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AI Agents & Assistants

Microsoft 365 Copilot

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Panel rating · 6 judges · How to read the stars

Category median

Sovereignty: not determined

0–5 in half steps. 5 means the rubric's top anchor is met on the evidence.

by Microsoft Corporation · learn.microsoft.com

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Microsoft 365 Copilot: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai Microsoft 365 Copilot: AI-assisted analysis on whats-best.ai (dark)

Add ?theme=dark to the image address for dark backgrounds. The badge shows the category and the month of the latest evaluation, and EU-Made where that is the product’s provenance. It never shows a score.

Microsoft 365 Copilot at a glance

Vendor
Microsoft Corporation
Headquarters
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 26 Oct 2026
Data hosting
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 26 Oct 2026
Free plan
Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 26 Oct 2026
Panel verdict
The AI panel rates Microsoft 365 Copilot 3/5, the mean of 6 judges. Microsoft 365 Copilot is an AI assistant add-on on top of Microsoft 365, and the bench scored it strongest on data use and training and on integrations and knowledge, both at 6-8: judges cited documented commitments that prompts, responses and Graph-accessed data are not used to train foundation models, a downloadable data protection addendum, ISO 27001 and ISO 42001 certifications, and a connectors API whose grounded answers store citations to their sources. how scores are made
As of
Vendor pages captured 26 Oct 2026; evaluated by the panel 28 Oct 2026. all sources

Microsoft 365 Copilot alternatives, European ones first →

Read this page as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.

The Automation Lead

Weighted verdict

Builds the agents that file tickets, draft offers and chase approvals across the ERP, CRM and wiki. Wants tools and actions with scoped permissions, MCP and an API, approval steps before anything is sent, run logs, and a way to test an agent before the whole company uses it.

Same scores as the panel view — this lens weights them the way this judge cares.

Scored by The Automation Lead

Panel median The Automation Lead This judge’s scores over the panel median. Each label opens its reasoning below.
Scores per criterion, in stars out of 5
Criterion Panel median The Automation Lead
Data use, training & retention 3.5 of 5 3.5 of 5
Models & processing location 3 of 5 3 of 5
Admin, identity & access controls 3.5 of 5 3.5 of 5
Integrations, connectors & knowledge 3.5 of 5 3.5 of 5
Agent capabilities & guardrails 2.5 of 5 3 of 5
European sovereignty 2.5 of 5 2.5 of 5

Data use, training & retention

How this is scored

What happens to prompts, uploaded files, connected data and outputs: whether any of it trains a model (the vendor's or a model provider's), how long it is kept and where logs live, whether zero-retention is available, and whether a data processing agreement covers it.

0 — No statement on training or retention; the privacy policy is a website policy that does not cover the product.

3 — A general statement that business data is "not used for training", with no word on retention, on the model providers behind the product or on logs.

5 — Business data excluded from training by contract, retention periods stated for chats and files, and a DPA offered to business customers.

8 — No-training commitments stated for the vendor and every model provider it routes to, retention configurable by the admin (including deletion of chat history), zero-data-retention terms with the model providers named, and abuse-monitoring retention described.

10 — Data use fully accounted for: training, retention, logging and abuse monitoring stated per model provider, customer-controlled retention and deletion with an audit trail, outputs and connected data treated as customer data in the DPA, and an independent audit (SOC 2, ISO 27001 or ISO 42001) covering the product.

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The Automation Lead

Prompts, responses and Graph-accessed data are stated not to train the foundation models behind Copilot, a downloadable Data Protection Addendum covers business customers, users can delete their own Copilot history, abuse-monitoring human review is documented as opted out, and certifications include ISO 27001 and ISO 42001. The general privacy statement, though, says Microsoft "may use your data to develop and train our AI models" — enterprise agreements take precedence over it, but the captured pages give different statements on training, and I found no word on zero-data-retention terms with the named model providers or on admin-configurable retention of chat history. 3 4 5 6

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Models & processing location

How this is scored

Which models sit behind the product and who runs them, where inference and storage happen, whether the customer can pin processing to the EU, choose or exclude model providers, bring its own model or key, or run the product in its own cloud or on premises.

0 — The models behind the product and the processing location are not stated.

3 — The model family is named, but where inference runs and through which provider (the model maker, a hyperscaler, the vendor) is unstated.

5 — Models and their providers named, with an EU processing option stated for storage and at least the default model.

8 — Each available model listed with provider and inference region, EU-only processing selectable by the admin and enforced across models, model providers excludable, and bring-your-own-key or own-cloud deployment documented.

10 — Processing fully under the customer's control and documented: EU-only or on-premises inference for every feature including agents and connectors, open-weight or self-hosted models supported, data flows per feature published, and a residency commitment in the contract rather than on a marketing page.

