⚠️ The Naming Problem
Microsoft calls at least four different products "Copilot." This article is specifically about Microsoft 365 Copilot (the one in Word/Excel/Teams) versus GitHub Copilot (the one in VS Code). If you're confused, you're not alone — and that confusion costs companies money.
Contents
  1. TL;DR — The 60-second answer
  2. What Microsoft 365 Copilot actually does
  3. What GitHub Copilot actually does
  4. Side-by-side comparison
  5. Pricing breakdown (2026)
  6. Who needs which one
  7. Do you need both?
  8. Verdict

TL;DR — The 60-Second Answer

Here's the short version before we go deep:

🔵 Microsoft 365 Copilot

  • For knowledge workers
  • Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams, PowerPoint
  • Summarizes meetings, drafts emails, analyzes spreadsheets
  • $30/user/month
  • Requires M365 Business Standard or higher

⚫ GitHub Copilot

  • For software developers
  • VS Code, JetBrains, Visual Studio, CLI
  • Autocompletes code, explains functions, writes tests
  • $10–$39/user/month depending on plan
  • Works standalone or with GitHub repos

Bottom line: If your team has salespeople, marketers, managers, and ops people → M365 Copilot. If your team writes code → GitHub Copilot. If both → potentially both, but read the section on whether you actually need both before deciding.

What Microsoft 365 Copilot Actually Does

Microsoft 365 Copilot is an AI layer bolted onto the apps your non-technical staff already use all day. It was built for the worker who's drowning in Teams calls, email threads, and spreadsheets — not the one writing Python scripts.

Where it lives

What makes it useful (and what doesn't)

M365 Copilot is genuinely useful for reducing meeting overhead and email drafting time. The Teams integration specifically — where it transcribes a meeting and delivers a bullet-point summary with action items 30 seconds after the call ends — is the feature that drives the most obvious ROI. People stop saying "can you send me the notes?" because the notes just appear.

Where it underdelivers: Excel analysis is inconsistent. PowerPoint generation saves time but usually needs heavy editing. And the $30/user/month price tag is only justifiable if your company actually deploys it — which requires real change management, not just flipping a license switch.

💡 The adoption problem
Microsoft's own data suggests 40–60% of M365 Copilot seats go unused 90 days after deployment. The product doesn't train itself. Companies that don't invest in adoption see their $30/user investment evaporate. This is why training material matters — and why we built a guide specifically for this.

What GitHub Copilot Actually Does

GitHub Copilot is a coding assistant. It sits inside your IDE and helps developers write, understand, and review code faster. It was trained on public GitHub repositories and is powered by models from OpenAI (and increasingly integrated with Anthropic and Google models in the Enterprise tier).

Where it lives

The three tiers matter here

GitHub Copilot isn't one product — it's three, with meaningfully different capabilities:

Most companies deploying to a dev team should be on Business, not Individual — the policy controls and IP indemnity alone justify it for any organization with compliance requirements.

Side-by-Side Comparison

Factor Microsoft 365 Copilot GitHub Copilot
Primary user Knowledge workers (sales, ops, marketing, managers) Software developers
Lives in Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams, PowerPoint VS Code, JetBrains, GitHub.com, CLI
Core job Summarize meetings, draft emails, analyze spreadsheets Autocomplete code, explain code, write tests
Starting price $30/user/month $10/user/month (Individual)
Business tier $30/user/month (no cheaper tier) $19/user/month
Requires other sub? Yes — M365 Business Standard+ No — standalone product
Overlap with each other Minimal Minimal
Biggest complaint Adoption rate drops without training Context window limits in large codebases
ROI timeline 3–6 months with proper deployment Weeks — measurable productivity gain fast
Admin controls Via Microsoft 365 Admin Center Via GitHub org settings (Business/Enterprise)

Pricing Breakdown (2026)

M365 Copilot
$30
per user / month
Requires M365 Business Standard ($12.50/user) or higher
GitHub Copilot Business
$19
per user / month
Most common choice for dev teams
Both (dev team member)
$49
per user / month
M365 Copilot + GitHub Copilot Business

The real cost question for most companies is whether M365 Copilot's $30/user is delivering $30/user of value. That's not a question about the product — it's a question about adoption. GitHub Copilot tends to show ROI faster because developers feel the impact in the first week.

⚠️ Watch the M365 bundle math
Microsoft 365 Business Standard is $12.50/user/month. Add M365 Copilot at $30/user/month and you're at $42.50/user just for the Microsoft productivity stack. For a 50-person company, that's $25,500/year before you add anything else. Make sure the seats are actually being used before expanding the license count.

Who Needs Which One

Buy Microsoft 365 Copilot for:

Do NOT buy it for these people: anyone who doesn't use Word/Excel/Outlook/Teams as their primary work surface. Buying M365 Copilot for a developer who lives in VS Code is pure waste.

Buy GitHub Copilot for:

Do NOT buy it for: non-technical staff. GitHub Copilot in Outlook is not a thing. The product only makes sense if the person writes code.

Do You Need Both?

This is the real question for most technology companies. You've got a mixed team — developers, product managers, designers, salespeople, ops. Do you roll out both?

The honest answer: probably yes, but to different people.

The products don't overlap. A developer who gets GitHub Copilot for their IDE does not automatically get meeting summaries in Teams. A sales manager who gets M365 Copilot doesn't get code suggestions. They serve completely different workflows.

The only scenario where you might legitimately skip one of them is a very small team (under 10) that is almost entirely developers — in which case GitHub Copilot has the clear ROI, and M365 Copilot is harder to justify unless the non-dev members are heavy Teams/Outlook users.

✅ Quick Decision Guide

Verdict

Microsoft 365 Copilot and GitHub Copilot are not competitors. They don't fight for the same user. The confusion comes entirely from Microsoft's decision to brand everything with the Copilot name — a marketing choice that is genuinely making enterprise IT decisions harder.

The actual decision is straightforward once you see the products clearly:

The company that wins with both products is the one that segments its workforce carefully, rolls each product out with deliberate training, and measures actual usage — not just license counts.

Get Your Team Actually Using Copilot

Our Microsoft Copilot Team Guide covers role-specific workflows, prompts that actually work, and a 30-day adoption playbook. Built for IT leads and managers who need to show results — not just get licenses activated.

Get the Copilot Guide — $29 →

Related: The 5 Microsoft Copilot Rollout Mistakes That Kill Adoption · GitHub Copilot Enterprise: What Your Dev Team Actually Needs to Know