In shortWhat to expect from this document
"Which AI tool should we go for?" comes up in nearly every first conversation we have, usually before anyone mentions training. The honest answer disappoints most people at first and reassures them afterwards: there is less to choose between than expected, and on the points that matter the tools resemble each other closely. This article puts Microsoft 365 Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude and Google Gemini side by side on four questions that genuinely matter inside an organisation, and then translates that into teams.
Those four questions are: where does your people's work already happen, what is the tool allowed to see, what can an administrator do with it, and what does a seat cost. The last question is the least interesting. The entry-level business seats sit so close together that choosing on price amounts to choosing on nothing.
Microsoft publishes euro prices for the Netherlands; those appear below per user per month on an annual subscription, excluding VAT. OpenAI and Anthropic bill in US dollars and publish no separate Dutch price list, so those amounts are left in dollars. Google folds the AI features into the Workspace subscription price, which is published in euros. If you buy through a partner, your rates may differ.
01The office suite decides half of it
Before anything substantive gets compared, there is a practical boundary that halves most choices. Microsoft 365 Copilot exists only as an add-on to a Microsoft 365 subscription; without that subscription you cannot buy it. Gemini has been part of the Google Workspace subscription price since March 2025, when the separate AI add-ons were withdrawn. ChatGPT and Claude sit apart from your office suite and work in an environment of their own, with connections to the places you give them access to.
| Your starting point | The obvious candidate | What else is usable |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 | Microsoft 365 Copilot, with Copilot Chat for anyone who gets no licence | ChatGPT or Claude for the people who write, research or analyse a great deal |
| Google Workspace | Gemini, because it is already inside the subscription you pay for | ChatGPT or Claude, connected to Google Drive |
| Both, or something else | ChatGPT or Claude, because neither is tied to a suite | Copilot Chat if you also hold Microsoft 365 licences |
"Obvious" is not the same as "best". It means the tool sits where the work already sits, and in practice that counts for more than any difference in features. Someone who wants a meeting summarised will do it in Teams, not in a separate window they first have to drag a recording into.
02The four, briefly described
Microsoft 365 Copilot
An add-on to Microsoft 365 that makes Copilot available in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams. The distinguishing part is not the writing but the searching: Copilot reasons over your own email, calendar, chats, documents and sites through Microsoft Graph and Work IQ, within the permissions the user already had. Alongside it sits Copilot Chat, which is included at no extra charge with nearly every business Microsoft 365 subscription and works with data from the web and with files the user supplies.
ChatGPT
A standalone environment with a business plan, ChatGPT Business, which adds an admin console, single sign-on through SAML, multi-factor authentication and domain verification. A seat gives access to projects, custom GPTs, deep research, Company Knowledge and Codex, plus connectors to widely used systems such as SharePoint, Google Drive, Slack and GitHub. A workspace requires a minimum of two seats; since 24 August 2026 there is also an upper limit of 200 paid seats per subscription, above which ChatGPT Enterprise is the plan.
Claude
Also a standalone environment, with Team for two to 150 seats and Enterprise above that. Almost everything is already in the entry plan: Claude Code, Claude Cowork, projects, deep research and the connections to Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Slack and GitHub. What you mainly pay for with Claude is usage headroom, and with Enterprise, administration: spend limits per user, user provisioning through SCIM and audit logs.
Google Gemini
No longer a separate subscription, but part of Google Workspace. Business Starter covers the assistant in Gmail; Standard and Plus add Gemini in Docs, Meet and more. For organisations that want more headroom, Google sells an expanded AI access add-on. The standalone agent platform, Gemini Enterprise, is a different product with its own seat price and falls outside this article.
Feature comparisons online go stale within weeks and almost always describe the consumer versions. The business plans differ on other points than the free ones, and those points (what it may see, who administers it, what happens when the headroom runs out) rarely appear in such a table. With any comparison you read, check the date first, and check which plan is being compared.
03The difference that matters most: what may it see?
This is where the four genuinely diverge, and it is rarely the point on which people choose.
Copilot looks across your entire Microsoft 365 environment by default, limited to what the employee in question was already allowed to open. That sounds reassuring, and technically it is correct. The catch is that in most organisations those permissions have grown for years without anyone looking at them. A SharePoint site opened up to everyone once for convenience, an old project folder with salary data in it: nobody found them, because nobody went looking. Copilot does go looking. The clean-up work that follows appears on no quotation, and it is the item we most often see underestimated.
ChatGPT and Claude see only what you give them. By default that is the conversation and the files the user puts in. On top of that you can switch on connectors to, say, SharePoint, Google Drive, Slack or GitHub, and there too the user only gets back what they were allowed to see themselves. For some organisations that limitation is exactly why they start there: you decide per connector what comes into view, and you can start small.
Gemini looks across Google Workspace, on the same logic. How deep that goes depends on the subscription you hold, and with Google that is the thing to check: the features in Starter are narrower than those in Standard and Plus.
