Ask Google what Microsoft 365 Copilot Business costs and you may get the wrong answer. When we searched on October 19, 2026, the AI Overview said the plan costs $21 a user a month, "previously $18 until June." Microsoft's own pricing page says the opposite. It's now from $18, down from $21.
Copilot numbers are easy to get wrong because "Copilot" is several products. There's Microsoft 365 Copilot for work, the free Copilot app, GitHub Copilot for developers, and Copilot inside Bing and Edge. Microsoft reports some of them every quarter and stays quiet about others.
This roundup of Microsoft Copilot statistics sticks to figures with a source and a date. Most come from Microsoft's own earnings calls. The rest come from Statcounter, Similarweb and Google search volume estimates, which we pulled on October 19. Microsoft reports its next quarter on October 28, 2026, so some of these numbers will move soon.
Microsoft Copilot statistics at a glance
| Statistic | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Paid Microsoft 365 Copilot seats | Over 30 million | Microsoft earnings call, July 29, 2026 |
| GitHub Copilot users | 50 million | Microsoft earnings call, July 29, 2026 |
| Bing monthly active users | 1 billion | Microsoft earnings call, April 29, 2026 |
| Copilot app daily users | Nearly 3x in a year | Microsoft earnings call, January 28, 2026 |
| Copilot's share of AI referrals, worldwide | 1.78% | Statcounter, September 2026 |
| Copilot's share of AI referrals, US | 6.69% | Statcounter, September 2026 |
| Copilot's share of AI site visits | 1.5% | Similarweb, September 2026 |
| Bing's share of searches, US | 9.91% | Statcounter, September 2026 |
| Bing's share of US desktop searches | 18.83% | Statcounter, September 2026 |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot Business price | From $18 a user a month, yearly | Microsoft pricing page |
Microsoft 365 Copilot paid seats
This is the number Microsoft reports most carefully, because it's the one investors watch. It has grown fast in 2026.
| Earnings call | Paid Microsoft 365 Copilot seats | What else Microsoft said |
|---|---|---|
| January 28, 2026 | 15 million | Seat adds up over 160% year over year; daily users up 10x |
| April 29, 2026 | Over 20 million | Seat adds up 250% year over year; Accenture at 740,000 seats |
| July 29, 2026 | Over 30 million | Net seat adds more than doubled from the quarter before |
In April, Satya Nadella said Copilot queries per user were up nearly 20% from the previous quarter, and that weekly engagement had reached the same level as Outlook. In July, he said the number of enterprise customers deploying Copilot to most of their information workers grew nearly 75% in a quarter.
Thirty million is a big number, but it's a small share of Microsoft's base. In February, The Register reported Microsoft figures showing that only 3.3% of Microsoft 365 users who touch the free Copilot Chat pay for Copilot. A July analysis by Digital Applied put paid seats at roughly 6.5% of an estimated 464 million commercial Microsoft 365 seats.
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Ask IT teams how it's going and the answers are mixed. An October thread in r/Office365 asked whether Copilot had changed how users work after rollout.
Has Copilot actually changed how your users work yet?
We keep hearing about Copilot adoption, but I’m curious what it looks like after the initial rollout. Are users actually saving time with it, or is it mostly a tool people try once and forget about? Also curious whether the bigger challenge...
The top reply complained that people ran everything through Copilot without proofreading. Another said many users tried Copilot, then moved to ChatGPT and Claude on their own. One reply simply said Copilot in Excel is quite good. It's one thread, but it matches the gap between seats sold and seats used that analysts keep raising.
The consumer Copilot app
Microsoft says much less about the free Copilot app. The last specific figure we found was from January, when Microsoft said daily users of the Copilot app had increased nearly three times year over year. It didn't give a total.
Reddit sentiment is split too. In October, a post in r/CopilotMicrosoft titled "Copilot Isn't Nearly as Bad as Reddit Makes It Sound" drew 93 upvotes, a sign that people who use it daily often like it more than its reputation suggests.
That gap gets filled by guesses. Stats pages we checked put consumer Copilot at anywhere from 33 million to 145 million monthly users, usually without naming who measured it. Treat those as estimates at best.
Outside data suggests the consumer side isn't growing as fast as the work side. Similarweb's monthly update put Copilot at 2.0% of visits to generative AI websites in October 2025 and 1.5% in September 2026. US Google searches for "microsoft copilot" fell from about 823,000 a month in September 2025 to 550,000 in September 2026, per Google search volume estimates, and searches for the old "bing chat" name fell from 22,200 to 6,600.
