Copilot vs Gemini vs ChatGPT vs Claude for business: 2027 per-seat costs

Summary. For a US or UK small business, the cheapest AI assistant in 2027 is usually the one already inside your productivity suite. Gemini is included in Google Workspace Business Standard at $14 per user per month on the annual plan ($16.80 flexible; £11.80 or £14 in the UK), so the assistant adds nothing to the bill. On Microsoft 365, the Copilot Business add-on lists at $21 (£16.10 ex VAT) per user per month paid yearly. The $18 (£13.80) price applies only to offers taken between 1 July and 31 December 2026, and only for the first year. Microsoft's bundles cost less again: Business Standard with Copilot is $23.50 (£18.10), just $9.50 (£7.30) above plain Business Standard at $14 (£10.80). ChatGPT Business and Claude Team both charge $20 per standard seat billed annually ($25 monthly) and $100 per premium seat ($125), listed in US dollars. Choose ChatGPT or Claude when you want one assistant across both suites, and budget it as a separate line. On data controls, Copilot inherits Microsoft Purview retention and eDiscovery and Gemini has admin-set conversation retention, while custom retention on ChatGPT and Claude needs their Enterprise tiers. If you want the Copilot promo, sign by 31 December 2026; otherwise price the bundle first.

About this article. For owners, finance leads and IT managers at US and UK small businesses choosing an AI assistant for 2027. We checked every price, seat limit and data control against each vendor's pricing pages, plan tables and help articles, plus GOV.UK, the ICO and NIST, on 12 November 2026; where a page blocked automated access, we cite an archived copy. Prices are list prices excluding tax unless stated, and vendors change them often. Not legal or financial advice; no vendor paid for inclusion. Researched with AI assistance and reviewed by our editorial team.

This article compares the assistant layer: seat cost, what it includes, and admin control over data. For the suite underneath, read our comparison of Microsoft 365 vs Google Workspace pricing in 2027.

What changes before 2027, and what to do by 31 December

Five changes in the second half of 2026 shape a 2027 buying decision.

1. The Copilot Business promo ends. Microsoft's US and UK footnote limits the discount to offers taken between 1 July and 31 December 2026, requires an annual commitment, excludes trials and applies to the first year only; Microsoft can change or cancel it. A seat bought on 15 December 2026 costs $18 for a year and then renews at $21; a seat bought on 4 January 2027 starts at $21.

1. Copilot bundles lead Microsoft's line-up. Microsoft's plans page leads with Business Standard with Copilot at $23.50 and Business Premium with Copilot at $32.00. The plain suites still sell at $14.00 and $22.00 on their own product pages.

1. Premium seats arrived on ChatGPT and Claude. OpenAI announced premium seats for ChatGPT Business on 10 August 2026 and made them available on 25 August 2026, at $100 a month billed annually. Anthropic's Team plan lists the same $100 and $125 premium tier.

1. The free tier got better. Microsoft's 2026 packaging update (prices effective 1 July, features rolled out over the summer) added Copilot Chat enhancements (inbox and calendar awareness, plus Word, Excel and PowerPoint agents) and Copilot Chat Analytics to Business Basic, Standard and Premium at no extra cost.

1. ChatGPT usage gets pooled. From December 2026, OpenAI will share each Business user's allowance across ChatGPT and Codex and measure it in tokens.

Before 31 December 2026: list who needs an assistant inside documents and email and who only needs chat, check whether your Microsoft renewal allows a switch to a bundle, and decide whether the promo saving ($3 a month, or $36 per seat in year one) justifies an annual add-on.

Per-seat prices as of 12 November 2026

Figures come from each vendor's US and UK pricing pages.

ChatGPT Enterprise is quote-based. Microsoft's UK pages state that prices exclude VAT. Google's UK business page does not state a VAT basis, though its US pricing page says prices exclude tax.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Business: the add-on versus the bundle

Copilot Business puts Copilot inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams, adds chat grounded in your work data with a choice of large language model, and includes Microsoft's pre-built Researcher, Analyst and Facilitator agents, plus analytics on adoption and usage. Microsoft's plan table also lists agent creation with Agent Builder and Copilot Studio as included. The add-on is sold only to existing customers on an eligible Business plan, for up to 300 users.

The detail most buyers miss: Business Standard on its own costs $14.00 per user per month paid yearly; Business Standard with Copilot costs $23.50. That is $9.50 for the same Copilot Business capabilities the add-on sells at $21 list. Business Premium moves from $22.00 to $32.00, a $10 step. In the UK, Business Standard moves from £10.80 to £18.10, a £7.30 step. Even at the $18 promotional rate, the add-on costs almost twice what the bundle charges for Copilot.

Two consequences follow:

• Business Basic at $7.00 has no with-Copilot version on Microsoft's plans page. Basic plus the add-on comes to $28 at list ($25 on promo), more than Business Standard with Copilot at $23.50, which also adds the desktop Office apps.

