Microsoft Copilot plans in Australia: every tier, compared.

For home — personal Microsoft account

For work — organisation account (prices exclude GST)

• “Microsoft 365 Copilot” is being renamed “Microsoft Copilot”, and “Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat” is becoming “Microsoft Copilot Chat”. Microsoft’s technical documentation already uses the new names; its Australian pricing pages still use the old ones. We use the pricing-page names here, because that is what you will see at the checkout.
• There is now one Copilot app. The separate home and work apps were merged during August and September 2026. You sign in with a personal or a work account, and the two stay separate.
• Copilot Pro no longer exists. The old US$20 personal add-on is off sale, and support ended on 1 August 2026. Microsoft 365 Premium replaced it.
• GitHub Copilot is a different product — a programming assistant, licensed separately. It is listed below only so you know it isn’t part of any plan here.

For what each feature actually does, see every Copilot feature, explained.

On 25 September 2026 Microsoft announced further usage-billed features — Code and Autopilot — and said the newest “frontier” AI models would also be billed by use. The direction is clear: a flat subscription for chat, a meter for work done on your behalf. Set a spending limit before you switch any of it on.

A feature-by-feature version of this table, including what is free and what is retired, is on the features page.

Prices, GST and billing

• Business prices exclude GST. Microsoft’s Australian business pages say so on every price. AU$44.90 is AU$49.39 once GST is added; AU$31.40 is AU$34.54.
• Monthly costs 20% more. The prices here are for an annual commitment. A month-to-month subscription is 20% higher — for example AU$37.68 rather than AU$31.40 for Copilot Business.
• Microsoft 365 itself went up on 1 July 2026. Business Basic and Standard and the E3 and E5 plans rose; Business Premium, the home plans and Copilot itself did not. The base-plan prices on this page are the current, post-rise ones.
• Copilot Credits are priced in US dollars on a pay-as-you-go basis, so metered features move with the exchange rate.

The ACCC case

On 27 October 2025 the ACCC began Federal Court proceedings against Microsoft, alleging it misled about 2.7 million Australian Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers. When Copilot was added in late 2024, the annual price rose from $109 to $159 for Personal and from $139 to $179 for Family. The ACCC alleges subscribers were told to accept the higher price or cancel, without being told about the cheaper “Classic” plans that had no Copilot.

On 6 November 2025 Microsoft apologised and offered refunds of the difference to subscribers who switched to a Classic plan by 31 December 2025. We found no judgment, penalty or settlement published as at 1 October 2026.

Where your data is stored and processed

• Stored in Australia. For Australian organisations, Copilot conversations are covered by the same data residency commitments as the rest of Microsoft 365, so they are stored at rest in Australia.
• Processed — possibly elsewhere. The AI processing itself can happen in other regions. Microsoft promised in-country processing for Australia by the end of 2025, then revised that in April 2026 to “by the end of 2026”. As at this writing it has not arrived.
• Other companies’ models are an exception. Copilot now uses Anthropic’s Claude models, and models operated by OpenAI directly, alongside the ones Microsoft runs itself. Both are switched on by default for Australian organisations, and both are excluded from in-country processing commitments.
• You can switch them off. In the Microsoft 365 admin centre: Copilot › Settings › AI providers operating as Microsoft subprocessors. It can be set per group. Switching a provider off also removes the features that rely on its models.

If your contracts or your regulator require that data is processed in Australia, that admin setting is the first thing to look at — before anyone is given a licence.

Training

• Work accounts: prompts, responses and the data Copilot reads through Microsoft Graph are not used to train foundation models.
• Personal accounts: Microsoft does train on Copilot conversations unless you opt out. Its list of excluded countries does not include Australia. Copilot used inside the Microsoft 365 apps on a Personal or Family plan is excluded, as are under-18s.

Government and IRAP

• Microsoft’s guidance for Australian government states that Microsoft 365, with Copilot included, has been IRAP-assessed to store information up to PROTECTED, and that Copilot Chat is covered by the same assessment. Its most recent assessments were announced in March 2026.
• An IRAP assessment is not a certification — each agency still makes its own authorisation decision. We could not confirm whether the Anthropic and OpenAI-operated model paths are inside the assessed scope; given they sit outside the in-country commitments, an agency should ask.

• Start with what you already own. If your team is on Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Standard or Premium, everyone already has Copilot Chat. It is protected, it isn’t used for training, and it costs nothing extra. Get people using that — with a work account, not a personal one — before buying anything.
• Then license the people who will use it, not the whole company. The paid licence earns its keep for people who live in email, meetings and documents. Buy Copilot Business for those seats and review after a quarter.
• 300 users or fewer? Don’t pay the enterprise price. Copilot Business has the same feature list as Microsoft 365 Copilot for AU$13.50 less per person a month, and the promotional price runs to 31 December 2026.
• Renewing Microsoft 365 anyway? Price the “with Copilot” bundles. At today’s list prices they undercut buying the plan and the add-on separately by a wide margin.
• Tidy your permissions first. Copilot can surface anything a person technically has access to. An overshared SharePoint site that nobody ever found becomes one that Copilot quotes from. Fix the sharing before the rollout, not after.
• Treat Cowork as a separate decision. It is metered, off by default, and depends on Claude models processed outside Australian commitments. Decide deliberately, and set a spending limit.
• At home: the free Copilot is enough for most people. Microsoft 365 Personal makes sense if you want the Office apps anyway; if you don’t want Copilot at all, ask for the Classic plan.

Compare with Claude’s plans and ChatGPT’s plans before deciding. Copilot’s advantage is that it lives inside the Microsoft apps your team already uses; the others are stronger as general-purpose assistants. Many businesses end up with one of each.

• Microsoft Australia: Copilot plans for business; for enterprise; for individuals; Copilot Studio
• Microsoft Australia: Microsoft 365 business plans; enterprise plans; home plans
• Microsoft Learn: Copilot Chat overview; Copilot overview; Data, privacy and security; Anthropic as a subprocessor; OpenAI as a subprocessor; Copilot Credits and usage-based billing
• Microsoft Learn, Copilot guidance for Australian government (ANZ blueprint); Microsoft, 2026 IRAP assessments
• Microsoft, In-country data processing for Microsoft 365 Copilot (4 November 2025; editor’s note 3 April 2026)
• Microsoft, Microsoft 365 pricing update (4 December 2025)
• Microsoft, Introducing the new Copilot with Home, Code and Autopilot (25 September 2026)
• Microsoft Support: About Copilot Pro; Privacy FAQ for Microsoft Copilot
• ACCC, Microsoft in court for allegedly misleading millions of Australians (27 October 2025); Microsoft, An apology to our Microsoft 365 subscribers in Australia (6 November 2025)
• GitHub, GitHub Copilot plans