GitHub Copilot
GitHub Copilot is the developer product, and it's the one with the clearest public numbers. In January, Microsoft said it had over 4.7 million paid Copilot subscribers, up 75% in a year. In July, Nadella said GitHub Copilot now has 50 million users.
Those two figures count different things, paid subscribers and all users. Don't compare them as growth. They do show that developers are one of Copilot's biggest audiences.
Copilot in Windows and Edge
Copilot's biggest edge is where it lives. It's built into Windows, the Edge browser and Office, so people meet it without going looking for it.
In April, Nadella said monthly active Windows devices passed 1.6 billion. He also said Edge had taken share from other browsers for 20 quarters in a row. Those are Microsoft's own counts.
Statcounter's data, which counts page views across its network, is bumpier. It had Edge at 13.78% of desktop browser use worldwide in September 2024, 10.37% a year later and 14.64% in September 2026. In the US the figure went from 15.62% to 14.83% over the same two years. So Edge holds a steady slice of desktop use, but outside data doesn't show the smooth climb the earnings calls describe.
For site owners, the takeaway is simple. A lot of office workers search from Edge on Windows, with Bing and Copilot one click away. If your buyers work at desks, Copilot can reach them even if few of them chose it.
Copilot's share of AI referral traffic
For a website owner, the most useful Copilot number is how often it sends visitors. Statcounter tracks the visits AI chatbots send to websites across its network. We exported its monthly data on October 19.
| Month | Copilot, worldwide | Copilot, US |
|---|---|---|
| April 2025 | 0.23% | 0.61% |
| May 2025 | 5.18% | 12.44% |
| October 2025 | 3.47% | 8.74% |
| January 2026 | 3.50% | 7.98% |
| April 2026 | 3.76% | 12.65% |
| July 2026 | 3.07% | 8.98% |
| September 2026 | 1.78% | 6.69% |
Copilot is a much bigger referrer in the US than worldwide. In September it sent more AI referrals than Perplexity in the US, while ranking fourth behind ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity worldwide. Our Perplexity statistics cover that comparison in more detail.
It's also a desktop product. Worldwide in September, Copilot had 2.00% of AI referrals on desktop and 0.33% on mobile. That fits a tool built into Windows, Edge and Office.
Copilot by country
Copilot's share of AI referrals also varies a lot by country. Here's Statcounter's September 2026 data for a few big markets.
| Market | Copilot's share of AI referrals |
|---|---|
| United States | 6.69% |
| United Kingdom | 5.68% |
| Germany | 3.06% |
| Worldwide | 1.78% |
| India | 1.70% |
In the UK, Copilot sent about twice as many AI referrals as Perplexity that month. In India, it was behind Gemini and Perplexity, though still ahead of Claude. If you sell mainly to English-speaking businesses, Copilot is worth more of your attention than the worldwide figure suggests.
How Copilot compares with other AI assistants
Put the two outside measures side by side and Copilot looks a little different from its rivals.
| Assistant | Share of AI site visits (Similarweb, Sept 2026) | Share of AI referrals (Statcounter, Sept 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | 56.4% | 80.47% |
| Gemini | 25.0% | 10.94% |
| Claude | 9.6% | 0.95% |
| Copilot | 1.5% | 1.78% |
| Perplexity | 0.9% | 5.84% |
Copilot's two numbers are close to each other. That suggests its users click through to websites at about an average rate, more than Claude's users and less than Perplexity's. Our AI chatbot market share analysis covers why the two measures differ.
Keep in mind what's missing. Similarweb counts website visits, so Copilot use inside Windows, Office and the apps doesn't show up there. Statcounter counts clicks to the sites in its network. Neither captures the work use that Microsoft's seat numbers describe.
Bing's reach
Copilot's search reach rides on Bing. In April, Nadella said Bing had reached 1 billion monthly active users for the first time, and that Edge had taken browser share for 20 straight quarters. In July, he said Bing and Edge had both taken share for five straight years.
Statcounter's search data shows that growth, slowly.
| Month | Bing, worldwide | Bing, US |
|---|---|---|
| September 2024 | 3.96% | 7.03% |
| September 2025 | 4.10% | 8.50% |
| February 2026 | 4.98% | 10.48% |
| September 2026 | 5.29% | 9.91% |
The US desktop number is the one to notice. In September 2026, Bing had 18.83% of US desktop searches and only 2.15% on mobile. Our search engine market share roundup has the full country and device split.
The desktop line is bumpy. Bing's US desktop share fell from 16.66% in February to 11.65% in June, then jumped to 18.83% in September. Treat any single month with care.
