatureChatGPTMicrosoft Copilot
Free tier[1],[9],[12],[17]Unlimited text chats (subject to abuse guardrails); uploads, image creation, voice, deep research, memory and Codex are capped. Ads may appear in some markets.Requires a Microsoft account; some capabilities are limited, with no published numbers. Word, Excel and PowerPoint on the web are also free.
→ If you mostly type questions, ChatGPT states plainly that text chats are not capped. Copilot's free tier only says "subject to limits", and many Trustpilot reviewers complain about message and image caps.
Cheapest personal paid plan[1],[3],[4],[9],[12]Go: $8/month (US App Store). More messages, uploads, image creation and voice chats than Free, plus longer memory; may include ads. No trial is documented.Microsoft 365 Personal: $9.99/month, or $8.33/month billed yearly ($99.99/year). One person, 5 devices, 1 TB, Copilot in the Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook desktop apps and more chat than free; one-month trial.
→ Go is the lower price but only raises the Free allowances (messages, uploads, images, voice) and may still show ads; Personal adds desktop Office and 1 TB of storage. If you were going to buy Office anyway, Microsoft's plan covers both; if you only want more AI headroom, Go is the leaner choice.
The roughly $20 tier[1],[3],[4],[9],[12],[19]Plus: $19.99/month (US App Store). GPT-6 advanced reasoning, expanded deep research and Codex, projects, scheduled tasks and custom GPTs; ad-free per 9to5Mac; limits still apply.Microsoft 365 Premium: $19.99/month, or $16.67/month billed yearly ($199.99/year). Everything in Family plus "extensive" Copilot usage, Researcher, Analyst, Cowork and limited agentic AI; AI audio is English only.
→ Plus spends the whole price on AI models and tools. Premium splits it across Office, 2 TB shared by up to six people and Copilot; per Thurrott, it launched on October 1, 2025 and replaced the standalone Copilot Pro.
Top personal tier[1],[3],[4],[12]Pro in three tiers: $100, $200 and $500/month (US App Store). Pro reasoning (GPT-6 Astra), longer Codex sessions, unlimited image creation, 128K (Instant) and 400K (reasoning) context, and monthly API credits of an unstated amount.Microsoft 365 Pro: $99.99/month, monthly billing only, no trial. Everything in Premium plus 5 TB of shared storage and the highest Copilot usage for chat, agentic AI, visual assistance and AI audio.
→ Only very heavy users need this level. ChatGPT Pro names its model and context sizes; Microsoft 365 Pro promises the "highest" usage without a number.
Working in Word, Excel and Outlook[1],[3],[12],[13],[15]Office is not among the listed integrations, which are Codex, deep research, custom GPTs and Epic (ChatGPT Health); documents and photos are uploaded into the chat.Copilot sits in the Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook desktop apps with Microsoft 365; search is grounded in web and work sources; Office files, PDFs and images can be uploaded; it ties into Windows, Edge, OneDrive and Teams.
→ People who draft, crunch spreadsheets and answer email in Office all day get the AI inside the open file with Copilot; for ChatGPT, the record only documents bringing files into a chat.
Sharing with a household[1],[12]No family plan is listed. Multi-person use means the organisation plans, Business and Enterprise, both billed per user; Business has a 2-user minimum and no price on the pricing page.Microsoft 365 Family: $12.99/month, or $10.83/month billed yearly ($129.99/year), for 1 to 6 people with 2 TB shared; but Copilot AI features are for the subscription owner only.
→ Buying Family so the whole household gets Copilot would be a mistake: other members get Office and storage only. ChatGPT's multi-user plans are for organisations, so they are not priced against a family plan here.
Advertising[1],[9],[14],[15]Free and Go may show ads: tested in the US from January 16, 2026, with visual ads beside image results since October 5, 2026. Per 9to5Mac, OpenAI says chats are not shared with advertisers and under-18 accounts see no ads; Plus and above are ad-free.The privacy statement says related data may be used for relevant advertising, and the App Store label lists identifiers used for tracking. The sources read do not mention ads inside the chat.
→ ChatGPT's ads are visible on the cheap plans but come with stated limits and disappear on Plus. With Copilot, ad-related data use sits inside Microsoft's general privacy statement.
Your chats and model training[2],[8],[10],[14]The homepage says chats may be reviewed and used to improve models; AppDuo could not read the full policy. Record: a data exposure in March 2023, and a 15 million euro Italian fine on December 20, 2024, which OpenAI said it would appeal.Microsoft "may use your data to develop, train, and fine-tune" its AI models. Copilot history can be viewed, exported and deleted on the privacy dashboard, with memory controls in settings; no Copilot-specific retention period, and opt-out details sit on a FAQ page AppDuo could not open.
→ Both may use your data for training. Microsoft describes its history controls in more detail but also allows ad use and tracking; ChatGPT carries a past incident and a fine it said it would appeal. AppDuo's two reviews score privacy almost the same (5.9 and 5.8/10).
User ratings[3],[6],[7],[15],[17]4.8/5 from over 12 million US App Store ratings and 4.8/5 on US Google Play (over 67 million). Trustpilot 1.6/5 (3,958 reviews), citing wrong answers, surprise limits, hard cancellation and hard-to-reach support.4.7/5 from over 1.38 million US App Store ratings. Trustpilot 1.5/5 (520 reviews, 79% one-star), citing lost context, wrong answers and message caps; Microsoft has not claimed the Trustpilot profile.
→ The pattern is nearly identical: high store scores, very low Trustpilot scores. Complaints about ChatGPT lean towards billing and support, those about Copilot towards answer quality and caps.