• The add-on still makes sense mid-way through an annual Standard or Premium term. Microsoft's FAQ warns that annual commitments paid monthly may carry early-cancellation penalties and that upfront annual payments are not refunded, so price the switch first.

Usage-based extras. Microsoft bills Copilot Cowork, Code, Autopilot and the Work IQ APIs on top of the seat through Copilot Credits, and administrators set spending policies in Cost Management. Leave those at zero until someone owns that budget.

The free option. Copilot Chat is included with eligible Microsoft 365 business plans. Microsoft's plans FAQ describes it as web-grounded chat that does not connect to Microsoft 365 apps or to organisational content such as files, email and chats, but the summer 2026 packaging update added inbox and calendar awareness and Word, Excel and PowerPoint agents. Before you buy a seat for everyone, check what the free tier now covers for lighter users.

Data controls. With enterprise data protection, Microsoft says prompts and responses stay inside the Microsoft 365 service boundary and are not used to train the underlying models. They are logged under your retention policies and are available to eDiscovery and other Microsoft Purview tools, with the exact controls depending on the base plan. Larger organisations on E3 or E5 buy the enterprise Copilot licence instead; our Copilot renewal maths for 2026 covers that case.

Gemini in Google Workspace: included, with tiered limits

Google includes Gemini in its Workspace Business plans rather than selling it as a separate seat. Business Standard ($14 annual, $16.80 flexible; £11.80 or £14) includes Gemini in Gmail, Docs, Meet and other apps, plus Gemini Notebook with expanded access. Business Plus ($22 or $26.40; £18.40 or £22) adds Vault for retention and eDiscovery, 5 TB of pooled storage per user and advanced endpoint management. All three Business plans stop at 300 users.

Business Starter ($7 or $8.40; £5.90 or £7) is where buyers get caught. Google's comparison table marks Gemini in Workspace apps as limited on Starter: Gmail and Vids are included; Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive, Meet and Chat are not; and Starter does not get Google's most capable models in the Gemini app. Workspace Studio, for building AI agents and automations, is listed on every Business plan.

In the Gemini app, Business Standard and Plus get up to 25 Pro prompts every four hours and 300 Thinking prompts a day, limits Google says can change often. The AI Expanded Access add-on raises Thinking to 600 a day and adds up to 200 Argon prompts a day; Google publishes no list price for it, saying pricing depends on currency and term.

Data controls. Google's privacy hub says Gemini interactions stay within your organisation, and content is not human-reviewed or used to train generative AI models outside your domain without permission. Administrators can auto-delete Gemini app history after 3, 18 or 36 months (18 is the default) or keep it indefinitely. Gemini activity appears in audit logs, but data region settings do not apply to Gemini Notebook. Data regions themselves are an Enterprise-plan feature.

ChatGPT Business and Enterprise

ChatGPT Business is sold to teams of 2 to 200. A standard seat costs $20 per month billed annually or $25 monthly; a premium seat costs $100 or $125. OpenAI's August announcement said premium seats give five times the usage of standard seats with no five-hour limit, and its current pricing card describes them as more usage than standard with no five-hour limit. Seat types can be mixed and reassigned. Every seat includes ChatGPT, ChatGPT Work and Codex, connectors for Google Workspace, Slack, GitHub and Microsoft 365, workspace agents, SAML SSO and MFA, centralised billing, and usage analytics with spend controls. OpenAI says it does not train on business data by default.

Three details matter for 2027 budgets. From December 2026, the allowance is shared across ChatGPT and Codex and measured in tokens, so heavy Codex use eats into chat (instant chat does not count). When users hit a limit, the owner can buy shared workspace credits; the launch offer of $100 in credits per premium seat has ended. And OpenAI's pricing page, as archived on 11 November 2026, now lists monthly API credits for Business, pooled per workspace and subject to change, so confirm the amount at signup.

ChatGPT Enterprise is quote-based. It adds custom data retention policies, SCIM, enterprise key management, role-based access, the Compliance API, IP allowlisting and data residency in ten regions, including the US and the UK. OpenAI's comparison table shows none of these on Business.

Claude Team and Enterprise

Claude Team is sold to teams of 2 to 150. Standard seats cost $20 per month billed annually or $25 monthly and give more usage than Claude Pro; premium seats cost $100 or $125 and give five times the usage of standard seats. Seats include Claude Code and Claude Cowork, Claude for Microsoft 365 and Outlook, enterprise search, SSO with domain verification, central billing, connector controls, managed desktop deployment, usage analytics and spend controls. Anthropic lists no model training on your content by default and up to $500 a month in pooled API credits per Team plan.

What Team lacks is the governance layer. Anthropic's comparison table marks role-based access, SCIM, audit logs, the Compliance API, custom data retention controls and the HIPAA-ready offering as Enterprise only.

Claude Enterprise is priced differently from the other three: $20 per seat per month billed annually with a 20-seat minimum, plus usage at API rates. At Anthropic's published rates, Sonnet 5.5 costs $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, and Opus 5.5 costs $4 and $20. Model a typical month with our guide to counting LLM tokens and cost before you sign. Anthropic's prices are in US dollars and exclude tax.

