Since July 1, 2026 Copilot is bundled into Microsoft 365 Business Standard and Business Premium rather than sold as a separate add-on. Here is what that costs a 5 to 25 person team, and how much time it has to save to be worth it.
List prices are Microsoft's published US rates on annual billing, checked July 2026.
Business Standard with Copilot is $23.50 per user per month. Business Premium with Copilot is $32.00. Both on annual billing.
Until June 30, 2026, Microsoft 365 Copilot was an add-on at roughly $30 per user per month on top of an existing subscription. Most small businesses either skipped it or bought a handful of seats for power users.
On July 1, 2026 Microsoft folded Copilot into the main SMB tiers. If you are signing up for or renewing Business Standard or Business Premium, Copilot is included. The question moved from "should we buy Copilot?" to "what are we doing with the Copilot we already have?"
| Team size | Standard / month | Standard / year | Premium / month | Premium / year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 employees | $117.50 | $1,410 | $160.00 | $1,920 |
| 10 employees | $235.00 | $2,820 | $320.00 | $3,840 |
| 15 employees | $352.50 | $4,230 | $480.00 | $5,760 |
| 25 employees | $587.50 | $7,050 | $800.00 | $9,600 |
Totals are the list per-user rate multiplied by seat count. They cover the whole Microsoft 365 subscription, not a Copilot-only charge, because the two are no longer billed separately on these plans. Verify current rates on Microsoft's pricing page before budgeting.
Take an employee whose fully loaded cost is $40 per hour — roughly an $80,000 salary once you include payroll costs. Divide the monthly seat price by that rate and you get the time the seat has to give back.
| Plan | Price | Break-even per month | Per week |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business Standard with Copilot | $23.50/user/mo | 35 minutes | ~8 minutes |
| Business Premium with Copilot | $32.00/user/mo | 48 minutes | ~11 minutes |
That is a low bar for a manager who lives in Teams meetings, a finance analyst in Excel, or an HR lead drafting policies in Word. It is an unreachable bar for someone who barely opens Microsoft 365 — and no amount of licensing changes that.
The break-even figures are an illustration at one hourly rate, not a promise of savings. Substitute your own fully loaded cost to get your number.
Microsoft bills Canadian customers in Canadian dollars at a Canadian list price. That price is set regionally and moves independently of the US figure, so converting the numbers above at today's exchange rate will give you the wrong answer. We deliberately do not republish CAD rates here — check Microsoft's Canadian pricing page for the current one.
What does transfer across regions is the structure: Copilot is bundled into the Business Standard and Business Premium tiers, it is priced per seat, and the break-even math is the seat price divided by your fully loaded hourly cost.
Widely reported adoption research puts dormant Copilot seats near two thirds of those licensed — the license is active, but the employee opened Copilot once and stopped, or never engaged at all. That was the pattern when Copilot was a deliberate $30 per seat purchase. Bundling it into a subscription most employees never think about does not improve it.
On a 15-person team on Business Standard, the annual subscription is $4,230. If most of those seats never use the AI features, you are not overpaying for software — you are underusing what you already bought. That is a training problem, and it is the cheaper half to fix: OpenSkills is $9.99 per month flat for up to 15 employees, against a per-seat subscription that scales with headcount.
Since July 1, 2026 Copilot is bundled into Microsoft 365 Business Standard at $23.50 per user per month and Business Premium at $32 per user per month on annual billing. There is no longer a separate $30 per user Copilot add-on line item for these SMB plans. Prices are Microsoft's published US list prices, checked July 2026.
Microsoft bills Canadian customers in Canadian dollars at its Canadian list price, which is set regionally and is not a straight conversion of the US figure. We do not republish CAD prices here because they change independently of the US ones — check Microsoft's Canadian pricing page for the current rate. The per-seat structure and the break-even logic on this page apply either way.
At a fully loaded cost of $40 per hour, a $23.50 Business Standard seat needs to save roughly 35 minutes of work per month — about 8 minutes a week — to pay for itself. That is achievable for meeting-heavy and document-heavy roles and unrealistic for roles that rarely open Microsoft 365 apps.
For the SMB Business plans, Copilot is now part of the subscription rather than an add-on you evaluate separately. The $30 per user per month add-on price is the pre-July-2026 arrangement and is now historical context for these plans.
You control which plan each employee is on, so you can keep some seats on a plan that includes Copilot and others on a cheaper plan. That selective approach is usually better economics than putting everyone on the top tier and hoping for adoption.
It is the largest cost on this page and it does not appear on the invoice. Widely reported adoption research puts dormant Copilot seats near two thirds of those licensed. On a 15-person team on Business Standard that is most of a $4,230 annual spend attached to features nobody opens. Training is the cheaper half of the fix.
No. OpenSkills is an independent employee training platform at $9.99 per month flat for up to 15 employees. We are not Microsoft, we are not a reseller, and we have no partnership with Microsoft. We train the people who already have Copilot.
A three-minute assessment tells you which roles on your team are ready to get value from Copilot and which ones need training before the seat pays for itself.
Microsoft, Microsoft 365, and Copilot are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. OpenSkills is an independent training platform, is not affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft, and does not resell Microsoft licenses.