Microsoft Copilot Pricing Changed and Nobody Noticed

Ask most UK businesses what Microsoft Copilot costs and you will get the same answer: about £25 per user per month. That number is out of date, and the pricing structure behind it has quietly been rebuilt. If you last looked at the Copilot business case in 2025, the maths has changed underneath you.

Key takeaways

• Microsoft's UK site now lists the enterprise Copilot add-on at £23.10 per user per month, down from the £24.70 most people still quote.
• Organisations with up to 300 users have a separate, cheaper SKU: Copilot Business at £16.10 per user per month, after Microsoft permanently cut the SMB price in December 2025.
• Bundled plans now combine a Microsoft 365 Business licence and Copilot in a single subscription, which changes the upgrade conversation entirely.
• Base plan prices rose on 1 July 2026, so the combined per-user figure is moving even where the Copilot line is not.
• The admin centre, not last year's proposal, is the source of truth for what your firm would actually pay.

Two lanes, not one price

Copilot licensing has split into two lanes and they are priced differently.

The enterprise lane is the one everyone knows. Microsoft 365 Copilot as an add-on to a qualifying plan, listed on Microsoft's UK site at £23.10 per user per month on an annual commitment, excluding VAT. That is the price at any scale and it is the equivalent of the $30 US list price.

The SMB lane is the one most firms have missed. In December 2025 Microsoft permanently reduced the price of Copilot for organisations with up to 300 users, creating the Copilot Business plan. In the UK that lists at £16.10 per user per month. Same core product, roughly a third cheaper, purely because of your seat count. A promotional rate of £13.80 ran until 30 June, and Microsoft's UK site currently shows a further discount offer on the Copilot Business add-on running from 1 July to 30 September 2026. Check the admin centre for the live price, because these offers move.

The bundles are the bigger story

Microsoft now sells plans with Copilot built in. Business Basic with Copilot, Business Standard with Copilot and Business Premium with Copilot are single subscriptions rather than a base plan plus an add-on.

When the bundles were reported in the UK in March, Business Standard with Copilot started at £16.94 per user per month and Business Premium with Copilot at £24.63. Base plan prices rose on 1 July, so treat those as illustrative and confirm the current figure in the admin centre. But hold on to the shape of that second number. Business Premium with Copilot, meaning the full security stack of Defender for Business, Intune and sensitivity labels plus the full Copilot experience, now costs about what the Copilot add-on alone did a year ago.

For an accountancy practice or professional services firm under 300 users, that reframes the decision. The question is no longer whether Copilot justifies £25 on top of everything else. It is whether Business Premium with Copilot at a similar all-in figure is the licence your fee earners should simply be on.

The July price rises underneath

While Copilot got cheaper for smaller firms, the base plans underneath got more expensive. Microsoft announced global price increases in December 2025 that took effect on 1 July 2026, applying at your first renewal after that date.

In US list terms, Microsoft 365 E3 rose from $36 to $39, E5 from $57 to $60 and Business Standard to $14, while frontline worker plans rose by as much as 33%. Business Premium stayed put. There is also a new top tier: Microsoft 365 E7 launched on 1 May at $99 per user per month, bundling E5, Copilot, the Entra Suite and Agent 365. We covered what that means for UK organisations in our Cowork, Agent 365 and E7 explainer.

The practical effect is that the gap between a base plan alone and a base plan with Copilot has narrowed from both directions. The base got dearer, Copilot got cheaper for SMBs and the bundles compress the difference further.

What this means in practice

Three things worth doing before your next renewal.

Reprice the business case with today's numbers. If your board saw a proposal built on £24.70 per user across the whole firm, the real figure for a sub-300-seat firm licensing the right people is materially lower. A 50-person practice putting 20 fee earners on Copilot Business is looking at roughly £3,900 a year at list, before any promotional discount.

Quote the combined figure, not the sticker. Copilot always needs a qualifying base plan, so the number that matters is base plus Copilot per user. The bundles make that arithmetic simpler, and in some cases cheaper, than buying the pieces separately.

Check your renewal date against the July rises. New base pricing applies at your first renewal after 1 July 2026. If yours is coming up, budget on the new figures and use the moment to right-size who actually needs which licence, because blanket licensing is still the most expensive mistake in Copilot procurement.

One more change worth knowing

Pricing is not the only thing that moved this spring. From 15 April 2026 the free Copilot experience split by organisation size, and unlicensed users in tenants with more than 2,000 seats lost Copilot inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. If you have been relying on the free tier as an informal pilot, our Basic vs Premium breakdown covers exactly what each tier now includes.

Getting the numbers right for your firm

Pricing pages give you list prices. What they do not tell you is which of your people would generate a return at £16.10 or £23.10 a month, and which would leave a licence idle. That is the conversation we have with clients before anyone buys anything, usually alongside Copilot training that makes sure the licences that are bought actually get used.

If you want a straight answer on what Copilot should cost your firm under the current pricing, get in touch. All figures in this post are Microsoft UK list prices excluding VAT, correct as of 17 July 2026, and worth confirming in your admin centre before you commit.