Comparing Microsoft 365 Copilot vs. GitHub Copilot
There are significant differences between the various Copilots Microsoft has brought to market. Find out details about two of the most significant copilots.
Microsoft has gone all in on its Copilot initiatives, but introducing so many different Copilots has led to a bit of confusion.
At its simplest, a Copilot is a generative AI-powered chatbot that is integrated with Microsoft software. It allows a user to interact with the software using natural language queries. Microsoft has partnered with OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT, and used the company's resources to create Copilots that look and behave somewhat similarly to ChatGPT.
The different Copilots for Microsoft's software and services vary in scope, and some are free while others require a subscription. For example, Microsoft is integrating a Copilot into Windows 11 (Figure 1).
The Windows 11 Copilot is included for free in supported Windows 11 Pro and Enterprise editions -- 23H2 and higher. However, many other Copilots, such as Microsoft 365 Copilot and GitHub Copilot, come at an additional cost. These are two of the most well-known Copilots, so it's important to understand what each of them do and how they are different from one another.
Figure 1. The Microsoft Copilot application shown in Windows 11.
One of the major differences between Windows 11 Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot is that the latter is subscription-based as a separate license from the technology it operates within. The Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on subscription costs $30 per user, per month on top of the normal Microsoft 365 subscription fee. Additionally, Microsoft requires subscribers to commit to an annual subscription.
Early on, Microsoft would only sell Copilot licenses to the largest organizations and required a 300-seat minimum license purchase. However, this requirement has since been removed and organizations of any size can purchase Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses.
Microsoft 365 Copilot is geared primarily toward enterprise customers and provides functionality to help users in large organizations make more efficient use of their time via AI-assisted suggestions and real-time prompt answering. For example, Copilot can help users plan meetings, summarize documents and perform other business-oriented tasks, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2. The Copilot interface inside of Microsoft 365, which can help users to easily interact with their data.
Microsoft also offers a less expensive option that may be a better fit for smaller organizations and home users. This lower cost option is called Microsoft Copilot Pro, and licenses cost $20 per user, per month. Like Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Pro provides Copilot access inside of Microsoft Office applications such as Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint, as shown in Figure 3. The main difference between Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Pro is that Microsoft 365 Copilot uses Microsoft Graph to ingest an organizations data, allowing users to ask questions related to that data. Conversely, Copilot Pro tends to be more document centric.
Figure 3. Microsoft 365 Copilot is also exposed through Office applications such as Excel, PowerPoint, and in this screenshot, Copilot in Word.
One thing that makes Microsoft 365 Copilot so powerful is that it has access to all the same data that the Copilot user has access to. This means Copilot can learn from data such as documents and email messages when formulating a response. Microsoft 365 Copilot is also integrated with Teams and can summarize Teams meetings, generate action items and search chat history for answers.
In September 2024, Microsoft launched Wave 2 of Microsoft 365 Copilot. Wave 2 introduced Copilot Pages, a collaborative, multi-user canvas with AI integration. Additionally, Microsoft made some improvements to Copilot within Teams, Excel and PowerPoint. Wave 2 also included the release of Copilot agents, which make it possible to automate various business processes.
Although a Copilot subscription can be pricey, particularly for organizations with large numbers of users, such organizations will likely find that the cost is justified by the potential for increased end-user productivity.
It is worth noting, however, that Microsoft 365 Copilot is not perfect. AI can make mistakes and those mistakes occasionally show up when a user asks Copilot to author an email message or a document. Another common problem associated with using Microsoft 365 apps with Copilot is that when asking Copilot questions about a document, it sometimes seems that Copilot might not have read the entire document prior to generating an answer.
What is GitHub Copilot?
GitHub Copilot is intended for use by developers and is designed to act as a part of a pair programming team: a practice in which two developers work together to develop code. Those developers share a workstation. One developer maintains control over the keyboard and writes the code, while the other developer helps to check the code as it is created. This technique helps developers write functional code more efficiently and with fewer bugs.
Unlike Microsoft 365 Copilot, individuals can also sign up for a free trial for GitHub Copilot.
GitHub Copilot uses an AI chatbot to generate code or code suggestions based on what the developer types. A developer could use GitHub Copilot to create an individual function or to assist with developing an entire app. However, because AI-generated code is not perfect, a human will still need to manually review the code to ensure it functions properly.
Like Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot is a subscription-based service. The cost ranges from $10 per month for an individual plan to $39 per month for an enterprise plan. There is also a business plan that costs $19 per month. Unlike Microsoft 365 Copilot, individuals can sign up for a free trial for GitHub Copilot before committing to a subscription.
The sign-up process for GitHub Copilot gives users the option to either allow or block suggestions matching public code. Allowing such suggestions offers flexibility, but blocking these suggestions can help you to avoid copyright issues if you are developing a commercial application.
To use GitHub Copilot, install the GitHub Copilot extension into a code editor. Users can download an extension for Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs or Xcode.
GitHub Copilot works differently from other copilots -- including Microsoft 365 Copilot -- in that you aren't automatically presented with a text box in which to create queries. Instead, if you want to ask GitHub Copilot to do something, press Ctrl+I, as shown in Figure 4, and then enter your request.
Figure 4. The Copilot pop-up menu that comes up in GitHub when the user clicks Ctrl+I.
Figure 5, for example, shows a request for GitHub Copilot to create a simple graphical "Hello World" script for PowerShell. GitHub Copilot can also generate code in response to text entered as a comment within a script.
Figure 5. A section of code that GitHub Copilot wrote.
GitHub Copilot seems to work exceptionally well. However, there is a limit to the amount of code that Copilot will generate. As such, customers performing complicated coding tasks will likely find that they need to use a series of requests for GitHub Copilot to create the application in sections as opposed to trying to do everything at once. Users who try to get GitHub Copilot to create an entire app in a single request may find that Copilot reaches its limit and produces an unusable code fragment.
Microsoft 365 Copilot vs. GitHub Copilot
Microsoft 365 Copilot and GitHub Copilot are both subscription-based, generative AI chatbots, but the similarities end there. In fact, Microsoft 365 Copilot and GitHub Copilot are not even competitors to one another. They integrate with different applications and serve different types of users. While it's feasible that a GitHub Copilot user could also use Microsoft 365 Copilot for different productivity tasks, it's extremely unlikely that any non-developer user would interact with GitHub Copilot.
Microsoft 365 Copilot is designed for use within the Microsoft 365 applications and related ecosystem. Conversely, GitHub Copilot is designed specifically for use by developers. There is no universal Copilot license that gets users access to both versions of Copilot.
Both services contain an interactive chatbot that users can issue requests to. For example, a user might ask GitHub Copilot to build a short application. However, GitHub Copilot doesn't necessarily need users to make requests in this way. Users can also configure GitHub Copilot to make suggestions as they type or to write suggested blocks of code in response to the comments they create within a script.
Brien Posey is a former 22-time Microsoft MVP and a commercial astronaut candidate. In his more than 30 years in IT, he has served as a lead network engineer for the U.S. Department of Defense and a network administrator for some of the largest insurance companies in America.