Head-to-head: data, retention and admin controls

The table condenses the vendor pages cited above.

Copilot and Gemini inherit the governance you already run for email and files; ChatGPT and Claude work across both suites but need Enterprise for full retention and audit control. If you are building custom agents on top of these assistants, our guide to enterprise AI agent governance layers covers the policies to set first.

Decision table: which assistant to choose

Worked example: a 25-person firm in the US and the UK

Take a 25-person accounting practice on annual billing, at the list prices above.

US firm.

UK firm (ex VAT). Workspace Business Standard costs 25 × £11.80 × 12 = £3,540, with Gemini included. Microsoft 365 Business Standard costs 25 × £10.80 × 12 = £3,240; the Copilot add-on on promo adds 25 × £13.80 × 12 = £4,140 (total £7,380), rising to 25 × £16.10 × 12 = £4,830 a year at list. Business Standard with Copilot costs 25 × £18.10 × 12 = £5,430, so the AI step is £2,190. ChatGPT Business and Claude Team standard seats remain $6,000 a year, billed in dollars. At the 20% standard rate, the £5,430 bundle becomes £6,516 including VAT; whether you can recover that VAT depends on your registration.

On Microsoft 365, the bundle costs $2,850 (£2,190) a year more than the plain suite, against $5,400 to $6,300 (£4,140 to £4,830) for the add-on. On Workspace, Gemini adds nothing. A separate ChatGPT or Claude subscription pays off only when those tools are clearly better for the firm's work, such as long-document review or coding.

US and UK buying notes

UK. Microsoft's UK prices exclude VAT, charged at the 20% standard rate. OpenAI and Anthropic list in US dollars, so currency movement changes your sterling cost at each renewal; confirm the billing currency and VAT at checkout. The ICO's guidance on AI and data protection covers what a data protection impact assessment should consider, but the ICO says it is under review because of the Data (Use and Access) Act, so check for updates before sign-off.

US. Google and Anthropic state that their list prices exclude tax, and sales tax varies by state. NIST's AI Risk Management Framework and its Generative AI Profile (NIST AI 600-1, released 26 July 2024) give a voluntary structure for mapping assistant risks. NIST says AI RMF 1.0 is being revised as part of the White House AI Action Plan.

Both. Seat licences do not cover AI use inside the browser; our note on agentic browser data security controls covers that gap.

Rollout checklist

1. Tag each active user as heavy, light or no-AI.

1. Check your Microsoft renewal date and the penalty for switching plans mid-term.

1. Run Copilot Chat Analytics or Gemini usage reports for 30 days before buying paid seats.

1. Match assistant conversation retention to your email retention.

1. Set usage-based spending caps to zero or to a named budget.

1. Give premium seats only to users who hit standard limits in the pilot.

1. Record which customer data may enter prompts, and update your privacy notice if needed.

1. Review usage at 90 days and move unused seats back to the free tier.

How eCorpIT can help

eCorpIT is a Gurugram-based technology organisation, founded in 2021, assessed at CMMI Level 5 and MSME certified, with senior-led engineering teams working across AWS, Microsoft and Google platforms. Our AI and machine learning services team runs short usage pilots, maps which roles need paid seats, and sets retention and spend controls across Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, ChatGPT and Claude. Talk to us at /contact-us/.

Last updated: 12 November 2026.

References

1. Google Workspace business plans and pricing (US) — Google

1. Google Workspace business plans and pricing (UK) — Google

1. Microsoft Copilot for small business (US), with promotional offer footnote and FAQ — Microsoft

1. Microsoft Copilot for small business (UK) — Microsoft

1. Microsoft 365 Business Standard (US), archived 24 October 2026 — Microsoft

1. Microsoft 365 Business Standard (UK), archived 19 July 2026 — Microsoft

1. ChatGPT Business and Enterprise pricing, archived 30 October 2026 — OpenAI

1. Claude plans and pricing — Anthropic

1. Microsoft 365 business plans and pricing (US), archived 29 October 2026 — Microsoft

1. Microsoft 365 Business Premium (US), archived 24 October 2026 — Microsoft

1. Premium seats are coming to ChatGPT Business, 10 August 2026 (updated 25 August 2026), archived 4 November 2026 — OpenAI

1. Microsoft 365 pricing and packaging updates, effective 1 July 2026 — Microsoft Licensing

1. Understanding ChatGPT and Codex usage limits, archived 5 November 2026 — OpenAI Help Center

1. Compare Google Workspace plans (US), archived 11 November 2026 — Google

1. AI Expanded Access — Google Workspace Help

1. Generative AI in Google Workspace Privacy Hub — Google Workspace Help

1. ChatGPT plans and pricing, archived 11 November 2026 — OpenAI

1. VAT rates — GOV.UK

1. Guidance on AI and data protection — Information Commissioner's Office

1. AI Risk Management Framework — NIST