The AI you go to, or the AI that reads your messages.
Microsoft Copilot is Microsoft's general-purpose AI assistant, embedded across Microsoft 365 (Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneDrive, SharePoint) and reachable from copilot.microsoft.com. You ask it to think, write, code, summarize a meeting, build a deck, or delegate a multi-app task to Copilot Cowork or Microsoft Scout. this+that is different. It's a comms-forward AI that reads every email, Slack thread, Teams chat, Google Chat, and Telegram DM you receive, extracts the tasks, and runs workflows. Both products speak MCP. Many teams use both.
A general-purpose AI you open and ask, or a comms-forward AI that reads your messages
Software has been here before. In the early Office days, Access was a core component because people built their own line-of-business apps. Then specialized SaaS took over, one domain at a time: Salesforce won CRM, Asana won projects, Shopify won commerce. Even though some people use Excel as a database, Access did not lose to Excel. It lost to a constellation of purpose-built apps that each nailed one job better than a general tool could. AI is at the same point. We think of it as two waves: Wave 1 is the general-purpose chat you open and ask (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot); Wave 2 is the fit-for-purpose AI that owns one job end-to-end, with UI tailored to it (more in our essay on AI's second wave).
Copilot is a Wave 1 product with a strategy of its own. Microsoft ships their own MAI models (MAI-Thinking-1, announced at Build 2026), Anthropic's Claude family is in Microsoft Foundry, and M365 admins can set Anthropic as the default model for Word/Excel/PowerPoint Copilot. That multi-model posture is unique among the major Wave 1 players. Around the chat are real product moves: Copilot Memory across sessions, Pages for persistent artifacts, agents in Word/Excel/PowerPoint that generate full files from a prompt, Copilot Cowork for cross-app M365 work, and Microsoft Scout (preview), Microsoft's always-on personal agent that drives Outlook, Teams, files, and a browser via Playwright + MCP. Microsoft reports roughly 420M Copilot monthly active users across surfaces. this+that is one of Wave 2's first products: fit-for-purpose for messages, tasks, and team workflow. The agent lives inside your inbox and chat channels, scans every message for what needs doing, surfaces tasks for the whole team, and runs workflows automatically. Both products are MCP-native, so they compose. Copilot can reach this+that's DoBox through MCP. Most teams who use Microsoft 365 heavily will also benefit from a Wave 2 product handling the messages flowing across their stack. They solve different jobs.
Feature by feature
How the two products compare across the things that matter most.
| Topic | Microsoft Copilot | this+that |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Wave 1 general-purpose AI. Microsoft's chat product with Memory, Pages, in-app file-generating agents, Copilot Cowork for cross-app M365 work, and Microsoft Scout (preview) for autopilot delegation. | Wave 2 comms-forward AI. An agent that reads your messages and acts on them without being asked. |
| Where work starts | With you. You prompt Copilot in chat, ask the side panel inside Word/Excel/Outlook/Teams, delegate a multi-app task to Copilot Cowork, or hand a browser job to Microsoft Scout. | With incoming messages. The agent reads what arrives without being asked and surfaces what needs doing. |
| Channels read | Deep native reach across Microsoft 365 (Outlook mail and calendar, Teams chats and meetings, SharePoint, OneDrive, Word, Excel, PowerPoint) via Microsoft Graph. Microsoft IQ adds Work IQ, Fabric IQ, and Web IQ as context layers. Pull-on-demand per prompt, not continuous scanning of incoming messages. | Gmail, Outlook, Slack, Teams, Google Chat, and Telegram, continuously. |
| Task layer | No persistent assignable task layer for messages you receive. Copilot can extract action items into Microsoft Planner or as a Loop list, but tracking lives wherever you put it. Microsoft Scout (preview) can take longer-running actions on your behalf. | DoBox. Every message scanned for tasks, surfaced as assignable items for the whole team. |
| Workflow automation | Copilot Cowork coordinates across M365 apps with Anthropic-powered reasoning. Microsoft Scout (preview) drives Outlook, Teams, files, and a browser via Playwright and MCP. Copilot Studio builds custom agents and connectors. Power Automate continues to handle deterministic flows. | Plain-language workflow builder triggered by incoming messages. 32 action types with IF/ELSE branching, loops, and sub-agents. |
