Demystifying Microsoft’s Copilots

• Copilot-branded technologies from Microsoft assist users in completing tasks, but Microsoft overstates ROI.
• Almost all Copilots bring significant costs, and some depend on other Copilot offerings; Microsoft’s documentation and product naming is poor.
• Few Copilots document exactly what features within each service are lit up by a given Copilot, and exactly what features are available, and which are in preview.

Copilot, formally Microsoft Copilot, is a brand applied to a range of Microsoft-hosted user- assistance services. Copilot branding was initially haphazardly applied to numerous Microsoft offerings integrated with multiple Microsoft services, even in cases where the feature may not use large language models (LLMs), resulting in additional customer confusion. To make effective licensing decisions, customers must understand the range of Copilot options available to them, and they must consider what value each distinct instance of Copilot technology purports to offer, how much it costs, and where specific details and documentation about it reside. Because the costs of most Copilot offerings can be significant, it is important that customers assess their return on investment (ROI) before and after deployment to ensure that employees continue to get value out of each Copilot. This report surveys key Copilot paid offerings and their features, as well as discussing Copilot-related terms that can be useful for disambiguation and deciphering of Microsoft’s rapidly changing Copilots. This report was most recently updated in late Oct. 2025, following a recent period where Microsoft discontinued multiple paid Copilots and collapsed their license and feature set into Microsoft 365 Copilot instead (the pricing of which remains unchanged.)