Copilot Cowork: What It Is, How to Use It and What It Costs

Copilot Cowork is the Microsoft 365 Copilot experience you hand a whole job to. You say what you want done, and Cowork plans the steps, works through your email, calendar, Teams meetings and files, and checks in with you before it sends, posts or books anything.

It has been generally available for work and school accounts since 16 June 2026, and every run is billed in Copilot Credits, so the two things to learn early are which jobs to give it and what each one costs. The video above is where I’d start: seven jobs in about 20 minutes, with nothing to connect first. The rest of this page puts my Cowork guides in the order I’d learn them, with a full article on each.

What does Copilot Cowork do?

Copilot Chat answers you in the conversation. Copilot in Word, Excel and PowerPoint edits the document you have open while you watch. Cowork takes a job that spans several apps, runs it in the background, and can repeat it on a schedule or start it when a matching email, Teams message or @mention arrives. None of the seven jobs in my first session needed a connector, because Cowork already works within your Microsoft 365 data and permissions.

Sending email, posting in Teams and creating calendar events all stop for approval, and you choose whether to allow each action once or for the session. A job waiting on an approval sits in the Recent list marked Needs input until you come back to it.

1Copilot Cowork Tutorial: How to Start Delegating Real WorkA beginner's Copilot Cowork tutorial: open it, hand over your first jobs, approve its actions and schedule a daily briefing from your email, calendar and files.

What do you need before you start?

Cowork lives at copilot.cloud.microsoft and in the Copilot app, and three things need to be in place first:

A Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, with Cowork turned on by your admin. The free Copilot Chat that comes with Microsoft 365 isn’t enough on its own.
Usage-based billing. Your Copilot licence doesn’t come with a Cowork allowance. Every run spends Copilot Credits, charged at US$0.01 each on pay-as-you-go, and admins can set limits for each user or group.
Your files in OneDrive or SharePoint. Cowork can’t reach files stored only on your device, can’t read encrypted files and can’t delete anything in OneDrive or SharePoint.

If you’re not sure which Copilot your organisation has paid for, check that first.

2Microsoft 365 Copilot vs Copilot Chat: What You're Actually Paying ForCopilot Chat is free with Microsoft 365. Microsoft 365 Copilot is US$30 a user a month. What each one can reach, who needs a licence, and the mistakes to avoid.

How much does Copilot Cowork cost to run?

The model you pick is the cost lever you control directly. I ran the same task, a CSV of sales figures turned into an Excel workbook, a board deck and an interactive dashboard, on three models from the picker. The output was equivalent, and the bill nearly tripled from the cheapest model to the dearest. On a heavier job in July, Claude Opus 4.8 came out cheapest and built the best dashboard.

Job I ran in Cowork	Cost
Sales workbook, deck and dashboard on Claude Sonnet 4.6	398 credits, US$3.98
The same job on GPT 5.5	1,069 credits, US$10.69
Mapping one process against how it really runs	371 credits, US$3.71
Building a SharePoint CRM app	US$46.54

The picker defaults to Auto. Type /cost in a task once it finishes to see exactly what it used.

3Copilot Cowork Models: What Each One Actually CostsI ran the same Copilot Cowork task on Sonnet 4.6, Opus 4.8 and GPT 5.5. The cost ranged from $3.98 to $10.69. What each model costs and which to use.

How do you turn raw data into reports and decks?

Monthly reporting is the same job every time, which makes it a good one to hand over once you’ve seen Cowork work. In my demo I pointed it at exports in a SharePoint library and wrote the prompt as a report spec, listing every section and KPI I wanted. Cowork built one section for each and returned a self-contained interactive HTML dashboard with charts, navigation and written commentary.

Branding comes from a design file attached to the task. I use DESIGN.md, an open format from Google Labs that describes a design system in one Markdown file, with design tokens at the top and plain-language rules underneath. Cowork returned an on-brand PowerPoint deck with my colours, fonts and logos in a minute or two, and swapping the design file on the dashboard changed the styling while the data and sections stayed the same.

How do you get Cowork to write like you?

A skill is a standard operating procedure for AI: you write down how a job is done once, and every run follows it. Cowork has a built-in Skill management skill that handles the format for you. In my demo it built a Write Like Me skill from my sent emails and saved it as a SKILL.md file in my OneDrive. The same skill can package a design file, so you stop attaching it to every new deck.