| Memory / knowledge | Copilot Memory across sessions (GA July 2025, enhanced through 2026), Pages for persistent artifacts the assistant can read and update, and Microsoft IQ as the org-wide context layer. Single-user across Memory; org content is governed by Microsoft Purview. | The brain. A writable team and personal knowledge layer with versioning. Agents read and write as a side effect of doing real work. |
| Team capabilities | Microsoft 365 admin is the team substrate: SSO via Entra, SCIM, role-based access, Microsoft Purview governance, audit logs, and data residency commitments. Memory and conversations remain individual. | Team task assignment, shared task view, and team-request grounding (your agent searches a teammate's brain to draft a suggested reply). |
| MCP support | Native. Copilot Chat hosts third-party MCP agents (Adobe, Monday.com, Figma at launch and growing); Microsoft Scout uses MCP to reach outside apps; Copilot Studio builds custom MCP connectors. | Native, bidirectional. Consumes any MCP server in workflows (HubSpot, GitHub, Linear, etc.), and exposes a public MCP server so Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude Desktop, or any MCP client can reach your tasks. |
| Model strategy | Multi-model by design. Microsoft ships their own MAI family (MAI-Thinking-1 announced at Build 2026, preview in Foundry), OpenAI models remain available, and Anthropic Claude Sonnet, Haiku, and Opus are in Microsoft Foundry and selectable as the default for M365 Copilot apps. Customers and admins choose. | Anthropic via Amazon Bedrock today; architecture is model-agnostic so workflows can target whichever model is best for the step. |
| Surfaces | Web (copilot.microsoft.com), Windows (built into the OS), macOS, iOS, Android, M365 app side panels (Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, OneDrive, SharePoint), GitHub Copilot, Edge browser, and a desktop app for GitHub Copilot (preview). | Web app, browser extension (DoBox for Gmail), and a public MCP server reachable from any AI client. |
| Usage | Roughly 420M monthly active users across all Copilot surfaces as of early 2026, per Microsoft. | Building from a smaller base; designed for the team that drowns in messages, not the population at large. |
| Pricing | Consumer Copilot Free, Copilot Pro $20/mo. Microsoft 365 Copilot Business $18/seat/mo (rising to $21 in July 2026, 300-seat cap), M365 Copilot Enterprise $30/seat/mo, M365 E7 Frontier Suite $99/seat/mo bundles E5 + Copilot + Agent 365. | Free during beta. |
- Microsoft Copilot is the deepest AI integration into Microsoft 365 work. If most of your team's day already happens inside Outlook, Teams, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, the side-panel and in-document Copilot is meeting users where they already are.
- The multi-model strategy is unique among the major Wave 1 players. Microsoft's own MAI models, OpenAI, and Anthropic all run inside Foundry, with admin-level controls to choose the default. Customers don't have to pick one vendor when they pick Microsoft.
- Copilot Cowork (Anthropic-powered) handles cross-app M365 work, and Microsoft Scout (preview) is the first always-on agent driving Outlook, Teams, files, and a browser via Playwright and MCP. Real bets on agentic work, not just chat.
- Memory across sessions, Pages for persistent artifacts, and in-app agents in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint that generate full files from a prompt. The product is real, not a thin chat skin.
- MCP is first-class: Adobe, Monday.com, Figma and a growing list of third-party agents are reachable directly from Copilot Chat, and Copilot Studio builds custom MCP connectors.
- Enterprise posture is industry-leading: SSO via Entra, SCIM, role-based access, Microsoft Purview governance, audit logs, data residency commitments, and the M365 compliance stack that enterprises already trust.
- Pricing is structured for the M365 base. Consumer Copilot Free, Copilot Pro $20/mo, Business $18/seat, Enterprise $30/seat, and the new M365 E7 Frontier Suite at $99/seat bundles Copilot + Agent 365 + E5.
- A different category. The agent reads the messages you receive, not just the prompts you send.
- Reads six channels natively, continuously: Gmail, Outlook, Slack, Teams, Google Chat, and Telegram. Not pull-on-demand, ambient.
- DoBox: every message scanned for tasks, with the whole team able to see, assign, and track them in one place. Not "open a Loop list when you remember to ask."
- Workflows triggered by incoming messages, not just by you asking or by a schedule. 32 action types with branching, loops, and sub-agents.
- The brain is a writable team knowledge layer (not single-user Memory) that agents read and update as a side effect of doing real work.
- MCP works both ways: this+that consumes any MCP server inside workflows, and exposes its own so Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude Desktop, or any MCP client can reach your tasks. The two products compose rather than compete.
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