# Copilot Chat limits: what to do if your team has no Copilot licence > For owners and Microsoft 365 admins in European companies of 10-200 people: who needs a paid licence, what it costs in EUR and GBP, and the one setting to change today. - **Canonical URL:** https://appwave.dev/en/blog/copilot-chat-limits-without-licence-what-to-do - **Language:** en - **Updated:** 2026-11-13 --- - **Published:** 2026-11-13 - **Author:** Mateusz Cieśliński - Co-Founder, DevOps Engineer - **LinkedIn:** https://www.linkedin.com/in/mateusz-cie%C5%9Bli%C5%84ski/ - **Reading time (min):** 6 - **Topics:** Microsoft Copilot, Costs, AI security ![Laptop with a greyed-out chat field, an hourglass and an access card: Copilot Chat without a licence works, but with a cap.](https://cms.appwave.dev/uploads/copilot_chat_limits_without_licence_what_to_do_cfbc61613f.webp) **Since 2 November 2026, Microsoft limits more Copilot Chat features for staff without a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence in organisations with up to 2,000 seats. The limits are unpublished, and admins cannot see or change them. In the EEA a Copilot Business licence costs from 15.60 EUR per user per month. Correct as of 6 November 2026.** For many small European companies, Copilot Chat was the free way into AI because it came with Microsoft 365. It still works, but now it has a ceiling nobody can see. The real decision this week is not whether to buy licences. It is who decides, before an employee with a credit card does it for you. ## Is there a limit on Copilot Chat now? Yes. Microsoft has extended its fair use limits to more Copilot Chat features for users in commercial tenants who have no paid Microsoft 365 Copilot licence. It applies on the web, desktop and mobile. Before that, limits applied to some features, such as image generation. The rollout has two dates. - 2 November 2026: organisations with 2,000 or fewer Microsoft 365 seats. - 9 November 2026: larger organisations. - Message Center posts MC1536158 and MC1536163, published on 3 November, describe the change for admins. Microsoft does not say which features are newly capped, only that more may follow. **You will not find the limits in the admin centre, and no setting raises them.** Microsoft sets them and changes them. ## Copilot Chat vs Microsoft 365 Copilot: what you lose without a licence If you run 10-200 people on Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Standard or Premium and never bought the Copilot add-on, the change already applies to you. Licensed users get "priority access" instead of "standard access". Microsoft's own support page lists the differences. - **Model access.** Without a Copilot licence: standard, may be limited at peak times. With a Copilot licence: priority. - **Web search.** Without a Copilot licence: yes. With a Copilot licence: yes. - **Work data (email, meetings, chats).** Without a Copilot licence: only files the user uploads. With a Copilot licence: full: email, meetings, chats, files. - **Agents.** Without a Copilot licence: limited, no advanced agents. With a Copilot licence: includes Researcher, Analyst and custom agents. - **Copilot in Microsoft 365 apps.** Without a Copilot licence: depends on the user's label. With a Copilot licence: included. - **Copilot in Outlook.** Without a Copilot licence: yes. With a Copilot licence: yes. - **Security.** Without a Copilot licence: enterprise grade. With a Copilot licence: enterprise grade. The last row matters to anyone who handles client data. Microsoft describes security the same way for both, so our reading is that the new limits do not change how your data is protected. They change how much work you can do, and when. ## What your staff see when they hit the limit The feature pauses, and the app shows a message with a time to try again. A response already in progress finishes normally. Microsoft's announcement to partners says that in most organisations the message also offers an upgrade. The employee can send a licence request to the admin. If your organisation allows self-service purchases, they may also see a buy button. Here is the catch. Microsoft Learn says new products allow self-service purchase by default. Such a purchase needs a payment method, renews automatically. Microsoft only describes notifications to the buyer, so your finance team may never hear about it. Microsoft is open about the intent in its announcement to partners: hitting a limit "might indicate interest in additional Copilot capabilities". The limit message is also a sales channel. ![Diagram: a Copilot Chat limit leads either to a licence request to the admin or to a self-service purchase.](https://cms.appwave.dev/uploads/copilot_chat_limits_without_licence_what_to_do_diagram_6f4a7f3b79.webp) ## How much does Copilot Business cost in Europe? Microsoft's price pages for the EEA (checked on the Polish site, in EUR) and the UK list these per-user monthly prices, excluding VAT. Euro prices on other EEA country sites may differ slightly. - **Copilot Business add-on, annual commitment.