Does Microsoft 365 Copilot need a separate Microsoft 365 licence?
Yes. Microsoft 365 Copilot is a per-user add-on that requires an eligible base licence: Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard, or Business Premium (Office 365 E3/E5 also qualify). It cannot be bought on its own or on frontline F1/F3 plans.
What Copilot needs to work
- A qualifying base licence (M365 E3/E5, Business Standard/Premium, Office 365 E3/E5).
- The user must be signed in to the desktop or web Office apps with a work account.
- OneDrive backing for the Office documents Copilot reads from.
- SharePoint content the user already has access to — Copilot does not bypass permissions.
What Copilot does not need
- Entra ID P2 — P1 (in E3/BP) is enough.
- Defender or Purview add-ons — although Purview restricted-content controls affect what Copilot can retrieve.
- Microsoft Fabric — Copilot for M365 is separate from Copilot in Fabric.
Copilot Chat (formerly Bing Chat Enterprise) is the free chat surface any Entra-licensed user gets — that is separate from Microsoft 365 Copilot, and needs no add-on.
Read next
- Microsoft 365 Copilot licensing— Microsoft 365 Copilot licensing without the marketing: eligible SKUs, how the add-on works, the free and paid Copilot Chat tiers, and the trade-offs.
- What is Microsoft 365 Copilot?— What Microsoft 365 Copilot is: what it does in Word, Excel, Outlook, and Teams, how grounding works, what it costs, and what to fix before rollout.
- Microsoft 365 Copilot rollout prerequisites— What you need to have in place before deploying Microsoft 365 Copilot — identity, data hygiene, labels, and pilot strategy.