Some sites see far more Bing traffic than they expect. A founder posted in r/SaaS in August that Bing sent 33 times more clicks than Google over 30 days, with 5,000 clicks against 150, because Bing ranked their pages much higher.
Bing sends me 33x more traffic than Google. Never saw that coming
Solo founder here, been shipping SaaS for years. My first product was an (NSFW) AI companion platform. Did the normal SEO stuff. Sitemap, Search Console, content, backlinks, wait. Last week I finally put my Google numbers next to my Bing We...
One reply pointed out that Bing's numbers include DuckDuckGo, Yahoo and Ecosia results, which draw on Bing's index. That's worth knowing when you compare engines in your own reports.
Search ads tell the same story
Microsoft also reports search and news ad revenue, which tracks how much Bing and Edge are used. Excluding the money it pays partners, that revenue grew 10% in the quarter reported in January, 12% in April and 10% in July. In April, Microsoft said growth came from both more searches and more revenue per search across Edge and Bing.
In July, it said growth was held back by third-party partnerships, without naming them. Bing's index also powers other search engines, so changes in those deals can move Bing's numbers in ways that have little to do with Copilot.
Prices for Copilot at work
For teams weighing Copilot, Microsoft's pricing page on October 19 listed Microsoft 365 Copilot Business from $18 a user a month, paid yearly, down from $21. Microsoft also sells Microsoft 365 Business Standard with Copilot included at $23.50 a user a month. Our comparison of AI content creation tools for SEO teams puts that next to ChatGPT Business and Claude Team.
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What these numbers mean for your website
Copilot is a small AI referrer worldwide but a real one in the US, especially for business audiences on desktop. A few things follow.
- Check your Bing presence. Copilot's web answers draw on Bing, so a page Bing can't find can't be cited. Our guide to submitting a sitemap to Google and Bing covers the setup.
- Use Bing Webmaster Tools' AI Performance report. Bing added it in early 2026, and it shows how often your pages were cited by Copilot and Bing's partners, by day and by page. Google's Search Console has a similar report for AI Overviews and AI Mode, so between the two you can see most AI search citations for free. Our guide to tracking Bing rankings alongside Google and Copilot puts both reports in one sheet.
- Watch copilot.microsoft.com in your analytics referrals. If your buyers work at companies on Microsoft 365, that line may matter more than its worldwide share suggests.
- Don't plan around consumer user counts. The work side and the Bing side have real numbers. The consumer app doesn't.
Our Bing and Copilot optimization playbook covers what to change on your pages.
What to watch on October 28
Microsoft's next earnings call lands on October 28, 2026, four days after this post goes live. A few numbers are worth checking when it does.
- Paid Microsoft 365 Copilot seats. The last three calls went from 15 million to over 20 million to over 30 million. Watch whether the jump keeps growing.
- Any total for the Copilot app. Microsoft hasn't given one this year, so a number would be news.
- Bing users and search ad growth. Both show whether Copilot is pulling more people into Microsoft's search.
- GitHub Copilot users. July's 50 million is the base to compare against.
- The price of Copilot at work. A cut or a new bundle would say a lot about how hard seats are to sell.
If the new figures change the picture, check them against the outside data above before you quote them. A big number on a call is a claim about one product, not all of Copilot.
How to read Copilot statistics without getting fooled
- Check which Copilot. Microsoft 365 Copilot, the Copilot app, GitHub Copilot and Copilot in Bing are separate products with separate numbers.
- Check paid versus total. GitHub's 4.7 million paid subscribers and 50 million users are not a growth story, they're two different counts.
- Check the date. Microsoft reports every quarter, and the next update lands on October 28, 2026.
- Be wary of headline figures that weren't said on the call. Digital Applied found that a widely shared "$37 billion Copilot AI revenue" figure came from April's call, not July's.
We cover the same problem across the wider market in our AI statistics roundup.
How much this takes to track by hand
Keeping these numbers current takes about two hours a quarter. Read Microsoft's earnings transcript the day it's posted, export Statcounter's AI chatbot and search engine data for your main countries, and note Similarweb's monthly post. Then check Bing Webmaster Tools and your own analytics every month, about an hour each time.
That tells you how Copilot is doing in general. It doesn't tell you whether AI engines cite you for your buyers' questions. Checking that by hand across engines takes two to four hours a month for 20 questions.
You can do all of this by hand. Or RankControl can do much of it for you, checking ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Grok and Google AI Mode every week for the questions your buyers ask and writing the pages that answer them, while you focus on your product.
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