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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 Head of IT

Weighted verdict

Has to roll an AI assistant out to eight hundred staff without a second shadow-IT wave. Wants SSO and SCIM, groups that decide who gets which model, agent and connector, answers that respect SharePoint permissions, audit logs for the SIEM, and a deployment option that is not "trust us".

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

Scored by The Head of IT

Panel median The Head of IT 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 Head of IT
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 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 Head of IT

The Copilot privacy documentation states that prompts, responses and data accessed through Microsoft Graph aren't used to train foundation LLMs, that Copilot services have opted out of the human-review abuse monitoring available in Azure OpenAI, and that users can delete their own Copilot activity history, with a downloadable Data Protection Addendum and ISO 27001 and ISO 42001 certifications behind it. The captured pages do give different figures on training, though: the general privacy statement says Microsoft "may use your data to develop and train our AI models", while the product terms state that customer agreements take precedence over that statement. I found no public information on admin-configurable retention periods, stated retention durations for chats and files, or per-provider zero-data-retention terms. 3 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 Head of IT

OpenAI and Anthropic are named as the model subprocessors behind Copilot experiences, and the EU Data Boundary — with Copilot a covered workload in the Microsoft Product Terms since March 2024 — states that EU traffic stays inside the EU and EFTA for LLM processing. However, the same pages state Anthropic's models are "currently excluded from the EU Data Boundary", so EU processing is not enforced across every model behind the product. I found no public information on admin-selectable or excludable model providers, bring-your-own-key, or deployment outside Microsoft's cloud beyond the government community environments. 2 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 Head of IT

This is documented well where it matters most for my rollout: Copilot only surfaces organizational data a user has at least view permission for, the Semantic Index enforces the identity-based access boundary during grounding, Purview-protected content keeps its usage rights, and admins can select which agents are allowed in the organisation — our SharePoint permission model carries through to answers. Entra authorization with role-based access control, Content search and Purview for stored prompts and responses, Teams export APIs for chat data, and PowerShell-based usage reports give me real admin tooling. I found no public information on SCIM provisioning, group-level assignment of specific models, or streaming audit logs to a SIEM. 3 4 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 Head of IT

Copilot connectors bring external data into Microsoft Graph through a documented five-step build using the connectors API, with per-item content access settings and natural-language search over the ingested content, and stored responses include citations to the sources that grounded them. Graph REST APIs, SDKs, change notifications with Azure Event Hubs, Teams bots and the Copilot APIs let us embed assistants and agents into other tools. I found no public information on a named catalogue of connectors for CRM or ticketing systems, incremental sync frequency, or MCP support. 3 7 8 9

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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 Head of IT

Copilot Studio builds agents without code on a visual canvas, the Agents Toolkit runs them across Copilot, Teams, web and third-party messaging channels, and the developer flow explicitly covers creating, testing and deploying agents, with admins able to select which agents are allowed in the organisation. Guardrails are documented openly — jailbreak and cross-prompt injection attack classifiers, content harm filters across hate and fairness, sexual, violence and self-harm categories, and protected-material detection for copyrighted text and licensed code. I found no public information on human approval before consequential actions, per-run logs, triggers or schedules, or evaluation against test sets before release. 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 Head of IT

Microsoft Corporation is a US company in Redmond and I found no public information on an EU contracting entity, so European sovereignty rests entirely on the EU Data Boundary — a contractual commitment that EU tenants' customer data is stored and processed within the EU and EFTA. Inside that boundary OpenAI and Anthropic are named as model subprocessors, but the captured pages state Anthropic's models are excluded from the boundary and that data continues to be transferred outside it in limited circumstances. The Data Protection Addendum and EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework membership are published safeguards, but the model chain is not European 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 Head of IT

The licensing pages document the eligible plans (Office 365 E1 through E5 and F3), a Business add-on capped at 300 users with an annual commitment, and the education and government purchase channels — but they publish no price per seat, so I cannot compute what a rollout to eight hundred staff would cost. I found no public information on usage limits, add-on pricing, or what enterprise features cost. For a purchase of this size, the number comes from a negotiation, not from a page. 2 7

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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 →