If your business runs on Microsoft 365, start with Copilot, because it works inside Outlook, Word, Excel and Teams. If it runs on Google Workspace, start with Gemini. Otherwise, try ChatGPT and Claude on your own work for a week: at $20 to $25 a seat, testing both costs less than guessing.
How they differ in practice
- Microsoft Copilot: lives inside Microsoft 365 and works with the documents, email and permissions you already have there, which is why comparisons point Microsoft businesses to it first.
- Google Gemini: the equivalent inside Google Workspace.
- ChatGPT and Claude: standalone assistants, not tied to an office suite. Both handle drafting, summarising, analysis and long documents, and which one suits you depends on your work more than on any published ranking.
The ecosystem advice comes from Be Adaptive. Capabilities shift with every release, which is why a trial on your own work beats any comparison table, including this one.
What business tiers cost
List prices in US dollars, per user per month, from the vendor pricing pages on 1 October 2026:
- ChatGPT Business: $20 billed annually, $25 monthly (OpenAI)
- Claude Team: $20 billed annually, $25 monthly (Anthropic)
- Microsoft 365 Copilot Business: $21 billed annually, on top of a qualifying Microsoft 365 plan (Microsoft)
- Gemini: included in Google Workspace business plans rather than sold as a separate seat
They sit close enough that price is rarely what decides it. Check the pricing page on the day you buy, because these change and promotions come and go.
The decision that matters more than which tool: use a paid business tier for anything involving customer or company data. OpenAI, Anthropic and Microsoft each state that business-tier content is not used to train their models by default. On personal accounts, your conversations may be used for training unless the setting is turned off (OpenAI business data, Anthropic consumer terms, Microsoft 365 Copilot privacy).
Most businesses end up with two
The common pattern is the assistant built into your existing apps for daily work, plus one of ChatGPT or Claude for heavier reasoning and writing. That is a reasonable place to land, not a failure to choose.
A one-week trial that settles it
- Pick the task your team does most, using real work, not a demo prompt.
- Run it through two tools for a week, on business tiers or trials.
- Have the person who does the task judge the results, not whoever is most excited about AI.
Sources. Be Adaptive, Copilot vs ChatGPT vs Gemini vs Claude for business. Claude pricing. Microsoft 365 Copilot pricing. Blue Harbour has no commercial relationship with OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft or Google, and is not paid by any of them.
Get an independent read on your specific situation
Every answer above is general. Yours depends on which work is costing you the most, what you already pay for, and who would own the change. The Navigator diagnostic takes three minutes and gives you a first read on where to start. Blue Harbour sells no software, does no implementation work, and takes no commissions from any vendor.
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About this page. Written to answer one question directly. Figures are attributed inline to where they come from, survey averages are labelled as averages, and enterprise research is labelled as enterprise research. Nothing here is a vendor recommendation: Blue Harbour sells no software, does no implementation work, and takes no commissions or referral fees. Last checked 1 October 2026.
Disclosure. Trevor Jamieson holds a contract role as Partner Marketing Director at Amazon Web Services and is co-founder and CEO of PhoneStack. Blue Harbour Solutions is not an AWS partner or reseller and earns nothing from any tool a reader chooses. Nothing here is written, reviewed or endorsed by AWS. Full independence statement.