ChatGPT vs Microsoft Copilot: Which Should Your Perth Business Actually Use?

Staff are already using one or both of these tools, with or without a policy telling them to. For a Perth business already running Microsoft 365, the real question isn't whether to allow AI tools, it's which one to standardise on, and why. Here's a direct comparison rather than a vague "it depends."

Where Your Data Actually Goes

This is the question that should be answered first, before cost or features, because it determines what staff can safely put into either tool.

Microsoft 365 Copilot operates inside your existing Microsoft 365 compliance boundary. Prompts, responses, and the data Copilot draws on from your tenant (emails, files, Teams chats it has permission to access) stay within that boundary and are governed by the same commercial data protection terms as the rest of your Microsoft 365 subscription. Microsoft's terms state this data isn't used to train the underlying foundation models. For a business that's already trusted Microsoft 365 with its email and files, Copilot doesn't introduce a new place for that data to live.

ChatGPT's data handling depends entirely on which tier you're using. The free and Plus consumer tiers are not built around business data protection commitments and aren't appropriate for confidential or client-identifiable information. ChatGPT Team and Enterprise are a different proposition - they come with business data protection terms, and OpenAI commits to not training on that data by default. The mistake to avoid is staff using a personal ChatGPT Plus account for work content because it's familiar, when the business hasn't actually adopted a business-grade tier.

Integration With What You Already Use

Copilot's main advantage is that it's embedded directly into the tools your staff already work in - drafting and summarising in Word and Outlook, building slides in PowerPoint, analysing data in Excel, and summarising meetings and catching up on missed Teams conversations. It can also be asked questions that draw on your actual SharePoint and OneDrive content (within the permissions the user already has), which a general-purpose chatbot can't do without manually uploading documents into it each time.

ChatGPT works as a separate destination - a browser tab or app you go to and bring information into, rather than something sitting inside Outlook or Excel. It does support file uploads and increasingly broad tool integrations, but it isn't reading your live mailbox or your SharePoint library the way Copilot can. Where ChatGPT tends to pull ahead is in general reasoning tasks, more advanced custom GPTs for specific workflows, and a more mature conversational interface for back-and-forth drafting work.

Cost Structure

Microsoft 365 Copilot is licensed as a per-user add-on on top of an existing eligible Microsoft 365 plan. If you're already paying for Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Premium, Copilot is an incremental cost on top of a subscription you already have. ChatGPT Team and Enterprise are billed per user independently, with no requirement to be on any particular existing platform. For a business already committed to Microsoft 365, Copilot is usually the cheaper incremental step. For a business not on Microsoft 365, or one that wants AI capability without the rest of the Microsoft 365 stack, ChatGPT is a more direct path.

Rollout and Change Management Matter More Than the Tool

Whichever platform you land on, the businesses that get genuine value from it treat the rollout as a change management exercise, not a licence purchase. Buying Copilot seats or ChatGPT Team accounts and announcing it in a staff email rarely produces meaningful adoption. What tends to work is picking two or three concrete use cases that matter to your business, training a small group of staff on those specific workflows, and letting word of mouth do the rest once people see real time saved rather than a generic demo.

It's also worth setting expectations early that neither tool replaces judgement. Both can confidently produce wrong answers, summarise a document inaccurately, or miss context that a human would catch immediately. Treating either as a drafting assistant that still needs review, rather than a finished output generator, avoids the most common and most embarrassing mistakes businesses make when they first adopt AI tools at scale.

A Practical Recommendation Framework

• Choose Copilot if your team is already heavily inside Microsoft 365, the main use cases are drafting emails and documents, summarising meetings, and analysing data already stored in Excel or SharePoint, and you want AI usage to inherit your existing Microsoft 365 permissions and compliance settings automatically.
• Choose ChatGPT (Team or Enterprise) if your team needs more flexible, general-purpose reasoning and drafting, you're not deeply invested in Microsoft 365 specifically, or staff are already getting more value from ChatGPT's interface and you'd rather formalise that on a business-grade tier than ban it outright.
• Consider both if different teams have genuinely different needs - for example, Copilot for the broader team's day-to-day Microsoft 365 work, and ChatGPT Team for a smaller group doing more open-ended writing or research work. The cost of running both is usually justified if it stops staff from defaulting to free, unmanaged ChatGPT accounts for work tasks.

Whichever you choose, the decision needs to be backed by a clear staff usage policy - what data can and can't go into either tool, and which tier is actually approved - rather than leaving it to individual judgement.

Frequently Asked Questions

Whichever tool you choose, it's worth checking your foundations first - try our free 2-minute AI readiness self-assessment.

For related reading, see our guides to Microsoft Copilot for Perth Businesses and AI Usage Policy for Staff: Using ChatGPT and Copilot Safely.