Choose ChatGPT if…

  • People who mostly chat in text and want a free tier with no cap on text messages
  • Anyone who wants to step up gradually, from Go at $8/month to Plus at $19.99 or one of three Pro tiers
  • Users who need custom GPTs, Codex, scheduled tasks or the 400K context window on Pro
  • Organisations that need per-seat Business or Enterprise plans

Choose Microsoft Copilot if…

  • People who write, build spreadsheets and handle email daily in the Word, Excel and Outlook desktop apps
  • Anyone already planning to buy Microsoft 365 for Office and storage who wants Copilot in the same subscription
  • Buyers who want a one-month trial of a paid plan (Personal, Family or Premium) before paying
  • Users who want to view, export and delete their chat history from a privacy dashboard

What you get without paying

According to OpenAI's pricing page, ChatGPT Free gives unlimited text chats, subject only to abuse guardrails; uploads, image creation, voice, deep research, memory and Codex are capped, and GPT Instant has a 27K context window. Per 9to5Mac, ads may appear on this plan in some markets.

Copilot is free with a Microsoft account, on the web, Windows and Mac apps, Edge, iOS and Android. Microsoft only says "some capabilities are subject to usage limits" without numbers, and many Trustpilot reviewers complain about message and image caps. In exchange, Word, Excel and PowerPoint on the web are free too. If you mainly chat in text, ChatGPT's allowance is easier to predict; if you also need free document editing in a browser, Microsoft adds the web Office apps.

Paid plans: an AI assistant or a whole Microsoft 365 bundle

OpenAI's pricing page shows no amounts, so ChatGPT prices come from the in-app purchase list on the US App Store: Go $8, Plus $19.99, and Pro at $100, $200 or $500 a month. No yearly billing or trial is listed. The pricing page describes allowances only with words like "limited" or "expanded", never numbers.

Microsoft no longer sells Copilot on its own: per Thurrott, it launched Microsoft 365 Premium on October 1, 2025 and dropped the standalone Copilot Pro. On Microsoft's US pricing page, Personal is $9.99/month ($99.99/year), Family $12.99/month ($129.99/year), Premium $19.99/month ($199.99/year) and Pro $99.99/month, billed monthly only. Personal, Family and Premium come with a one-month trial; Pro does not. The easy-to-miss detail: on Family, only the subscription owner gets the AI features, and the other members get Office and storage only.

Using it for work

Copilot's clearest advantage is where it lives: with Microsoft 365, the AI sits inside the Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook desktop apps, grounds search in both web and work sources, and ties into Windows, Edge, OneDrive and Teams. Per the App Store, users can also choose among several AI models and upload Office files, PDFs and images. Premium adds Researcher (formerly Deep Research), Analyst and Cowork (formerly Tasks).

ChatGPT is a standalone assistant that does not live inside Office; its strength is the AI toolset: Plus brings GPT-6 advanced reasoning, projects, scheduled tasks, custom GPTs and expanded Codex, and Pro opens context windows up to 400K. For organisations, ChatGPT offers Business (per user, 2-user minimum) and Enterprise (quoted by sales). AppDuo's Copilot record covers only individual plans, so business plans are not compared here.

