Quick answer
Gemini for Workspace is included in Business Standard and above (from $14 per user a month) and works across Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Meet, and Drive. Microsoft 365 Copilot is a $30 per user a month add-on to Microsoft 365 (with a cheaper Copilot Chat included), working across Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, and the Microsoft Graph. Both ground answers in your own documents and mail. For almost every organisation the choice follows the suite you already run.
Nobody switches office suites for an AI feature. But if you are deciding how much to pay, which users to license, or whether the AI is worth turning on, the differences matter.
Where Gemini is stronger
- Price: bundled into Workspace since 2025 rather than sold as a separate add-on
- Sheets: generating tables, formulas, and analysis from a prompt is among the best office AI features anywhere
- Meet: note-taking and summaries are reliable and require nothing extra
- Gmail: drafting and summarising long threads works well and is used constantly
Where Copilot is stronger
- Breadth of context: the Microsoft Graph pulls from Teams chats, meetings, SharePoint, and mail in one answer
- Excel: Copilot has matured quickly for analysis and Python-in-Excel workflows
- Teams: meeting recaps, action items, and catch-up on missed meetings are the flagship use case
- Enterprise controls: the most mature admin, compliance, and data-governance story
The honest caveats
Both are uneven across apps: Slides and PowerPoint generation still produce decks that need real work, and both can summarise confidently and wrongly. Copilot's $30 price means many organisations license it for a subset of staff; Gemini's bundling raised Workspace prices for everyone, whether they use the AI or not. And the assistants inside the suites are less capable at hard reasoning than the standalone Gemini and ChatGPT apps.
Related reading
Bottom line
Use the AI in the suite you already have. If you are choosing a suite, Gemini is cheaper and stronger in Sheets and Meet; Copilot is deeper in Teams and enterprise governance. Either way, pilot with the people who write and analyse the most, because that is where the value is.