** EEA (EUR): 18.20. UK (GBP): 16.10. - **Promotion until 31 December 2026, first year, existing customers.** EEA (EUR): 15.60. UK (GBP): 13.80. - **Monthly billing.** EEA (EUR): 21.84. UK (GBP): 19.32. Take a 30-person company paying in euros. Licences for the six people who actually live in email, meetings and documents cost 93.60 EUR a month on the promotion and 109.20 EUR after the first year. Licensing all 30 costs 468 to 546 EUR a month. In the UK, six licences are 82.80 to 96.60 GBP. Two announcements from this week affect anyone who buys. First, default usage-based billing for new Copilot Business licences bought through CSP partners (extra Copilot Credits for selected AI features such as Copilot Cowork, capped by default at 4,000 credits per user per month) is now planned to start in January-March 2027 instead of 1 December 2026, and this time it applies in all markets, including Germany, France and the Netherlands. Second, on 5 November Microsoft said that processing for Claude models in Copilot, which are off by default in the EU and EFTA, will move inside its EU Data Boundary by the end of 2026. ## What we see in the market: AI assistants get the details wrong On 6 November we asked four AI assistants the same question about a 40-person company with no Copilot licences. Perplexity gave the right dates and EEA prices. Claude had the dates right but said licensed users have no chat limits and quoted about 30 USD, the enterprise price. Gemini repeated the old 1 December billing date. ChatGPT treated November 2026 as the future and the change as unconfirmed. None of them mentioned self-service purchases. Google's AI Mode in Polish even said no admin action is needed. ## What this means for your company **Probable conclusion:** your first Copilot purchase may be made by an employee, not by you. The limit message points to an upgrade, and self-service purchases are on by default. Source: Microsoft partner announcement of 4 November 2026, The Register of 5 November and Microsoft Learn. **Probable conclusion:** you cannot plan a process around a limit you cannot see. If a daily task depends on Copilot Chat, such as summaries for your customer service team, it needs a licence or a different tool. Source: Microsoft does not publish the limits, and they vary during the day. **Hypothesis to test:** some people who hit the limit will switch to a personal ChatGPT account on their phone. Company data then leaves the protection of the work account. Source: no data yet on user behaviour after the limit; we covered the risk in our post on shadow AI. ## What to do this week These steps are for whoever administers Microsoft 365 and billing. 1. In the admin centre, go to Settings, Org settings, Services, Self-service trials and purchases. Set each Copilot product on the list to "Do not allow"; the control works per product. It can take up to 72 hours to apply. 2. Under Billing, open Licenses (the menu uses US spelling) and then Requests to see who has already asked. That list shows you your heaviest Copilot users. 3. Send your team one short note: the limit message is expected behaviour, not an outage, and here is where to ask for a licence. 4. Pick three to six people whose work runs on email, meetings and documents. If you license them, the promotion runs until 31 December, but only buy the annual commitment if you have read its terms. 5. Write down which data must never go into personal AI tools when someone hits the limit. We explain licence setup step by step in [Microsoft 365 Copilot Business setup for small companies](https://appwave.dev/en/blog/microsoft-365-copilot-business-setup-for-small-companies). Credits for agents are covered in [Copilot Credits in Copilot Business: what changes in Europe](https://appwave.dev/en/blog/copilot-credits-copilot-business-december-1-europe). The risk of personal accounts is in [shadow AI and personal ChatGPT accounts](https://appwave.dev/en/blog/shadow-ai-personal-chatgpt-accounts-small-business), and the full AI bill in [AI implementation cost: what you pay for](https://appwave.dev/en/blog/ai-implementation-cost-what-you-pay-for). If you would rather not track licences and limits yourself, you can