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The Automation Lead

OpenAI and Anthropic are named as the model subprocessors behind Copilot, and EU customers get the EU Data Boundary commitment with Copilot a covered workload since March 2024. Anthropic models are stated to be excluded from that boundary, worldwide traffic can be processed in the EU and other regions, and I found no documented way for an admin to pin every model to EU processing, exclude a provider, or bring their own key. 3 4 9

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Admin, identity & access controls

How this is scored

What the IT department controls: SSO and SCIM provisioning, roles and groups, which models, agents and connectors each group may use, retrieval that respects the permissions of the source system, audit logs, usage reporting, and policies such as data-loss prevention — and whether reporting on staff use is scoped and documented.

0 — No admin features documented; accounts are individual sign-ups.

3 — A team workspace with an owner and member invitations, but no SSO, no roles and no audit log.

5 — SSO, admin and member roles, user management, and an admin view of usage.

8 — SAML/OIDC SSO with SCIM provisioning, group-based permissions for models, agents and connectors, retrieval that inherits source-system permissions, exportable audit logs, and usage analytics with documented scope.

10 — Governance a regulated company can operate: fine-grained policies (DLP, content filters, prompt and output logging rules), audit logs streamed to a SIEM, per-agent ownership and approval, usage reporting that can be aggregated or pseudonymised for works-council agreements, and every admin action logged.

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The Automation Lead

Retrieval inherits source-system permissions twice over — Copilot surfaces only data the user has at least view rights to and the Semantic Index honours the identity boundary — and admins can select which agents are allowed at all, with Purview and Content Search to manage stored interactions and Entra plus role-based access control for tenant isolation. What holds it back: the captured pages do not document SCIM provisioning, exportable audit logs, or group-level permissions per model and connector, and the scope of usage reporting is not spelled out. 2 3 7

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Integrations, connectors & knowledge

How this is scored

How the product reaches company knowledge and systems: connectors to file stores, wikis, mail, CRM, ticketing and ERP, how fast and how completely they sync, the API, support for open protocols such as MCP, and how the assistant cites the sources it answers from.

0 — No integrations; users paste text or upload files one at a time.

3 — File upload and one or two connectors (for example a drive), with no API and no statement on sync or citations.

5 — A connector library covering the common file stores, wikis and collaboration tools, answers citing sources, and a documented API.

8 — Connectors to file stores, wikis, mail, CRM and ticketing with incremental sync, custom connectors or MCP support, an API and webhooks for embedding assistants and agents in other tools, and source citations on every grounded answer.

10 — The product sits in the company's systems: read and write connectors with documented scopes, MCP servers and clients, contact-centre or telephony integration where relevant, a knowledge layer that can be audited and corrected, and the data, agents and configuration exportable when the customer leaves.

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The Automation Lead

There is a real connector pipeline — bring external data into Microsoft Graph, register schemas with semantic labels, manage access to external items — plus a documented connectors API, Graph REST APIs with SDKs, change notifications and Teams bots, and grounded answers store citations to what they used. I found no public information on MCP support or incremental sync behaviour on the captured pages, which is what an automation shop would probe next. 3 7 8

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Agent capabilities & guardrails

How this is scored

What an agent can actually do and where it stops: multi-step tasks, tool use and actions in other systems, scheduling and triggers, human approval before consequential actions, run logs, evaluation and testing before release, and the limits the vendor states rather than hides.

0 — No agents; the product is a chat window, whatever the marketing says.

3 — Saved prompts or custom assistants with instructions and files, but no actions in other systems and no run history.

5 — Agents that call tools or APIs and run multi-step tasks, built without code, with a log of each run.

8 — Agents that act in connected systems with scoped permissions, human approval configurable per action, triggers and schedules, test and evaluation tooling before release, and documented limits and failure handling.

10 — Agents a business can put in production and account for: versioning and staged rollout, evaluation against test sets, monitoring of quality and cost per agent, handover to a human with full context, every action attributable to the agent and the person who deployed it, and the vendor's own statement of what agents must not be trusted with.

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The Automation Lead

Copilot Studio builds agents on a visual canvas with pre-built tools, the Agents Toolkit deploys across Copilot, Teams, web and third-party messaging channels, and agents can be created, tested and deployed from Visual Studio Code — so there is a test-before-release story, plus jailbreak and cross-prompt-injection classifiers and admin gating of which agents may run. What I could not find on the captured pages: per-action human approval, run logs, triggers and schedules, or scoped per-agent permissions — and for agents that file tickets and chase approvals, those guardrails have to be in writing. 3 7 9

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European sovereignty

How this is scored

Who the contracting entity and the parent company are, where customer data is hosted, and who the subprocessors are — model providers above all, then hosting, search, telephony and email. Independently sourced by the sovereignty pipeline; for an AI product the model provider is a subprocessor, so a European interface over a non-European model counts as such.