None of these tools gives an employee access to a document they were not allowed to open. The risk runs the other way: files they could already open but never found. So walk through the permissions on your shared environments before a broad rollout. That is a few days of work for an administrator, and it is cheaper than the conversation afterwards.
04What an administrator can do with it
The second question that outweighs price. As soon as more than a handful of people use it, you want to see who has access, cap what it costs and show what happened.
| Administrative need | Microsoft 365 Copilot | ChatGPT Business | Claude Team and Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single sign-on | Through Microsoft Entra, which you already use | SAML, with domain verification and multi-factor authentication | Included with Team and Enterprise |
| Permissions per user | Through the Microsoft 365 admin centre | Through the admin console, with admin roles | Roles per user; with Enterprise, provisioning through SCIM |
| A cap on the cost | Spending limit on Copilot Credits for agents | Credits for usage beyond the included headroom | Spending limit; with Enterprise, per user and per organisation |
| Accounting for it afterwards | Reporting in the admin centre | Admin reporting in the workspace | Audit logs with Enterprise |
| Rolling out per department | Assign per licence | Assign and reassign seats | Mix seat types and enable per group |
What stands out in this table is how small the differences have become. Two years ago the standalone environments were clearly behind Microsoft on business administration; that gap has largely closed. For organisations that must be able to show who had access to what, the distinction between the ordinary and the highest tier does still matter: with Claude, audit logs sit in Enterprise, not in Team.
05The prices, and why they do not decide it
| Tool | Per user per month | What you pay alongside it |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Copilot | €26.00 billed annually | A Microsoft 365 licence, because Copilot is an add-on |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot Business, up to 300 users | €15.60 in the promotion running to 31 December 2026 | A Business subscription; the fixed combination is cheaper than the parts |
| Copilot Chat | €0 | Nothing, provided you already hold a business Microsoft 365 subscription |
| ChatGPT Business | $20 billed annually, $25 monthly; heavier seat $100 and $125 | Your office suite carries on as before; minimum of two seats |
| Claude Team | $20 billed annually, $25 monthly; heavier seat $100 and $125 | The same; two to 150 seats, Enterprise above that |
| Google Workspace with Gemini | €6.80 to €21.10, depending on the subscription | Nothing separate for AI; an add-on if you want more headroom |
Two things about this table deserve attention. The first is that the entry-level business seats of ChatGPT and Claude have landed on exactly the same figure, with the same split towards a heavier seat of $100 for people who run into the usage limits. Choosing between those two on seat price is choosing on nothing.
The second is that the figures do not measure the same thing. With Microsoft the amount shown is a surcharge on a subscription you were paying anyway. With Google the AI part already sits inside the subscription price, so formally you pay nothing extra for it. With ChatGPT and Claude the seat price is the whole story for that tool, but your office suite keeps running alongside it. For the comparison that counts, set the amount per employee per year against what that employee does with the tool, rather than putting three price lists next to one another.
The breakdown per licence type is in two earlier articles: what does Microsoft 365 Copilot really cost covers the Microsoft side, including the items that never appear on the quotation, and what does Claude cost does the same for Anthropic, including how the usage limits work.
06Which tool suits which team?
The breakdown below comes from what we see with organisations in training. It is a starting point for your own judgement rather than a rule, and it assumes you run Microsoft 365, because most of our clients do.
Office management and support staff
Here the work sits almost entirely in Outlook and Teams: calendars, email threads, minutes, action lists. That is precisely where a standalone environment struggles, because everything has to be carried across to it first. Copilot has the largest advantage here, and the gain is in the dull work: reducing a thread of forty messages to what was actually agreed, summarising a meeting with who does what. See Copilot for office management.
Finance and control
Two kinds of work that call for different tools. Work inside the spreadsheet itself, with formulas, pivot tables and cleaning up columns, goes fastest with Copilot in Excel. Analytical work over an exported set, where you want to keep asking and see the reasoning, is often more comfortable in ChatGPT or Claude, because you can carry on in the same conversation. See Copilot for finance.
HR
Here the choice is less about features than about permissions. HR works with data that should not be broadly findable, and a wide Copilot rollout will expose whatever is wrong in the permission structure. The sensible order is: check the permissions on the HR environment first, then roll out. See Copilot for HR.
Marketing and communications
Longer texts, several versions, a house style that has to stay consistent. This is the work where a standalone environment distinguishes itself most clearly: you can set up a project with the house style, earlier texts and ground rules, and keep working there without explaining everything again. Both ChatGPT and Claude suit this; in practice the choice between them comes down to preference and to what your people enjoy working in.
IT, service desk and application management
Two separate questions here. For your own work, such as scripts, documentation and working through incidents, all four will do. For building something colleagues will use, for instance an agent that handles common questions within your own sources, you belong with Copilot Studio, because it plugs into the environment you already administer.
Directors and management
Reading, weighing and deciding, and much of that reading arrives in Teams and Outlook. Copilot fits the daily work here. For the documents that genuinely need thought, such as an annual plan or a tender, we see people move to a standalone environment more often, because a long document can be handled there in a single conversation. See Copilot for management.
