Don’t choose on which one is smarter.
It’s the comparison everyone writes, and it’s the least useful. Both are good enough at ordinary business writing that the difference won’t decide whether your work improves. What decides it is whether the tool can reach the documents, email and meetings your work runs on, and what it takes to get it there.
That used to be a simple split: one lived inside your files and the other didn’t. Now both can reach your content, and the difference has moved to how much setup sits in between, who has to do it and where your content is processed.
What separates them?
Where each one starts from.
Copilot begins inside your Microsoft 365 tenant, so it can work from what the person asking already has permission to open. Nothing outside that tenant gets that for free. ChatGPT begins from what you put in front of it, and everything beyond that has to be connected deliberately.
What’s changed is that connecting ChatGPT to your content is now routine, so it’s no reason to rule it out.
Does it matter which model is smarter?
Less than the marketing around it suggests.
OpenAI released a new flagship model at the start of September, and Microsoft announced a substantial reshaping of Copilot three weeks later. Both will happen again. If you pick a platform because of where the benchmarks sat in a particular month, you’ll be repicking it every quarter, and the migration costs more than the difference ever gave you.
Benchmark gaps are real in a laboratory and rarely survive contact with an ordinary Tuesday. What does survive is what the tool can reach, what it costs and whether your people know which one to open.
What does it take to let ChatGPT see your files?
More than a toggle. This is the part worth knowing before anyone promises it in a meeting.
ChatGPT reaches outside content through what OpenAI now calls apps, packaged as plugins. The Microsoft ones are there: SharePoint, Outlook mail and calendar, and Teams, alongside Google Drive, Slack, Box, Notion and others. Personal OneDrive isn’t supported, only the work or school kind.
Setting it up runs on two layers. An administrator enables the app for the workspace, then each person authorises their own account against it, so nobody sees more than they already had. For live SharePoint access the permissions have to be granted in both ChatGPT and Microsoft Entra, and OpenAI’s own setup documentation notes the two administrator roles may be held by different people. That’s a scheduling problem as much as a technical one.
The deeper version, where ChatGPT indexed your SharePoint so it could search across all of it, no longer exists. OpenAI retired the individually authorised kind in August 2026 and the administrator-managed kind on 16 October, so live, fetch-on-request access is what’s left.
None of that should put you off. Just know who’s doing it and when, before you find the dependency halfway through.
Does any of this work differently in Australia?
Less than it did when I first wrote this.
Until 16 October 2026, the indexed SharePoint and Teams option wasn’t offered in an Australian region for workspaces with data residency switched on. OpenAI has since retired that option everywhere, so every workspace that connects SharePoint or Teams now uses the live connection.
What still differs is where the work happens. ChatGPT Enterprise and Edu workspaces set up with data residency can store content in Australia, but OpenAI offers in-region processing only in Europe, the United States and the United Arab Emirates.
So ask where your content is processed as well as where it’s stored, and ask Microsoft the same question about Copilot.
Whether yours is stored here depends on whether the workspace was set up with data residency, which only Enterprise and Edu offer. An owner can see the region under Workspace settings, then General. If you don’t know, the person who set up your ChatGPT workspace does, and it’s worth asking before someone promises the board that everything stays onshore. It’s also the kind of detail that changes between when I write it and when you read it, so check it yourself before you quote me. I’ve set out how to think about what goes into these tools in whether it’s safe to put client information into AI tools.
What does Copilot reach, and what does it cost?
Your tenant, natively. The cost question has become the more interesting half.
Because Copilot lives inside Microsoft 365, it works from your documents, mail and meetings without any of the connection work above. That’s why it rewards an organised tenant. It also inherits your existing permissions and the state of your content, so a messy SharePoint produces messy answers.
Microsoft has been widening that reach. Late September brought federated connectors that reach third-party systems in real time without storing your data in Microsoft’s services, along with better controls for marking which sites are authoritative and a dashboard for watching consumption.
That last one matters, because the pricing shape is moving. Microsoft sells Copilot both bundled into some business plans and as a paid add-on to others, so two firms both on Microsoft 365 can be in quite different positions. On top of that sits usage-based billing for the heavier work. Microsoft had planned to switch it on by default for new Microsoft 365 Copilot Business licences bought through the partner channel from 2 November, has moved that to 1 December and says the change won’t reach Australia at first. Where it applies, each user gets a default limit of 4,000 Copilot Credits a month, which an admin can change.
It takes about ten minutes to settle which one you’re in. Open the billing section of your Microsoft 365 admin centre and look at what you’re paying for line by line. If a reseller handles that for you, send them three questions in one email. Is Copilot included in our current licences or billed as an add-on? What changes at our next renewal? Is usage-based billing switched on for our tenant? The third question is the one people forget, and it’s the one that produces an unexpected invoice.
One caution on the newest announcement. In late September Microsoft set out a substantially reshaped Copilot built around three pieces, and it reads impressively. It isn’t generally available: it’s rolling into a preview programme on terms that carry no service commitment, a tenant administrator has to opt in and there’s no published pricing.