6Why Does Copilot's Writing Sound Generic? Four Causes and FixesCopilot sounds generic when it has no voice guide, no samples of your writing, a stock agent template or no review step. Check each cause and fix it in Copilot.

Can Cowork show how work really gets done?

In my demo Cowork read the documented process for supplier onboarding, compared it with what happened in email, Teams chats and meetings, and laid out the differences side by side with a source on every gap. Each finding pointed back to the message or meeting it came from, so you can check it before acting on it. The first pass used 371 Copilot Credits.

7How Work Really Gets Done vs What's Written DownYour SOP says one thing, your inbox says another. How Copilot Cowork compares a documented process with what really happens, with a source for every gap.

Can Copilot Cowork build apps?

Yes. Cowork’s App skill builds an interactive app from a description and connected data, which you can publish and share inside your organisation. For my SharePoint CRM, Copilot in SharePoint created the lists from a Markdown definition, and Cowork built the app on top from an as-built schema document. It worked in several passes and stopped at checkpoints for me to test. People selection, document display and user identity all needed fixing before it was close to pilot-ready.

If you built apps with the old App Builder agent, Cowork and Copilot Studio are where you build them now. Microsoft is retiring the App Builder agent on 30 November 2026, and new app creation in it stopped in mid-October 2026.

When should you use Copilot in SharePoint instead?

When the job lives in one SharePoint library. Microsoft’s Zach Rosenfield put the difference to me this way: Copilot in SharePoint runs in your browser, while Cowork runs as a hosted instance in the cloud. That makes Cowork the better fit for browser work and long-running jobs across apps, and Copilot in SharePoint the better fit for working through a library, his example being 10,000 contracts. He’s happy for people to use Cowork to drive SharePoint skills too. I’d add that Copilot in SharePoint already knows which site, list or library you’re on, so you don’t have to explain where you are first.

10The Real Purpose of Copilot in SharePoint, with Microsoft's Zach RosenfieldMicrosoft's Zach Rosenfield explains Copilot in SharePoint as an agent that does work, where skills and SharePoint.md fit, and why metadata still cuts AI cost.

Hand Cowork jobs in this order

Each step below raises what’s at stake if Cowork gets something wrong, so build your trust in it one step at a time.

A job only you see. A morning briefing or a weekly plan. Mine goes to me alone, so it sends without asking, and a wrong line costs nothing but a minute of my time. Each person can have up to 25 scheduled prompts, so set the briefing up once and let it run.
A recurring report. You know the numbers well enough to spot a mistake straight away, and the inputs live in a library you control. Run /cost after the first few runs and try the job on two or three models before settling on one.
A team process. Comparing how a process is written with how it really runs touches other people’s email and meetings, so the findings need checking before anyone acts on them. Keep the approval prompt on for anything that leaves Cowork.
An app. The CRM build cost US$46.54 and still needed fixes before a pilot, and an app is something other people rely on every day. Pilot it with a small group and measure what it uses before you estimate monthly costs.

Whatever the job, the inputs need to be somewhere Cowork can reach. If the information sits in desktop folders or on someone’s laptop, move it into a SharePoint library before you hand the job over. My SharePoint fundamentals guide covers how to set one up.

Frequently asked questions

Is Copilot Cowork included in my Microsoft 365 Copilot licence? No. The licence gets you access, and Cowork runs are billed separately in Copilot Credits. Your admin can cap spending for each user or group, and running /cost in a finished task shows you exactly what it used.

Can I use Copilot Cowork on my phone? Yes, in the Microsoft Copilot mobile app for iPhone and Android. A job you start on your phone keeps running, you can pick it up later on your laptop, and plugins you’ve set up on the desktop are available on mobile too.

Which models can I choose in Copilot Cowork? The picker offers Auto (the default), Claude Sonnet 4.6, Claude Opus 4.8 and GPT 5.5, and the effort setting defaults to Medium. Some tenants also have a paired mode that runs Sonnet with Opus as an advisor. What you see depends on what your organisation allows.

Can Copilot Cowork start a job without me asking? Yes, in two ways. Scheduled prompts run at the time you set, and you manage them on the Automations page. Event-driven tasks run when a matching email, Teams message or @mention arrives. Cowork shows a Set up trigger? card for you to review first, and by default these tasks prepare actions for your approval rather than acting on their own.