Everyone who does not get a licence yet
The group that is left over in every plan. Do not set them to zero. Copilot Chat costs nothing with a business Microsoft 365 subscription and is enough to learn what an AI tool does and does not do. It is also the cheapest way to see who picks it up of their own accord, and that is exactly the group where a paid licence earns something back.
07Two tools alongside each other
In most organisations we visit, what ends up in place is not one tool but a combination: Copilot or Copilot Chat for everyone because the work sits in Microsoft 365, and a second tool for the ten to twenty people who write, research or analyse a great deal. That is a defensible arrangement, and usually cheaper than giving everyone the heaviest licence.
What rarely works out is the variant where everyone gets two subscriptions and picks for themselves. Nobody builds a routine, the working methods one person invents are not shared, and the administrator loses track of where company data ends up. Choose per group, write down which tool is meant for what, and revisit it after six months.
"We will take ChatGPT, our people know it from home." Familiarity with the consumer version helps for the first ten minutes and works against you afterwards: the habit of asking one-off questions is precisely the habit that makes a paid subscription earn nothing. Budget for guidance on the move from private use to work use, whichever tool you choose.
08Deciding in four weeks
You can spend six months in meetings on this. You can also measure it, which is quicker and produces a better answer.
- Week 1: find out where the work sits. Ask five to ten people from different teams to note for a week which tasks repeat and where those tasks take place. In Outlook, in Excel, in a document, in a system of its own.
- Week 2: try what you already have. Switch on Copilot Chat for that group. It costs nothing and it answers the question of whether people open an AI tool unprompted.
- Week 3: give the candidates a real trial. Buy a handful of seats of whichever tool week 1 points to, and let those people do their own work in it. No demonstration, no invented examples.
- Week 4: count what stuck. Who is still using it, for what, and what did it save. Two people using it daily tell you more than twenty who tried it once.
What this order prevents is the most common mistake: signing an annual contract for the whole organisation on the strength of a demonstration. With Microsoft that stings extra, because an annual subscription becomes fixed after seven calendar days and the number of licences cannot be reduced after that.
09The item that decides the outcome
Of everything in this article, the tool is the least decisive for the result. At the organisations we return to, the difference lies somewhere else: whether anyone was reachable in those first weeks when colleagues got stuck. Where that is not arranged, usage drops away after about three weeks and you pay for a year for people who opened the tool twice. Which logo is on it makes no difference to that curve.
That is preventable, but not with a comparison table. It takes something simpler: people bringing their own material to the first session instead of invented examples, and knowing afterwards whom to ask when an answer is wrong. That is what our training is about: the full range is on the AI and Copilot training page. If you work in Google Workspace, Google Gemini is the subject. If you want your people to write better instructions whichever tool you choose, prompt engineering is the training that covers it. If your question sits earlier, with the rollout itself and with how to measure whether it delivers, then AI adoption with a framework is the subject.
In closingA level-headed conclusion
If you run Microsoft 365, Copilot is the logical starting point, and the sensible first step is switching on Copilot Chat for everyone before you buy licences. If you run Google Workspace, you have already paid for Gemini and the question is mainly which subscription you hold. In both cases a second tool for a small group of heavy users is often the cheapest way to get the most out of it.
Between ChatGPT and Claude there is little to choose on substance or price. Both cost $20 per seat per month billed annually, both have a heavier seat at $100, and both offer projects, research and connections to the places your documents live. So let that choice be made by the people who will use it, on the strength of two weeks of real work with their own documents.
And keep the most important question separate from all the comparing: not which tool can do the most, but which tool your people will still be signing into three months from now.
Switch on what you already have and watch for four weeks to see who picks it up unprompted. Then buy seats for those people, in a small quantity you can extend. Walk through the permissions on your shared environments before a broad rollout. And schedule the guidance in the same month as the licences, not a quarter later.
SourcesVerified on 12 September 2026
- microsoft.com – Microsoft 365 Copilot for enterprise, rate of €26.00 per user per month, verified 12 September 2026
- microsoft.com – Microsoft 365 Copilot for business, rate of €15.60 and the promotion running to 31 December 2026
- learn.microsoft.com – Microsoft Copilot Chat overview, what Copilot Chat does without a paid licence and where it stops
- learn.microsoft.com – Licensing options for Microsoft Copilot, Copilot as an add-on to a base subscription
- learn.microsoft.com – New commerce cancellation policy, the seven-day window on an annual subscription
- openai.com – ChatGPT business pricing, $20 per seat per month billed annually and $25 monthly, heavier seat $100 and $125
- help.openai.com – What is ChatGPT Business, admin console, SAML sign-on, connectors and the two-seat minimum
- claude.com – Pricing, Team seat prices and the range of two to 150 seats, verified 11 September 2026
- support.claude.com – What is the Team plan, the two seat types and what Enterprise adds above them
- workspace.google.com – Google Workspace pricing, €6.80 to €21.10 per user per month on an annual plan and the expanded AI access add-on
- workspace.google.com – Gemini included in Workspace plans, the withdrawal of the separate AI add-ons in March 2025