Guide
Copilot license price and licensing: what you need before Copilot works in Word, Excel and Teams
Copilot Chat comes with eligible Microsoft 365 plans. The full experience across your files, mail and meetings is a paid add-on — worth piloting before buying for everyone.
Updated 28 September 2026
Copilot license price is the first question most Malaysian organisations ask, and the answer depends on which Copilot you mean and which Microsoft 365 plan you already have.
- Microsoft sells Copilot for work in two layers.
- Copilot Chat is included with eligible Microsoft 365 subscriptions at no extra cost.
- The paid add-on gives Copilot access to the organisation’s own emails, meetings, chats and files, and the full experience inside the Office apps.
- Most of the confusion about “Copilot licence price” comes from not knowing which layer a team already has.
- The names are also changing.
- Microsoft’s documentation now states that “Microsoft 365 Copilot is now named Microsoft Copilot, and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is now named Microsoft Copilot Chat”, while its Malaysian pricing pages still use the older names.
- This guide uses both where it helps you match what you see.
- Facts are from Microsoft Learn and microsoft.com (Malaysia), read on 28 September 2026.
Copilot Chat versus the paid Copilot licence
Microsoft describes Copilot Chat as a secure AI chat grounded mainly in the web. Users can bring work content into it by pasting it, uploading a file or opening one, and Copilot Chat in Outlook can also draw on the user’s mail, calendar and meetings. The paid licence adds what Microsoft calls broad organisational grounding across emails, meetings, chats, documents and sites the user can access, plus priority access to capabilities.
| Capability | Copilot Chat (included) | Paid Copilot licence |
|---|---|---|
| Web-grounded chat | Yes | Yes |
| Enterprise data protection | Yes | Yes |
| File uploads and analysis | Yes | Yes |
| Organisational grounding in Outlook | Within supported Outlook scenarios | Yes |
| Reasoning across all Microsoft 365 data the user can access | Limited | Yes |
| Priority access | No | Yes |
Copilot license: what you need to buy the add-on
The add-on is bought on top of a qualifying plan. Microsoft’s licensing article lists, for its business offer, Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Business Standard and Business Premium, Microsoft 365 Apps for Business, and Teams Essentials. For larger organisations it lists plans including Microsoft 365 E3 and E5, F1 and F3, and Office 365 E1, E3 and E5. The Malaysian business page states that the business offer is for up to 300 users.
Inside the apps, Microsoft labels the experience so users can tell what they have: “Premium” or “Pro” means the paid add-on; “Basic” means no add-on, with standard access that depends on tenant configuration. Microsoft also provides a Copilot License Details diagnostic for administrators to check whether a particular account meets the requirements.
Getting a price for Malaysia
Microsoft’s Malaysian website (microsoft.com/en-my) lists Copilot’s business and enterprise offers with reference prices in US dollars, excluding tax — but on 28 September 2026 every one of those offers carried the note “This product is not available in your market”. In other words, the figures on that page are not a price a Malaysian organisation can buy at online.
The practical route is a quote in your own currency from your Microsoft licensing partner or Microsoft account team, for the specific plan your tenant is on. Ask for three things in the same quote: the add-on price per user, whether it requires an annual commitment, and whether any promotion applies — Microsoft’s pages showed promotional pricing that runs for a fixed period.
Budget the pilot group first. Licensing a small group of heavy users, training them, and measuring the time saved on real tasks gives you the number that decides whether a wider rollout is worth it.
What Microsoft says about your data
Microsoft’s privacy article states that prompts and responses are processed within the Microsoft 365 service boundary with enterprise data protection, and that “Prompts and responses aren’t used to train the underlying foundation models.” It also states that Copilot “only accesses content you’re authorized to access” and “doesn’t grant access to additional organizational content”.
That second point is the one to act on before a rollout. Copilot respects existing permissions, so it will surface anything a user can already open — including files that were shared too widely years ago. Reviewing who can see sensitive SharePoint sites and folders is a sensible first step, and it is work for your IT team rather than for Copilot.
Plan a pilot before licensing everyone
Because the add-on is paid per user per year, the expensive mistake is buying for the whole company and discovering that most people use it twice. A pilot avoids that. Choose a group whose work is heavy in writing, summarising and meetings — managers, administrators, analysts — and include a few sceptics as well as enthusiasts. Give everyone in the pilot Copilot Chat as the baseline, so the comparison is between the included layer and the paid one.
Before the pilot starts, write down three or four recurring tasks per role and how long they take now: the monthly summary, the meeting follow-up, the first draft of a proposal. Measure the same tasks after six to eight weeks. That produces a case for or against wider licensing in your own numbers rather than in Microsoft’s.
Why the Copilot license pilot group should be trained
An untrained pilot measures how good people are at guessing how to use Copilot, not what Copilot can do for them. The pattern is familiar: a few people get useful results, most try a vague request, get a generic answer and stop. Training the pilot group on its own documents, mail and meetings — what makes a useful prompt, which tasks it saves time on, and when an answer must be checked — makes the pilot a fair test.
Our one-day Copilot course is built for this stage, and it needs a working licence on each participant’s laptop. It is HRDF claimable where the provider and course are registered and the grant is approved before training, with the in-house course fee capped at RM10,500 per group per full day under the January 2026 cost matrix.
Questions
›Do we need to pay for Copilot to use it at work?
Not for Copilot Chat, which Microsoft includes with eligible Microsoft 365 subscriptions at no extra cost. The paid add-on is needed for Copilot to work across your organisation’s mail, meetings, chats and files, and for the full experience in the Office apps.
›Which Microsoft 365 plans can add Copilot?
Microsoft’s licensing article lists Business Basic, Standard and Premium, Apps for Business and Teams Essentials for the business offer, and enterprise plans including Microsoft 365 E3, E5, F1 and F3 and Office 365 E1, E3 and E5. Check the article for the full current list, as Microsoft updates it.
›What does a Copilot licence cost in Malaysia?
There is no online Malaysian price to quote. On 28 September 2026, Microsoft’s Malaysian website listed the Copilot offers in US dollars, excluding tax, and marked each as “not available in your market”. Ask your Microsoft licensing partner or account team for a quote in ringgit for your specific plan.
›Is our data used to train Copilot?
Microsoft states that prompts and responses are not used to train the underlying foundation models, and that they are processed within the Microsoft 365 service boundary with enterprise data protection.
›How many people should be in a Copilot pilot?
Enough to cover the roles you expect to license and small enough to train properly — for many organisations that is one or two in-house training groups. What matters more than the number is measuring the same tasks before and after.
Get a quote for HRDF claimable Microsoft training
Tell us the course, your team size, where you are and whether you pay the HRDF levy. Within one working day you get a suggested course shape, next steps on a quote, and how to claim it through HRDF.