0 — Non-EU vendor and contracting entity, hosting unstated, subprocessors (including model providers) unnamed.

3 — A privacy policy exists, but hosting location is unstated or non-EU and the model providers behind the product are not named as subprocessors.

5 — EU hosting stated and an EU contracting entity, but prompts reach non-EU model providers or other subprocessors without a stated safeguard or EU region.

8 — EU hosting on named infrastructure, EU contracting entity, every subprocessor listed with its location including model providers, EU inference available, and a DPA offered.

10 — Sovereign end to end and evidenced: European ownership, entity, hosting and model processing, every subprocessor European or optional, data export and deletion documented, and a security or certification statement published rather than implied.

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The Automation Lead

The EU Data Boundary is a contractual commitment in the Product Terms with Copilot a covered workload, a Data Protection Addendum is offered, and the model providers — OpenAI and Anthropic — are named as subprocessors. The boundary is not total, though: Anthropic models are excluded from it, some customer and professional-services data continues outside in limited circumstances, the privacy statement says personal data may be stored in the United States and other jurisdictions, and the vendor here is Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, USA — so what is proven is EU hosting and named subprocessors, not a European chain end to end. 3 4 5 6

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Pricing transparency not rated — the vendor publishes no price

How this is scored

Whether a company can compute the real annual cost from public pages alone: price per seat, per agent, per conversation or per usage unit, what is included in each tier, usage limits and overage, which models, connectors or agents cost extra, minimum seats and term.

0 — No public prices at all; every customer is a sales call.

3 — A starting price or "from" figure exists, but usage limits, included models and what scales the cost are unclear.

5 — Prices per tier are public with the main inclusions, but usage limits, overage, agent runs or enterprise features (SSO, audit logs, EU processing) are unpriced or "on request".

8 — Every tier priced publicly with seat or usage units, usage limits and overage rates, add-ons listed, minimum seats and term stated.

10 — Complete price computability: annual cost derivable for a given number of seats, agents or conversations, with every usage rate, model surcharge, add-on and support tier and the cancellation and data-return terms published.

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The Automation Lead

The licensing pages document real structure — eligible Office 365 plans, an annual-commitment Business add-on capped at 300 users per tenant, education and government channels — but I found no public price figure on the captured pages: no per-seat amount, no usage limits, no overage rates. A buyer cannot compute an annual cost from these pages alone. 2

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European sovereignty — proven facts

0 of 4 dimensions proven

Built only from facts shown on the vendor's own pages. A dimension we could not prove is left open, not scored as zero.

Ownership Not determined — uncited Report an error
Data residency Not determined ⚠ unverified — uncited Report an error
Subprocessors Not determined — uncited Report an error

Questions about Microsoft 365 Copilot

Is Microsoft 365 Copilot European?

No. whats-best.ai classifies Microsoft 365 Copilot as Rest of world.

Where does Microsoft 365 Copilot store data?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 26 Oct 2026.

Does Microsoft 365 Copilot have a free plan?

Not stated on the vendor’s pages as of 26 Oct 2026.

What are the best alternatives to Microsoft 365 Copilot?

As of 28 Oct 2026, the panel rates Langdock (4/5), Dust (3.5/5) and Unique AI (3.5/5) highest among the other 15 AI Agents & Assistants products evaluated. Ratings that look equal are rounded to half stars; the order uses the unrounded rating, then the name. The highest-rated European alternative is Langdock (EU-Made). Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made. The full list, with European products first: Microsoft 365 Copilot alternatives.

Where this could be wrong

What we left out

A claim that does not survive our checks costs us the claim, not the page. This is what was taken off this one.

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Sources (9)

The pages every claim on this page was read from — each one checked, dated, and kept verifiable.

  1. 1 Product documentation (overview) learn.microsoft.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  2. 2 Licensing and pricing documentation learn.microsoft.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  3. 3 Data, privacy and security documentation learn.microsoft.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  4. 4 EU Data Boundary documentation learn.microsoft.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  5. 5 Data protection addendum www.microsoft.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  6. 6 Privacy policy www.microsoft.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  7. 7 Integrations, connectors & knowledge — found from sitemap developer.microsoft.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  8. 8 Integrations, connectors & knowledge — found from sitemap developer.microsoft.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →
  9. 9 Agent capabilities & guardrails — found from sitemap developer.microsoft.com Checked 26 Oct 2026 Details →