The thing I took away most usefully from Microsoft is how far an announcement sits from something you can actually buy. Inside a company that size the two feel like the same event. From a customer’s desk they can be quarters apart, and sometimes the thing that ships is narrower than the thing that was described. So treat late September as direction, and budget for what ships.
Who’s telling you the answer?
Usually someone with a reason to prefer one of them.
I spent eight years in channel sales at Microsoft across Asia Pacific, the last two inside Microsoft AI as technical sales lead, and the part worth passing on is how channels work. Partners are paid differently on different products, and those arrangements change, sometimes quarterly. That is not a scandal and it is not unique to Microsoft. It is simply how almost all enterprise software reaches a customer, and my own business has incentives too. But it means a recommendation arrives through a structure the buyer cannot see, and the honest response to that is better questions rather than suspicion.
The second thing is that there’s no single front door, and I’m my own evidence for it. I ran the Asia Pacific partner channel for Microsoft Advertising, which became part of Microsoft AI, and I could have told you a great deal about how search advertising reached customers through partners in that region. I used Microsoft 365 and Copilot every day. And I could have told you nothing useful about your Microsoft 365 licensing. Different part of the company, different people, different incentives. So “ask Microsoft” gives you nowhere to start. Find one named person and ask them one specific question.
The third is that the names move constantly. In the past year alone OpenAI has gone from connectors to apps to plugins for the same idea, and Microsoft renamed its Microsoft 365 Copilot app to Microsoft Copilot. Anyone who has worked inside a large software company stops treating the label as the thing. When someone tells you what a product is called, ask what it does and what it reaches, because the name will have changed by the next renewal and the capability probably won’t have.
Do you have to choose at all?
Often not. Plenty of firms run both.
That works when each has a stated job. It stops working the moment nobody can say which is for what, because then two people doing the same task produce work that doesn’t sound like it came from one business. Getting a team to work the same way is its own job, and I’ve written about it in getting a team using AI consistently.
What if you want to switch?
Plan it as a migration. Instructions get rewritten, saved work moves across and you run both for a while until the change settles. It takes longer than the ten minutes people expect, and the cost lands on whoever was most productive with the old tool.
It’s worth doing when the other tool does a specific job materially better for you. It’s rarely worth doing on a general impression that the other one is cleverer this month.
Where does that leave a firm your size?
With a shorter decision than the internet suggests.
Work out whether the jobs you care about run on your own documents or start from a blank page. If they run on your documents and you’re already paying Microsoft, start there, because the access you’re comparing is the thing you’ve already bought. If they start from a blank page, that advantage stops mattering and you’re choosing on preference.
Then the housekeeping: three jobs, none of them technical.
Find out what people are actually signed into. Ask, and make it safe to answer honestly. Then look at the last few months of company card statements, where personal subscriptions show up as small recurring charges. Those are the accounts you don’t control and can’t switch off when someone leaves.
Write down which tool is for which job. A short list will do: proposals here, research there, anything with client names in it on the approved plan only. People follow a rule they can remember. It’s also the written standard good AI training should leave behind.
Name someone who owns the answer. By name, including the weeks when nobody has time. Without that, the decision quietly reverts to whoever asked most recently.
You can see how I work through that with a team in Copilot training or ChatGPT training, read the longer view on each in Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT and compare the rest on the AI platforms page. Or tell us what your team uses on a discovery call, and I’ll come back afterwards with what I’d change first.
FAQ
Is Copilot or ChatGPT better for business?
They’re better at different things. Copilot works from the documents, mail and meetings inside your Microsoft 365 tenant without any setup, because it already lives there. ChatGPT works from what you give it, and can reach SharePoint, Outlook and Teams once someone connects it. If the work depends on content you already hold, the question is how much setup you’re willing to do.
Can ChatGPT see our company files?
Yes, if you connect it. The Microsoft apps are available on the business plans, and a person only ever sees what their own account already had permission to open. It can’t see anything by default, which is a different statement from “can’t see anything at all”, and the difference matters when someone tells you an outside tool is automatically safer.
Which is cheaper?
Often Copilot, because it may already be included in what you pay Microsoft. Check whether you hold a plan with it bundled or whether it’s an add-on, since Microsoft sells it both ways. Then check what the heavier usage-based work would cost on top, because that part is billed separately from the seat.
Do we need both?
Some firms legitimately do, and that’s fine when each has a job written down. It stops being fine when nobody can say which is for what. Two subscriptions and no decision is worse than one subscription and a clear rule.
Does it matter that a new model just came out?
Rarely. A new flagship arrives every few months on both sides, and the ranking swaps back. Choose on what the tool can reach and what it costs to run, because those change more slowly and they’re the things you’ll live with.
We keep our data in Australia. Does that change the answer?
Less than it used to. The indexed SharePoint and Teams option that wasn’t offered in an Australian region has been retired everywhere, so every workspace that connects them now uses the live connection. ChatGPT Enterprise and Edu workspaces set up with data residency can store content in Australia, but in-region processing is offered only in Europe, the United States and the United Arab Emirates, so ask where your content is processed as well as where it’s stored.
Microsoft, Copilot, ChatGPT, OpenAI, Claude and Gemini are trademarks of their respective owners. Korbai is independent and not affiliated with, endorsed by or a partner of any of them.