work through it with us as part of [AI administration for companies](https://appwave.dev/en/services/ai-administration). We have not tested how many prompts trigger the limit, because Microsoft does not say and the limit changes during the day. Check prices with your licence reseller, as CSP partners may offer different terms from Microsoft's own pages. ## Sources - Microsoft Partner Center, [November 2026 announcements](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/partner-center/announcements/2026-november), entries of 3 and 4 November 2026, accessed 6 November 2026. - Microsoft Support, [Limits for features in Microsoft Copilot Chat](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365-copilot/standard-versus-priority-access-to-features-in-microsoft-365-copilot-chat), accessed 6 November 2026. - Microsoft Support, [How Copilot Chat works with and without a Microsoft Copilot license](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/get-started-with-microsoft-copilot-61033adf-484d-45f5-a8c3-b89876963bd8), accessed 6 November 2026. - Microsoft Learn, [Manage self-service purchases and trials (for admins)](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/commerce/subscriptions/manage-self-service-purchases-admins), accessed 6 November 2026. - Microsoft, [Bringing Claude models in Microsoft Copilot into the EU Data Boundary](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/copilot/blog/2026/11/05/bringing-claude-models-in-microsoft-copilot-into-the-eu-data-boundary/), 5 November 2026. - Microsoft price pages for the EEA ([pl-pl, without Teams](https://www.microsoft.com/pl-pl/copilot/pricing/business-without-teams)) and the UK ([en-gb, without Teams](https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365-copilot/pricing-without-teams)), accessed 6 November 2026. - Message Center posts MC1536158 and MC1536163 (archive at mc.merill.net), 3 November 2026. - The Register, "Copilot Chat has usage caps, and Microsoft would rather you found them by hitting them", 5 November 2026. ## Questions & Answers (FAQ) ### Is there a limit on Copilot Chat without a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence? Yes. Since 2 November 2026 Microsoft applies fair use limits to more Copilot Chat features for people in work accounts without a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence. Before that, limits applied to some features, such as image generation. Copilot Chat stays in your Microsoft 365 subscription, but a feature can pause for a while and the app tells the user when to try again. ### When do the new Copilot Chat limits start? Microsoft's partner announcement of 4 November 2026 says the limits started on 2 November 2026 for organisations with 2,000 or fewer Microsoft 365 seats. Larger organisations get them from 9 November. They apply to Copilot Chat on the web, desktop and mobile. Admins do not need to switch anything on, and they cannot switch the limits off. ### How many prompts can I send in Copilot Chat without a licence? Nobody outside Microsoft knows. Microsoft does not publish the numbers because, in its words, they are subject to change, and they can vary during the day. Admins cannot see or raise them in the admin centre. A response that is already being written is not cut off. You learn the limit only when someone in your team reaches it. ### How much does Microsoft 365 Copilot Business cost in Europe? On Microsoft's Polish site, in EUR, the Copilot Business add-on is 18.20 EUR per user per month on an annual commitment, excluding VAT, or 15.60 EUR in the first year for existing Microsoft 365 customers who buy by 31 December 2026. Monthly billing is 21.84 EUR. In the UK the same add-on is 16.10 GBP, or 13.80 GBP on the promotion. ### Can employees buy a Copilot licence themselves? Yes, if your organisation allows self-service purchases, and Microsoft says new products allow them by default. A self-service purchase needs a payment method and renews automatically. An admin can block it per product in the Microsoft 365 admin centre under Settings, Org settings, Services, Self-service trials and purchases. Changes can take up to 72 hours. --- ## About AppWave AI development company from Łódź, Poland. We build custom AI software, automation agents and web applications. We co-create them with the client and guarantee every system we deliver. - **Legal name:** AppWave sp. z o.o. - **Address:** ul. Kolumny 147E/1, 93-611 Łódź, Poland - **Phone:** +48 538 441 413 - **Email:** office@appwave.dev - **Business hours:** Monday-Friday, 09:00-17:00 - [Book a Free Consultation](https://appwave.dev/en/appointment)