Microsoft has launched the feature meant to shift Microsoft 365 Copilot from a chatbot into an agent that finishes the work, not just drafts it. After three months in Frontier preview, customers including Accenture, Avanade, Capital Group, Koch, Ooredoo Qatar, and Zurich Insurance were already running it, and more than half of the Fortune 500 used Cowork during that window.
It returns a finished result, not a draft
of Fortune 500 companies used Cowork during preview
cheaper than Claude Cowork with its M365 connector, per Microsoft's internal testing
PayGo price per Copilot Credit
Copilot Cowork executes complex, long-running, multi-tool tasks end to end. Microsoft says one engineering team taught it to safely edit batch-job spreadsheets and generate dependency flow charts after every change; another team compared nearly 4,000 files across two product versions, work that would have taken weeks; a sales lead pointed Cowork at a stalled pipeline and got back a ranked list of at-risk deals with the exact follow-up that had gone cold — collapsing a week of manual review into a single morning.
At general availability, Copilot Cowork runs on Anthropic's Opus 4.8 and Sonnet 4.6. Frontier customers can also choose GPT 5.5. Microsoft says its own model, Cowork 1, will ship in the coming weeks as a lower-cost option for everyday tasks. Microsoft's internal testing claims Copilot Cowork was on average 30–40% cheaper than Claude Cowork using its Microsoft 365 connector for equivalent work.
After hearing repeated customer questions about budgeting for variable usage-based pricing, Microsoft shipped admin controls for spending limits at the tenant, group, and user level, plus customizable usage alerts. Tasks fall into light, medium, and heavy patterns, and Microsoft published a spreadsheet to help estimate costs. Tenants that had at least one Frontier-preview user get a billing grace period through July 1, 2026.
What shipped alongside GA
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Default models at GA | Anthropic Opus 4.8, Sonnet 4.6 (GPT 5.5 available in Frontier) |
| Microsoft's own model | Cowork 1, coming soon, lower-cost option |
| New plugins (available now) | Enosix, Harvey, LSEG, Miro, monday.com, Moody's, Morningstar, S&P Global Energy, TeamsMaestro |
| Plugins (coming soon) | Adobe, Atlassian, Box, Canva, CB Insights, Databricks, MoneyForward, Templafy |
| Security/compliance | Audit log, DSPM, eDiscovery, Insider Risk Management, Data Lifecycle Management (GA June 22), Communication Compliance |
Pricing requires the Microsoft 365 Copilot User Subscription License, with usage billed in Copilot Credits calculated from model use, context retrieval, tool calls, and runtime. A pre-committed plan (P3) offers a discount over pay-as-you-go.
- The cost comparison against Claude Cowork comes from Microsoft's own internal testing — worth re-validating with a pilot on your actual workloads before committing.
- Usage-based billing means admins who don't set spending limits and alerts ahead of time risk unexpected cost spikes.
- The fact that the default engine at launch is an Anthropic model, not Microsoft's own, is worth watching as Cowork 1 rolls out and potentially reshapes the cost structure.
Copilot Cowork is now generally available worldwide to Microsoft 365 Copilot customers, though it's off by default — admins decide when to turn it on and who gets access within their tenant.
— Microsoft 365 official blog: Copilot Cowork is now generally available
— TechRadar: Microsoft makes Copilot Cowork open to everyone
— Crypto Briefing: Microsoft Copilot Cowork goes live worldwide with Anthropic Claude integration