Microsoft Copilot for a business in Ireland costs €18.20 per user per month paid yearly as an add-on to a Microsoft 365 Business plan, with a first-year offer of €15.60 until 31 December 2026, excluding VAT. Enterprise plans pay €26.00. Copilot Chat is included free with eligible Microsoft 365 plans. Before you buy, fix who can see what in SharePoint and OneDrive, because Copilot shows users everything they already have access to. ERS IT Solutions, a Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider in Dublin 15 since 1983, helps businesses do that groundwork.
How much does Microsoft Copilot cost in Ireland?
Microsoft's Irish price list, checked on 28 October 2026, shows these prices per user per month, excluding VAT (Microsoft Copilot pricing):
| Option | Paid yearly | Paid monthly | Who it is for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Copilot Chat | Included | Included | Anyone with an eligible Microsoft 365 plan |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot Business (add-on) | €18.20, or €15.60 first-year offer | €21.84 | Businesses up to 300 users |
| Microsoft 365 Business Standard with Copilot | €20.36 | €24.43 | New customers wanting both in one plan |
| Microsoft 365 Business Premium with Copilot | €27.73 | €33.28 | New customers wanting security plus Copilot |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot (enterprise add-on) | €26.00 | Organisations on E3, E5 or frontline plans |
The enterprise add-on price is from Microsoft's Irish enterprise plans page (Microsoft enterprise plans, as listed in September 2026). Microsoft 365 E7, at €91.92 per user per month on the same page, includes Copilot.
What are the recent Copilot pricing changes?
Three changes matter in 2026. First, Microsoft now sells Copilot Business, a version for organisations with up to 300 users on Business plans, at a lower price than the enterprise add-on (Microsoft Learn). Second, the €15.60 promotional price runs from 1 July to 31 December 2026, needs an annual commitment, applies to the first year only and is only for existing customers with an eligible Business plan. Third, Microsoft notes that some advanced features, such as Copilot Cowork and Autopilot, are billed by usage on top of the licence (Microsoft Copilot pricing).
Microsoft has also renamed the products. "Microsoft 365 Copilot is now named Microsoft Copilot, and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is now named Microsoft Copilot Chat" (Microsoft Learn), though licences and invoices may still use the old names for a while.
How much does Copilot Studio cost?
Copilot Studio, the tool for building your own agents, is billed in Copilot Credits. You can buy prepaid credit packs, prepurchase credits for a year through Azure, or pay as you go through an Azure subscription and pay only for credits used each month (Microsoft Learn). In June 2026 Microsoft's Irish site listed a pack of 25,000 Copilot Credits per month at €173.30, paid yearly, excluding VAT. The pack price was no longer shown on the Irish Power Apps page in October 2026, so ask for a current quote.
Users who already have a Copilot licence can use agents in Copilot Chat, Teams and SharePoint for some tasks without those tasks counting against Copilot Studio credits (Microsoft Learn).
Copilot Chat vs Microsoft 365 Copilot: what is the difference?
Copilot Chat is the free version. It is a secure AI chat with enterprise data protection, mostly grounded in web data and in files you upload or paste in. In Outlook it can also answer questions about your inbox and calendar. It does not reason across all your company files, chats and meetings (Microsoft Learn).
The paid licence connects Copilot to your organisation's data through Microsoft Graph and Work IQ: emails, meetings, chats, documents, SharePoint sites and files the user can access. It also gives Copilot inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Teams, priority access to newer models and advanced agents.
| Copilot Chat (free) | Microsoft Copilot (paid) | |
|---|---|---|
| Web-grounded chat | Yes | Yes |
| Enterprise data protection | Yes | Yes |
| Upload and analyse files | Yes | Yes |
| Reasoning across all your Microsoft 365 data | Limited | Yes |
| Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams | Limited | Yes |
| Advanced agents | Limited | Yes |
Start every user on Copilot Chat. Buy paid licences for the people who spend their day in email, meetings and documents, and measure whether it saves them time.
How does Microsoft Copilot work?
When a user asks Copilot something, it finds relevant content the user is allowed to see in Microsoft 365, adds it to the prompt and sends that to a large language model, then returns an answer with references. Microsoft says Copilot "only surfaces organizational data to which individual users have at least view permissions" and that prompts, responses and Graph data "aren't used to train foundation LLMs" (Microsoft Learn).
For Irish businesses, two points matter. Copilot is an EU Data Boundary service, so EU traffic stays within the EU Data Boundary. Models provided by Anthropic as a subprocessor are currently excluded from the EU Data Boundary, so check which models your tenant allows (Microsoft Learn).
What is a Microsoft Copilot agent?
A Copilot agent is a version of Copilot set up for one job, such as answering HR policy questions from your handbook or drafting replies from a product catalogue. You can use ready-made agents, build simple ones in SharePoint or build larger ones in Copilot Studio. Admins choose which agents are allowed. For agents that take actions across non-Microsoft systems, see our agentive AI solutions.
