If two people in your business both have a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, do they both get the same Copilot? Since late July 2026, the honest answer is: check the service plan, not just the licence name.
What changed
Microsoft has changed how it decides whether a user gets the full Microsoft 365 Copilot (Premium) experience or the lighter Copilot Chat and Microsoft 365 Copilot (Basic) experience. The Copilot service plan assigned to that user, not just the licence SKU they hold, is now the primary factor determining what they actually see.
Unlicensed users only ever receive Basic experiences, regardless of what else is assigned to them elsewhere in the tenant.
Why the licence name was never the whole picture
Microsoft licences are typically made up of multiple service plans bundled together, and it has always been possible for a user to hold a licence without every service plan inside it being active for them. What changed in July and August 2026 is that this distinction now determines Copilot access specifically, rather than access being inferred more loosely from the licence itself.
In practice, this means two staff members with what looks like the same Copilot licence on paper can have genuinely different day-to-day Copilot experiences, and the difference will not be obvious from the admin centre’s licence view alone.
What to do about it
This is a five-minute audit for most businesses, but it is worth doing deliberately rather than assuming your last licensing review still holds. If you rolled out Copilot to specific teams and expected consistent access across them, this is the point to confirm it.
Talk to us about auditing your Copilot licensing.
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Sources: Microsoft 365 admin centre documentation and Microsoft 365 message centre, service plan and Copilot licensing behaviour (rollout late July to early August 2026). Accurate as of publication and subject to Microsoft’s ongoing updates.
