Skip to content
AI & Automation

ChatGPT, Claude or Microsoft Copilot: which one suits your business?

A fair comparison of ChatGPT, Claude and Microsoft Copilot business plans: data use, training, admin controls, and where each one fits best.

Geidi AI Team6 min read

In brief

What it is
A fair comparison of the ChatGPT, Claude and Microsoft Copilot business plans: where each lives, what it can see and how much control IT gets.
Who it affects
Organisations whose staff already use different AI assistants and now need to choose which one to pay for.
What to do
Move work off personal accounts, pick by fit (Copilot for your Microsoft 365 data, ChatGPT or Claude for general work), and trial before rolling out.
On this page
  1. First, rule out the personal accounts
  2. Microsoft Copilot: inside your Microsoft 365 data
  3. ChatGPT Business and Enterprise: a general assistant with a workspace
  4. Claude Team and Enterprise: the same idea, with different strengths
  5. So which one?
  6. Where Geidi fits
  7. Sources

Half the office already has a favourite AI assistant. Someone in marketing swears by ChatGPT, a developer prefers Claude, and the finance team has noticed a Copilot button appearing in Outlook. Sooner or later someone asks which one the business should actually pay for.

There's no single right answer, and anyone who tells you one of these is useless is selling something. All three have business plans that keep your data out of model training by default. They differ in where they live, what they can see, and how much control your administrator gets. This is a plain comparison as of September 2026. Names and plans change often, so check the vendor pages in the sources before you sign anything.

First, rule out the personal accounts

The comparison only makes sense for business plans. Personal accounts play by different rules. ChatGPT's free and personal plans have a setting called "Improve the model for everyone", and when it's on, conversations can be used to train OpenAI's models. Anthropic says it uses chats from its consumer plans (Claude Free, Pro and Max) for model improvement if the person chooses to allow it. Either way, it's the individual's setting, not yours, and you can't see or manage it.

So the first decision is easy: whichever tool you choose, staff should use it through a work account on a business plan.

Microsoft Copilot: inside your Microsoft 365 data

If you run Microsoft 365, you already have part of this. Microsoft has renamed its products: Microsoft 365 Copilot is now called Microsoft Copilot, and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is now Microsoft Copilot Chat. You'll still see the old names in some places during the transition.

Copilot Chat comes with eligible Microsoft 365 work accounts and doesn't need a Copilot licence. Microsoft says prompts and responses are processed within the Microsoft 365 service boundary under enterprise data protection, and aren't used to train the underlying foundation models. Staff can see this is in place by the green shield at the top of the chat. It's mostly grounded on the web plus whatever the person pastes or uploads, with some access to mail and calendar inside Outlook.

Microsoft Copilot, the paid add-on licence, is the one that searches across your organisation's content: mail, files, meetings and chats, through Microsoft Graph. Businesses on the Microsoft 365 Business plans buy it as Microsoft Copilot Business. It respects existing permissions, which is good news and bad news. It only shows people what they can already open, so if your SharePoint permissions are loose, it will find that out for you. Our article on Copilot oversharing and SharePoint permissions covers the clean-up.

One twist worth knowing: Microsoft now offers Anthropic's Claude models inside Copilot, with Anthropic acting as a Microsoft subprocessor under Microsoft's Product Terms and Data Protection Addendum. Microsoft says the models are on by default in some regions and off by default in the EU, EFTA and the UK. An administrator can switch it on or off in the Microsoft 365 admin center under Copilot settings.

ChatGPT Business and Enterprise: a general assistant with a workspace

OpenAI's small business plan was called ChatGPT Team until 29 August 2025, when it was renamed ChatGPT Business. It needs at least two seats and offers Standard and Premium seat types with different usage limits. ChatGPT Enterprise sits above it.

OpenAI says it doesn't train its models on business data from ChatGPT Business or Enterprise by default. On Enterprise, your workspace admins decide how long data is kept, and deleted conversations are removed from OpenAI's systems within 30 days unless the law requires otherwise. Admins also choose which connected apps (Google Drive, Slack and so on) are available, and each person still has to sign in to those apps themselves.

ChatGPT is strong as a general assistant: writing, research, analysis of files you give it. What it doesn't have is native access to your Microsoft 365 tenant in the way Copilot does. Anything it knows about your business, someone has uploaded or connected.

There's more detail in our guide to using ChatGPT at work.

Claude Team and Enterprise: the same idea, with different strengths

Anthropic's business plans are Claude Team and Claude Enterprise. Anthropic says it won't use inputs or outputs from its commercial products to train models by default. The exception is feedback: if a staff member presses thumbs up or down, that conversation may be used. Worth a line in your staff guidance.

Team includes single sign-on, domain capture, just-in-time provisioning and role-based permissions, plus connectors for Microsoft 365, Google Drive, Gmail, Slack and GitHub. Enterprise adds audit logs, SCIM provisioning, custom data retention, a Compliance API and customer-managed encryption keys. Chats are kept until someone deletes them, and deleted chats leave Anthropic's back-end within 30 days.

Like ChatGPT, Claude is a general assistant. It only knows your business data through what you upload or connect, although its Microsoft 365 connector (set up by your administrator) can search SharePoint, OneDrive, Outlook and Teams on each person's behalf.

More in our guide to Claude for business.

So which one?

A few honest rules of thumb:

  • If you live in Microsoft 365 and want answers from your own mail and files, Microsoft Copilot is the natural fit, because it's already inside the tenant and bound by your existing permissions and compliance tools. Tidy permissions first.
  • If you mainly want a general assistant for writing, research and analysis, Copilot Chat may be enough, at no extra licence cost. If people find it limiting, ChatGPT Business or Claude Team are both reasonable, and the choice often comes down to which one your staff find more useful in a trial.
  • If you need central control over retention, audit logs and identity, look at the Enterprise tiers of ChatGPT or Claude, or at Microsoft Copilot with Purview, and compare them against your actual obligations.
  • If you end up with more than one, that's fine, as long as each is approved, signed in with work accounts and covered by one policy. Our shadow AI policy guide has a template.

Whatever you pick, run a proper trial with a handful of staff on real, non-sensitive work before you roll it out. The tool that looks best in a demo isn't always the one people keep using.

Where Geidi fits

Geidi AI is Geidi's newest division, offering practical AI and automation built safely on the Microsoft 365 environments, infrastructure and security Geidi already manages, with the same fixed scopes, review gates and audit trails as its managed services. If the AI tools have multiplied and nobody owns them, start with a conversation.

Sources

More on AI & Automation

One partner for the whole environment.

Tell us about your existing IT. We would be pleased to review your current system and give you an overview as to how Geidi may be able to deliver and enhance your IT operations.

Book a consultationCall 1300 855 049