When Microsoft first launched its Copilot Pro plan last year and wanted an extra $20 a month on top of a Microsoft 365 Family or Personal subscription to get AI-powered Office features, it seemed like a tall ask. After bundling Office AI features into Microsoft 365 subscriptions earlier this year, Microsoft is now taking the next step of merging Copilot Pro and Microsoft 365 into a new Microsoft 365 Premium subscription.
“It’s really going to be our most powerful AI and productivity subscription for any individual,” says Gareth Oystryk, senior director of marketing for Copilot Pro and Microsoft 365, in an interview with The Verge. “It brings together our trusted collection of productivity apps with Copilot built-in, along with our highest Copilot usage limits and exclusive features.”
Microsoft 365 Premium will be priced at $19.99 per month, the same price as OpenAI’s ChatGPT Plus subscription, and will include Microsoft’s highest usage limits in features like GPT-4o image generation and voice, as well as Copilot Podcasts, Deep Research, Vision, and Actions. It will also include all of the Microsoft 365 Family benefits, with access to Office desktop apps for six people, 1TB of storage per person, and more.
“We created this subscription really for any solopreneur, professional, or high achiever looking to tackle the most demanding productivity tasks with AI at their side,” Oystryk says. “When you look at the value you get with this plan at this price point, and you stack that against the competition, you’re going to find that the value is pretty undeniable.”
That competition is clearly ChatGPT Plus. OpenAI markets ChatGPT Plus as a productivity subscription, with extended access to GPT-5 and higher limits on messaging, file uploads, data analysis, and image generation. Microsoft 365 Premium has the added benefit of access to Office desktop apps with Copilot features built straight into them, as well as 1TB of cloud storage per person.
As Sumit Chauhan, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Office Product Group, told me earlier this week: “Productivity is our DNA, we’re Office. While others will try to replicate us, there is no substitute for the real thing.”
Microsoft is also opening up access to its Researcher and Analyst reasoning agents to Microsoft 365 Premium, and they’ll both be available in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel apps soon.
Perhaps the most intriguing part of Microsoft’s 365 Premium launch is how it and Microsoft’s existing Family and Personal subscriptions will now allow consumers to enable Microsoft’s AI features in their Office apps at work. “We have seen a lot of employees, all over the place, bringing their own AI to work,” Oystryk says. “With Microsoft 365 Premium, along with Personal and Family, you can actually bring Copilot to work with you.”
Microsoft will now light up the Microsoft 365 Copilot features your workplace would normally have to pay a subscription for if you have your own Microsoft 365 Premium, Family, or Personal account. All you have to do is sign into your work version of Office with your personal Microsoft account, and it will enable the AI features inside your work Office apps.
It essentially enables the Microsoft 365 Copilot license, while maintaining all the usual security, compliance, and enterprise data protection features to ensure corporate data isn’t shared with your personal Microsoft account. “This capability works with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Outlook on Windows PCs, Mac, iPad, and more,” Oystryk says. “It doesn’t work on the web… but in the apps that most people use you can sign in and apply that capability.” IT admins will be able to enable or disable the sign-in functionality, too.
Unfortunately, Microsoft is still limiting the ability to unlock AI features in Office at work or at home to the main account holder for Microsoft 365 Family or Premium subscriptions. “We definitely have feedback from our customers to offer some kind of sharing, so we are evaluating some options there,” Oystryk says.
Existing Personal and Family subscribers will also get GPT-4o image generation and voice access, with higher usage limits than the free Copilot tier. Copilot Chat, which was previously only available for Microsoft 365 commercial customers, is also coming to all consumer subscriptions.
All of these changes effectively mean the end of Copilot Pro, which remained in place for power users to get priority access to the latest AI models and higher usage limits after Microsoft bundled Office AI features with Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions earlier this year.
“Copilot Pro is not entirely going away, but we will stop selling it,” Oystryk admits. “We’re not automatically opting-in Copilot Pro subscribers to Microsoft 365 Premium. We have no timing yet of if and when we’ll discontinue it.”
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