Ads, data and privacy record

The ChatGPT homepage says conversations may be reviewed and used to improve the models. Since January 16, 2026 OpenAI has tested ads for Free and Go users in the US; per 9to5Mac, it says chats are not shared with advertisers, ads do not influence answers and under-18 accounts see none. On the record: in March 2023 a bug exposed conversation titles, and according to Wikipedia OpenAI later confirmed some users' names, emails and partial payment details were also exposed. On December 20, 2024, per Security Affairs, Italy's data protection authority fined OpenAI 15 million euros for training on personal data without an adequate legal basis, transparency failures and not notifying that breach; OpenAI said it would appeal. AppDuo could not read OpenAI's full privacy policy.

Microsoft's privacy statement says it may use your data to develop, train and fine-tune its AI models, and related data may be used for relevant advertising. Copilot history can be viewed, exported and deleted on the privacy dashboard, with memories managed in settings. The statement gives no Copilot-specific retention period, the training opt-out sits on a FAQ page AppDuo could not open, and the App Store label lists identifiers used for tracking. For both, the training opt-out is not fully described in the sources AppDuo could read, so check the data settings before putting work documents in.

Frequently asked questions

Is ChatGPT or Copilot better for working in Word and Excel?

Copilot, if you have a Microsoft 365 plan: the AI is built into the Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook desktop apps. ChatGPT lists no Office integration; to work on a document, you upload it into the chat.

ChatGPT Plus vs Microsoft 365 Premium: what is the difference?

Both list at $19.99/month (Plus on the US App Store, Premium on Microsoft's US pricing page), and Premium also lists yearly billing at $199.99, while no yearly price is documented for Plus. Plus spends it all on AI; Premium bundles Office, 2 TB of shared storage and "extensive" Copilot usage, with a one-month trial.

Can I use Copilot free without Microsoft 365?

Yes, with a Microsoft account, though some features have limits Microsoft does not quantify. Copilot inside the Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook desktop apps needs a Microsoft 365 plan.

Does Microsoft 365 Family give Copilot to everyone in the household?

No. Family covers up to six people for Office and 2 TB of storage, but Copilot AI features are only for the subscription owner. ChatGPT lists no family plan either, only plans for organisations.

Which one uses my chats to train AI?

Both may. ChatGPT says chats may be used to improve its models; Microsoft says it may use data to train and fine-tune its AI models. Microsoft offers a dashboard to view, export and delete Copilot history; for ChatGPT, check the data controls in your account settings.

Sources

Numbers in the table refer to these sources, read on the dates shown.

  1. 1.Official pricing page · Vendor-provided · Nov 10, 2026
  2. 2.Official homepage (terms, privacy and data-use notice) · Vendor-provided · Nov 10, 2026
  3. 3.App Store listing (United States) · store · Nov 10, 2026
  4. 4.App Store listing (Vietnam) · store · Nov 10, 2026
  5. 5.iTunes Lookup API (release date, version, languages, screenshots) · store · Nov 10, 2026
  6. 6.Google Play listing (United States) · store · Nov 10, 2026
  7. 7.Trustpilot reviews · review-site · Nov 10, 2026
  8. 8.Wikipedia: ChatGPT · Community-reported · Nov 10, 2026
  9. 9.9to5Mac: ChatGPT Go and ads (2026-01-16) · press · Nov 10, 2026
  10. 10.Security Affairs: Italy fines OpenAI 15 million euros · press · Nov 10, 2026
  11. 11.TechCrunch: ChatGPT news tag page · press · Nov 10, 2026
  12. 12.Microsoft Copilot for individuals (plans and pricing) · Vendor-provided · Nov 10, 2026
  13. 13.Copilot official site (copilot.com) · Vendor-provided · Nov 10, 2026
  14. 14.Microsoft Privacy Statement (Copilot section) · Vendor-provided · Nov 10, 2026
  15. 15.App Store listing (United States) · store · Nov 10, 2026
  16. 16.iTunes Search API (rating, version, languages) · store · Nov 10, 2026
  17. 17.Trustpilot: copilot.microsoft.com · review-site · Nov 10, 2026
  18. 18.Pureinfotech: Bing Chat renamed Copilot (2023-11-15) · press · Nov 10, 2026
  19. 19.Thurrott: Microsoft 365 Premium (2025-10-01) · press · Nov 10, 2026

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