The short version: These two get compared because both say AI on the box. They are different shapes of purchase. ChatGPT Business, which most people still call Team, is a per-seat assistant for your staff: USD 25 a user a month, or USD 20 on an annual plan, since OpenAI's April 2026 price cut. Copilot Studio is a platform for building agents that do one job for many people, billed by consumption from a pooled stock of Copilot Credits. Work out whether your problem is people needing a tool or a process needing automating, and the product follows.
Get the names straight first
OpenAI renamed ChatGPT Team to ChatGPT Business in August 2025, then cut the price in April 2026: USD 25 a user a month billed monthly, USD 20 billed annually, two-seat minimum. On Microsoft's side the confusion is older and worse, because two products share a brand. Microsoft 365 Copilot is the per-seat assistant inside Word, Excel, Outlook and Teams at roughly NZ$35 to $52 a user a month. Copilot Studio is the agent-building platform. I've unpicked that pair before in Copilot and a Copilot Studio agent are not the same thing. This post puts the OpenAI product next to both.
The fair comparison
| Product | What it is | Priced (checked August 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT Business | Chat assistant for your people, workspace admin, your data excluded from training by default | USD 25 a user monthly, USD 20 annual, 2-seat minimum |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot | Chat assistant inside the Office apps, grounded in your tenant's mail, files and meetings | Roughly NZ$35 to $52 a user a month on top of M365 |
| Copilot Studio | Platform for building agents that answer staff or customers and act in your systems | Pooled Copilot Credits: 25,000 for USD 200 a month prepaid (0.8c a credit), or 1c a credit pay-as-you-go |
The first two rows compete for the same budget line. The third is a different line. Between the two seat products, the decision comes down to where your firm's data lives. If "summarise the Henderson job" needs your Outlook, SharePoint and Teams to answer, that tenant grounding is the case for M365 Copilot, and whether it clears the bar seat by seat is its own post. If your people want a general assistant for drafting, working through a problem and code, ChatGPT Business is cheaper per seat than it was before the April cut.
When the answer is neither seat product
Listen to how the request is phrased. "Can the team get ChatGPT?" is a seat problem. "Can something answer the same twenty questions our staff ask every week?" is a process problem, and buying seats for it means paying per head for one job. That second shape, one repeatable job serving many people, is what a Copilot Studio agent is for. The credit maths scales with how much the agent gets used, and headcount never enters it. The same logic runs through the jobs an agent can take off a team: shared knowledge retrieval, policy checks, triage.
One 2026 change worth knowing before you buy seats: Microsoft is wiring Dataverse business data directly into M365 Copilot, and agents are getting their own audited identities, both part of this year's Dataverse push. The assistants and the agents are converging on the same business data. A wrong seat purchase costs you a year of licences. A wrong platform choice costs you the rebuild.
The default for a small NZ firm
For a 5 to 20 person firm on Microsoft 365: trial three to five seats of whichever assistant matches where your data lives, measure whether they get used daily, and treat any repeatable question-answering or triage process as an agent candidate priced on consumption. The expensive mistakes are buying twenty seats for a one-process problem, and building an agent for people who wanted an assistant.
Common questions
What happened to ChatGPT Team?
It was renamed ChatGPT Business in August 2025, and OpenAI cut the price in April 2026 to USD 25 a user a month billed monthly, or USD 20 billed annually, with a two-seat minimum. Same product line people still call Team; different name and cheaper than it was.
Is Copilot Studio the Microsoft version of ChatGPT Business?
No, and the confusion costs money in both directions. ChatGPT Business is a chat assistant humans use, priced per seat. Copilot Studio is a platform for building agents that answer staff or customers and take actions in your systems, billed by consumption from a pooled stock of credits: 25,000 credits for USD 200 a month prepaid, or one cent a credit pay-as-you-go. Microsoft's per-seat chat assistant is Microsoft 365 Copilot, which is the fairer comparison to ChatGPT Business.
Which should a small NZ firm buy first?
Decide with one test: is the problem people needing a capable assistant, or a process needing automation? Assistants are per-seat, and for a Microsoft-shop the honest comparison is ChatGPT Business at USD 20 to 25 a seat versus M365 Copilot at roughly NZD 35 to 52 a seat with the tenant integration that implies. A repeatable process serving many people points to a Copilot Studio agent, where you pay for usage, not headcount.
Work out which problem you've got
Book a free 30-minute call and bring the requests your people are making. Sorting them into seats and agent candidates takes one coffee, and I do it before any AI build.