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Microsoft 365 Copilot vs R2 Copilot

Two fact sheets from our own research, side by side — pricing, platforms, API access and status re-checked by us rather than quoted from the vendors.

The short answer

Entry price
Microsoft 365 Copilot from $18/seat/mo, R2 Copilot from $29/mo — different billing units, so no direct winner
Free plan
Neither — Microsoft 365 Copilot has paid plans only, R2 Copilot has paid plans only
Public API
Both have one
Higher Trust score
Microsoft 365 Copilot — 90 vs 85 for R2 Copilot
Best fit
Microsoft 365 Copilot: Knowledge workers in a Microsoft 365 tenant who spend their day in Teams meetings, long email threads and shared documents · R2 Copilot: professionals handling client material inside Outlook and Word

From our own records as of each tool's last check. Anything we have not confirmed is left out rather than guessed. How we verify

Microsoft 365 CopilotAssistant inside Word, Excel, Outlook and TeamsR2 CopilotPrivate GPT assistant for Office and Telegram that encrypts prompts on-device and drops them when you close it.

Side by side

FactMicrosoft 365 CopilotR2 Copilot
CategoryDocument Editing & Office SuitesGeneral-purpose AI Chatbots
Pricing modelPaidPaid
Starts at$18/seat/mo$29/mo
Public APIYesYes
Trust score90 / 10085 / 100
PlatformsWeb, Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, APIWeb, Chrome extension, API
CompanyMicrosoftVerizon Solutions FZ LLE
Last verifiedSep 6, 2026Sep 6, 2026

What our research says

Microsoft 365 Copilot

For a company that lives in Outlook, Teams and SharePoint there is no competing assistant with the same reach into its own data, and the free Copilot Chat tier means every tenant can try the web-grounded version for nothing. The paid add-on is worth it for the people who draft, summarise and search across the tenant all day; it is wasted on seats that mostly read email, and the Business edition's $18 headline is a first-year promotion against a $21 list price.

Pros

  • Grounds answers in the user's own mail, files, meetings and chats with existing permissions respected
  • Free Copilot Chat with web grounding ships with eligible plans, so evaluation costs nothing
  • Business edition and bundles bring the price well under the $30 enterprise add-on for smaller companies
  • Enterprise data protection, EU data boundary and admin usage reports come as standard

Cons

  • Requires a qualifying Microsoft 365 licence on top, so the true cost is add-on plus base seat
  • Yearly commitment on the discounted prices; month-to-month is 20 to 40% dearer
  • Cowork and Code agents are usage-billed credits beyond the licence, and the credit rates are not on the pricing page
  • Product naming keeps shifting — the app is now called Microsoft Copilot, the licence Microsoft 365 Copilot — which confuses procurement and training

R2 Copilot

R2 Copilot sells confidentiality rather than model quality: on-device encryption, no training on your prompts, and delivery inside the Office apps where the sensitive documents already live. For a lawyer or a clinician that framing is worth something. The problem is that a privacy product publishes no address, no jurisdiction and no audit — you are asked to trust claims you cannot verify.

Pros

  • Add-ins for Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote
  • Prompts encrypted on-device and discarded when the session ends
  • Token quotas are stated per plan, so usage is legible up front
  • Telegram bot and Chrome extension alongside the browser client

Cons

  • Signup requires a Microsoft 365 account
  • No standing free plan, only a trial
  • Unused tokens expire with the subscription rather than rolling over
  • API integration appears only on the larger enterprise tiers

Which one fits

Choose Microsoft 365 Copilot if you need

  • Knowledge workers in a Microsoft 365 tenant who spend their day in Teams meetings, long email threads and shared documents
  • IT teams that want one assistant with enterprise data protection, Purview labels and audit logs already wired in
  • Small businesses under 300 seats, where the Business edition and bundles cut the price below the enterprise add-on

Choose R2 Copilot if you need

  • professionals handling client material inside Outlook and Word
  • teams that need an assistant without prompts going to model training
  • Microsoft 365 shops that want add-ins rather than a separate app

Microsoft 365 Copilot vs R2 Copilot: the questions people ask

Is Microsoft 365 Copilot cheaper than R2 Copilot?

They charge in different units, so there is no like-for-like answer: Microsoft 365 Copilot starts at $18/seat/mo, R2 Copilot at $29/mo. Entry price is the lowest paid plan as we last verified it.

Which has a public API, Microsoft 365 Copilot or R2 Copilot?

Both ship a public API, so either can be built on; the fact table above shows the platforms each one runs on.

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