ChatGPT or Copilot for your business?
Both are good. The right answer depends on where your work happens, who is using it, and what the data is. Three questions settle it, and there is a third option most comparisons skip.
It is the most common question we hear from small businesses: do we buy ChatGPT for the team, or Copilot, since we already pay for Microsoft 365? Both are good products. The right answer depends on where your work actually happens. Here is the decision, made simple.
The thirty-second answer
If your work lives in Word, Excel, Outlook and Teams, buy Copilot. It is already inside those applications, it respects your Microsoft permissions, and deployment is close to frictionless. If your team works across many tools, or you want the strongest general assistant and developer tooling, buy ChatGPT Enterprise. And if what you actually want is AI that runs your processes rather than assisting your people, that is a different category, and we will come to it.
What each one is good at
- Microsoft 365 Copilot wins on integration and governance. It drafts in Word, analyses in Excel, summarises in Outlook and Teams, and inherits your existing Microsoft security and compliance setup. Per-seat pricing is predictable. Its weakness is that it is largely confined to the Microsoft estate.
- ChatGPT Enterprise is the stronger general assistant: broader reasoning, better at long documents, and its platform tools (custom GPTs, data analysis, Codex for developers) are more mature. Enterprise terms remove training on your data and add SOC 2 and admin controls. Its weakness is that it is another platform to manage alongside your existing stack.
Three questions that settle it
- Where does the work happen? Overwhelmingly Microsoft: Copilot. Split or Google-based: ChatGPT Enterprise, probably alongside something else.
- Who is using it? Everyone in the office: Copilot's familiarity wins. Engineers and analysts: ChatGPT's tooling wins.
- What is the data? Internal and low-sensitivity: either works. Client-identifiable or regulated: neither is the right tool on its own, whatever the marketing says. See our post on client data safety.
The costs, honestly
Copilot runs roughly £22 to £28 per user per month on top of your Microsoft licences. ChatGPT Enterprise is priced per seat annually, typically comparable for a similar headcount, with usage-based elements on some features. Both are real money for a ten-person firm, so pilot with the people whose time is actually being saved, not the whole company at once.
The third option most comparisons skip
Both products are assistants: they help a person work faster. Neither runs a process. If your goal is automating the work itself, invoices triaged, reports compiled, documents checked, that is an agentic platform, not a seat licence. We built Odokai for exactly that, and we publish a full, gap-included comparison of all the enterprise platforms so you can judge the difference yourself.
Bottom line
Microsoft-shaped work: buy Copilot and do not overthink it. Mixed or technical work: trial ChatGPT Enterprise against it for a month. Process automation: talk to us. And whichever assistant you buy, the full comparison is published in complete detail, including the scenarios where each one loses.