Microsoft's free AI assistant built into Windows 11 and Microsoft services, offering GPT-powered conversations with real-time web access and seamless ecosystem integration - the main competitor to ChatGPT's free tier.
Microsoft's answer to ChatGPT - a free AI assistant that's built right into Windows. Ask questions, generate images, get help with tasks, and search the web, all from your taskbar without opening a browser.
Microsoft Copilot is an AI Chat assistant that delivers GPT-4-powered conversations with real-time Bing web access, DALL-E 3 image generation, and deep Windows 11 integration, available free to all users with an optional Copilot Pro tier at $20/month. It's designed for Windows users, students, and Microsoft 365 subscribers who want an AI companion embedded into their daily computing workflow.
Launched in February 2023 (initially as Bing Chat) and rebranded to Copilot in late 2023, Microsoft's consumer AI assistant represents one of the largest deployments of generative AI in history, reaching billions of Windows users worldwide. Built on OpenAI's GPT-4 (and more recently GPT-4 Turbo and custom Microsoft Prometheus models), Copilot combines conversational intelligence with live web search, making it one of the few free AI chat tools that doesn't suffer from training data cutoffs. Users can invoke Copilot directly from the Windows 11 taskbar, the Edge sidebar, or the dedicated copilot.microsoft.com web app, and ask it to summarize webpages, draft emails, generate images, write code, or research topics with cited sources.
The platform's headline feature is its tight coupling with the Microsoft ecosystem â Copilot can read the page you're viewing in Edge, reference files in OneDrive (with Copilot Pro), and hand off complex document work to Microsoft 365 apps. Compared to the 25+ other AI chat tools in our directory, Copilot's distinguishing advantage is zero-cost access to GPT-4-class intelligence paired with live web data, a combination that typically requires a $20/month ChatGPT Plus subscription elsewhere. Image generation via DALL-E 3 is included free with a daily 'boost' allowance, and Copilot Pro subscribers get priority access during peak hours, faster image generation (100 boosts/day), and Copilot integration inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote.
Based on our analysis of 870+ AI tools, Microsoft Copilot stands out for users already invested in Windows and Microsoft 365 â it's effectively the default AI layer of the Microsoft stack. However, power users may find the 30-turn conversation cap, stricter content filters, and slightly slower feature rollouts compared to ChatGPT to be friction points that push them toward competitors.
Was this helpful?
Copilot combines OpenAI's GPT-4 model with real-time Bing search, meaning answers reflect today's news, prices, and events rather than stale training data. Every factual claim includes clickable source links, letting users verify information without leaving the chat.
Free users can generate images with OpenAI's DALL-E 3 directly inside chat, receiving roughly 15 daily 'boosts' for fast generation and unlimited slower queued generation. Copilot Pro subscribers get 100 boosts per day and priority access during peak times.
On Windows 11, Copilot is one click away from the taskbar and can execute system-level commands like toggling dark mode, taking screenshots, or launching apps. This turns the AI from a chatbot into a lightweight OS assistant, unique among the AI chat tools in our directory.
The Copilot sidebar in Microsoft Edge reads the page you're viewing and answers questions about its content â summarizing articles, extracting data from tables, or translating foreign text. It works on any website and eliminates the need to copy-paste content into a separate chat window.
Copilot supports natural voice conversations with spoken responses, plus image and document uploads for visual analysis and summarization. Users can photograph a math problem, a foreign menu, or a broken appliance and receive explanations, translations, or troubleshooting steps.
$0
$20/month
Ready to get started with Microsoft Copilot?
View Pricing Options âWe believe in transparent reviews. Here's what Microsoft Copilot doesn't handle well:
Weekly insights on the latest AI tools, features, and trends delivered to your inbox.
Throughout 2025 and into 2026, Microsoft rolled out Copilot Voice (natural spoken conversations), Copilot Vision (screen-aware assistance in Edge), Copilot Pages (collaborative AI canvases), and 'Think Deeper' reasoning mode powered by OpenAI's o1-series models. The consumer Copilot also gained Copilot Daily podcast-style briefings and a redesigned homepage positioning it as an 'AI companion' rather than a search tool.
AI Chat
OpenAI's flagship AI assistant featuring GPT-4o and reasoning models with multimodal capabilities, advanced code generation, DALL-E image creation, web browsing, and collaborative editing across six pricing tiers from free to enterprise.
AI Models
Claude: Anthropic's AI assistant with advanced reasoning, extended thinking, coding tools, and context windows up to 1M tokens â available as a consumer product and developer API.
AI Models
Google's flagship AI assistant combining real-time web search, multimodal understanding, and native Google Workspace integration for productivity-focused users.
Research Agents
AI research assistant that provides accurate, real-time answers with comprehensive citations. Combines search and language models for reliable information discovery and research.
Development Platforms
Anthropic Console is the official developer platform for managing Claude AI API access, monitoring usage, generating API keys, and building AI-powered applications with comprehensive project management and team collaboration tools.
No reviews yet. Be the first to share your experience!
Get started with Microsoft Copilot and see if it's the right fit for your needs.
Get Started âTake our 60-second quiz to get personalized tool recommendations
Find Your Perfect AI Stack âExplore 20 ready-to-deploy AI agent templates for sales, support, dev, research, and operations.
Browse Agent Templates âBusinesses using chatbots report up to 30% reductions in customer service costs, according to [IBM's research on virtual agents](https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/chatbots). Yet most teams still assume building a chatbot requires hiring a developer or learning Python. That assumpt
Tested 10 ChatGPT alternatives head-to-head. Honest breakdown of Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, DeepSeek, and more â with real pricing and pros/cons.
A three-person e-commerce team shipped a WhatsApp bot last month that books demos, answers product questions, and hands off to sales. It was built in an afternoon by a marketer who has never written a line of JavaScript. That is the bar for no-code chatbot builders this year.
A support bot trained on a 48-page help-center export and deployed to a site widget took **11 minutes end-to-end** in our fastest test run this month. No Python, no repo, no developer rotations. The no-code category split in 2025 between retrieval-first tools (point at docs, get