Copilot, Claude or ChatGPT: which one fits your work?

This is by a wide margin the question I get most often. Usually from someone who has just heard that a colleague is paying for something and wonders whether they are missing out.

The honest answer is that they are all good. They are good at different things, and the difference is not where most people look for it. Not in which model is cleverest, but in practical matters. What your employer lets you use. Where the information you need actually sits. And how much it may cost.

I turned it into a short questionnaire. Nine questions, two minutes, and you get one recommendation with the cost that goes with it. For anyone who wants to know what they are choosing between first, here are the five.

The five, in plain terms

Copilot Chat is the free version already included in most Microsoft 365 subscriptions. You buy nothing and your business data is protected. Fine for mail, summarising and a first draft of a text. Since May of this year it has been pulled out of Word, Excel and PowerPoint for anyone without a paid licence, so you now work through the separate Copilot app instead of inside the document.

Microsoft 365 Copilot is the paid version, around €26 per person per month. The difference is that this one knows your own company data. It searches your mail, your Teams conversations, your calendar and your SharePoint in one question, and it works inside Word and Excel. For people who sit in Office all day, that is a different product from the free chat.

Copilot Cowork is not an assistant but a worker. You describe what you want delivered and it arranges the steps itself. You do not get advice back, you get a finished document. It only works on top of a paid licence and you pay per job carried out, which means the cost can climb steeply.

Claude is the strongest at long material and careful thinking. Contracts, policy documents, tenders, anything you genuinely have to work through and where nuance counts. Around $20 a month. What it does not do: it does not live in your Office apps and it makes no images or video.

ChatGPT is the widest toolbox. Besides text you can make images, video and speech with it, and it does solid online research with sources attached. Also around $20. Watch one thing: on the personal plan your conversations are used to train the model by default unless you switch that off. For client work you want the business plan.

What actually decides it

In practice three things settle it.

What you are allowed. If you work somewhere IT decides which software is permitted, the conversation is usually short. Then you choose inside Microsoft and nowhere else. That is not a disaster, but it is worth knowing beforehand rather than afterwards.

Where your information sits. This is the point people overlook most often. If the information you need is in your own mail, calendar and documents, there is only one product that gets there without a detour, and that is the paid Copilot. If you would rather supply your documents yourself, Claude and ChatGPT are fine and a good deal cheaper.

How often you use it. With daily use, any of these subscriptions pays for itself within a week in time saved. Use it a few times a month and the free chat is simply enough, so do not talk yourself into anything.

Why you probably need two

Everyone who works with these things seriously ends up on two subscriptions sooner or later. One that sits in your working environment and knows your company data, and one that thinks well.

That is not a luxury but a consequence of how they are built. Copilot knows what is going on inside your organisation but is not the sharpest thinker. Claude thinks excellently but knows nothing about your company unless you supply it. Together they cost around €45 per person per month, which is still less than an hour of a consultant.

So the questionnaire always gives two names. Your primary choice at the top, and below it what you will probably put next to it once you notice where you get stuck.

How to read the outcome

You get one recommendation with the price and three reasons why it suits you. Those reasons come straight out of your own answers, so if you disagree you can go back and change one.

Under every recommendation there is a block headed where it lets you down. I put that there deliberately. Each of these five has something it is not good at, and I think you should know that before you sign up rather than after.

Right at the bottom you see how all five scored for you. If two are close together, the choice really is not that sharp and you can comfortably take the cheaper of the two.

One more thing

Prices are indicative, exclude VAT, and reflect August 2026. This landscape shifts every few weeks, so check the current terms before you sign.

And one practical piece of advice regardless of which tool you pick. If nobody where you work has ever written down what is and is not allowed with company data, sort that out first. Not because somebody requires it, but because the conversation afterwards is a good deal less pleasant.