Microsoft Copilot vs ChatGPT: which should a business use?
The biggest difference for a business is what the tool can see. Microsoft Copilot works inside your Microsoft 365 tenant, respects your existing permissions and can draw on your email, files and meetings without anyone copying data out. ChatGPT works on what users paste in or connect to it, so the risk is staff pasting client data into a personal account.
ChatGPT Plus is a personal subscription. If you choose ChatGPT for business use, use a business plan with a data processing agreement and check its terms. If you already run Microsoft 365, Copilot Chat is the sensible default for staff because it is included and covered by your existing Microsoft agreement. Whichever you choose, write an AI usage policy so staff know which tools they may use.
How to get Microsoft 365 Copilot
You need an eligible base plan first. Copilot Business works with Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Standard, Premium, Apps for business and Teams Essentials. The enterprise Copilot add-on works with E3, E5, F1, F3 and several Office 365 plans (Microsoft Learn). Copilot Business needs an annual commitment and supports up to 300 licensed users per tenant.
You can buy directly from Microsoft or through a Cloud Solution Provider such as ERS. Through a CSP, Copilot appears on the same euro invoice as your other licences, and we assign it to the right people.
How to prepare for Microsoft Copilot: a readiness checklist
Copilot does not create new access. It makes existing access easy to use. If a salary spreadsheet sits in a SharePoint site shared with "Everyone except external users", any staff member can now ask Copilot about salaries. Microsoft's own deployment guidance starts with this problem (Microsoft Learn). Work through these steps before you assign licences:
- Run Microsoft's Copilot Optimization Assessment. Microsoft recommends completing it before deployment. It evaluates your data governance maturity and data security controls (Microsoft Learn).
- Find overshared SharePoint sites and files. Use SharePoint Advanced Management, which is included with Copilot licences, and Microsoft Purview to find sites that are overshared, ownerless or inactive, or hold sensitive data.
- Apply interim protection. Restricted Content Discovery can exclude sensitive sites from Copilot while you fix permissions. Purview data loss prevention for Copilot can stop labelled content being used.
- Fix permissions. Remove "Everyone" and company-wide sharing links, correct broken inheritance on libraries and folders, and give every site an accountable owner.
- Set safer defaults. Restrict "Anyone" links, require sensitivity labels on new sites and label sensitive documents.
- Clean up old content. Archive or delete stale files so Copilot does not quote a 2019 price list as current.
- Decide on retention. Set how long Copilot prompts and answers are kept for audit and legal reasons.
- Write an AI usage policy. Microsoft's onboarding lets you link your AI usage policy for users to review.
- Train users. Under Article 4 of the EU AI Act, organisations using AI systems must take measures to ensure "a sufficient level of AI literacy" among staff, applying since 2 February 2025 (AI Act Article 4).
- Pilot, then measure. Start with 10 to 20 heavy email and meeting users, agree what success looks like and review after six to eight weeks.
How do we fix SharePoint oversharing before Copilot?
Start with a report of sites shared with large groups or the whole company, sites with no owner and files shared by "Anyone" links. Ask each site owner to confirm who should have access, remove the rest and put sensitivity labels on finance, HR and client folders. Microsoft's site access reviews in SharePoint Advanced Management let owners do this down to file level. Expect a few days of work for a typical SME tenant.
How to use Microsoft 365 Copilot well
Copilot is most useful for work that already lives in Microsoft 365:
- Outlook: summarise a long thread, draft a reply in your tone, find what a client asked for last month.
- Teams: get meeting notes, decisions and actions, or catch up on a meeting you missed.
- Word: turn notes into a first draft, or summarise a long contract into key points.
- Excel: ask questions of a table in plain English and get a chart or formula.
- PowerPoint: build a draft deck from a Word document.
Write prompts with a goal, context, the source to use and the format you want, for example: "Using the Smith Ltd proposal and last week's emails, draft a one-page summary of open issues as bullet points." Always check the output. Microsoft says plainly that generative AI responses "aren't guaranteed to be 100% factual".
Is Microsoft Copilot worth it? An honest review
For people who spend most of the day in email, meetings and documents, the paid licence usually saves time on summarising, drafting and finding things. For staff who use Microsoft 365 lightly, Copilot Chat is enough. The quality of answers depends on the state of your data: well-organised SharePoint with current documents gives good answers, years of duplicate folders gives poor ones. That is why readiness work pays off before licence spend.
How ERS helps with Copilot
ERS supports Microsoft AI tools including Copilot through our AI enablement service: AI readiness assessments, acceptable use policies, data leakage controls, access control and user education. As part of Microsoft modern workplace and Microsoft estate management we tidy permissions and licences so Copilot sees the right data. ERS quotes per business after a short call.