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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 Data Protection Officer

Weighted verdict

Signs the DPA and gets asked where a prompt goes. Wants every model provider named as a subprocessor with its region, training excluded for all of them, retention the company controls, and an EU-only switch that also covers agents and connectors — not just the chat window.

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

Scored by The Data Protection Officer

Panel median The Data Protection Officer 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 Data Protection Officer
Data use, training & retention 3.5 of 5 3 of 5
Models & processing location 3 of 5 2.5 of 5
Admin, identity & access controls 3.5 of 5 3 of 5
Integrations, connectors & knowledge 3.5 of 5 3 of 5
Agent capabilities & guardrails 2.5 of 5 2.5 of 5
European sovereignty 2.5 of 5 2 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 Data Protection Officer

Prompts, responses and Graph data are stated not to train foundation models, abuse monitoring with human review is opted out, a downloadable Data Protection Addendum applies, and users can delete their Copilot history via the My Account portal. But the privacy statement separately says Microsoft "may use your data to develop and train our AI models" — the captured pages give different statements on training use — and we found no public information on no-training or zero-data-retention commitments with the named model providers OpenAI and Anthropic, or on concrete retention periods the company controls. 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 Data Protection Officer

OpenAI and Anthropic are named as the model providers behind Copilot, and EU customers' traffic is stated to stay within the EU Data Boundary for storage and LLM processing, with Bing named for web search. But models provided by Anthropic are excluded from the EU Data Boundary, Multi-Geo customers are outside it entirely, and we found no public information on an admin-enforced EU-only option across all models, provider exclusion, bring-your-own-key or on-premises deployment. 3 4

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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 Data Protection Officer

Retrieval inherits source-system permissions — Copilot only surfaces data the user has view rights to and the Semantic Index honors the identity-based access boundary — alongside tenant isolation through Entra authorization and role-based access control, admin control over which agents are allowed, Purview information-protection labels honored, and PowerShell-based user, group and usage reporting. We found no public information on SSO with SCIM provisioning, group-scoped permissions for models and connectors, or exportable audit logs on the captured pages. 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 Data Protection Officer

A documented connectors API with a five-step build process brings external data into Microsoft Graph, Graph REST APIs and SDKs cover mail, Teams bots and change notifications, and stored interactions include citations to the sources used to ground responses. We found no public information on the catalog of ready-made connectors, sync frequency and completeness, or support for open protocols such as MCP. 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 Data Protection Officer

Agents are built without code on the Copilot Studio visual canvas or in Visual Studio Code, deploy across Copilot, Teams, web and third-party channels, and ship with jailbreak and cross-prompt injection classifiers, content harm filters, protected-material detection and admin control over which agents are allowed. We found no public information on human approval before consequential actions, run logs, evaluation against test sets before release, or a vendor statement of what agents must not be trusted with. 3 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 Data Protection Officer

The EU Data Boundary commits to storing and processing Microsoft 365 customer data inside the EU and EFTA, OpenAI and Anthropic are named as model subprocessors, and a Data Protection Addendum is downloadable — but Anthropic's models are excluded from that boundary, Multi-Geo customers are outside it entirely, and transfers out continue in "limited circumstances". The contracting entity is a US company and we found no public information on a European contracting entity or European model processing for every feature. 3 4 5

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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 Data Protection Officer

The licensing structure is public — an add-on to eligible Office 365 E5, E3, E1 and F3 plans, an annual-commitment Business option capped at 300 users, plus education, government and small-business channels. But we found no public price figures on the captured licensing pages, so a company cannot compute even a starting annual cost from them. 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 →