4 reasons Copilot Pro is better than ChatGPT Plus

Microsoft is OpenAI's biggest investor, and the former company has injected billions of dollars into the latter company. Well, we're starting to see the investment pay off for Microsoft. While OpenAI's ChatGPT Plus has long been an expensive way to get the best AI features available, it has now been usurped by Microsoft's Copilot Pro subscription. As skeptical as many Windows 11 users were when Microsoft began going all-in on Copilot, the service has grown significantly since it was first shown in preview mode. We're now at the point where the following can be said definitively: Copilot Pro is a better AI subscription than ChatGPT. Here are four reasons why that's the case.

4 It's well-rounded

Copilot Pro has a mobile app, custom GPTs, and image-creation tools

There are certainly a few ways that Microsoft's Copilot Pro subscription, which costs $20 per month (per user), beats out ChatGPT Plus. However, that only matters if Copilot Pro can match ChatGPT's breadth of features. Surprisingly, it looks like Copilot can offer nearly complete feature parity. For starters, Microsoft already has a Copilot app available for iOS and Android, and it will integrate it into the Microsoft 365 app as well. Copilot on mobile is just as good, if not better, than using the ChatGPT mobile app in our testing.

The more important areas where OpenAI has pulled ahead with ChatGPT Plus in the past are image generation and custom GPTs. Copilot Pro gives users access to OpenAI's DALL-E 3 image creation model, so Copilot can hang with the best image creation tools currently available. Image creation is also faster with Copilot, and it uses the Image Creator from Designer, which used to be called Bing Image Creator. The Copilot Pro subscription gives you 100 boosts daily to create images faster, and the AI tool can also generate high-quality images in landscape orientation.

Plus, the Copilot Pro subscription brings Copilot GPTs, which can be customized to meet a user's specific needs. This is equivalent to custom GPTs from ChatGPT. In all, the only reason that Microsoft can compete with Copilot Pro is because it has managed to make it just as versatile as ChatGPT Plus.

3 Microsoft 365 integration

It's going to be a perfect solution for education and enterprise users

The biggest advantage Microsoft has over OpenAI with Copilot Pro is integration. Microsoft can integrate Copilot Pro into its other products and services like it is doing with Microsoft 365. The company says that Copilot Pro subscribers with Microsoft 365 Personal or Family plans can use Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Outlook. Though Excel with Copilot is still in preview, all the other integrated programs are publicly available.

There are plenty of ways to use AI in Copilot with Microsoft 365 apps, but let's use Microsoft Word as an example. Copilot in Word can be used as a text generator, writing content straight into a document. It can also rewrite and transform existing texts, generate summaries, give advice, and more. These are all things that ChatGPT can do, but ChatGPT can't perform these actions within the Microsoft 365 suite. In fact, Copilot can even generate PowerPoints from Word documents, something ChatGPT can't do. As such, Copilot in Microsoft 365 is simpler to use and more accessible for users since they won't have to work between multiple apps and sites.

2 Windows integration

You can launch Copilot Pro straight from your OS, or soon your keyboard

The same logic applies to Windows since Copilot is easily accessible — perhaps too accessible — on Windows 11 computers. Copilot can be found right in the taskbar on Windows, and users can ask Copilot a question without launching a web browser. Microsoft also plans to add a dedicated Copilot key to Windows laptops, which will make activating Copilot even easier. Simply pressing the button next to the right-hand alt key on a Windows laptop will launch the AI chatbot. Whether you love or hate how Microsoft is forcing Copilot onto Windows users, there's no doubt that the company's moves make using Copilot more convenient than ChatGPT.

1 GPT-4 Turbo

Copilot Pro uses OpenAI's best AI model, whereas ChatGPT Plus lags behind

By far, the biggest reason that end users will pay $20 per month for either Copilot Pro or ChatGPT Plus is to gain access to cutting-edge AI models. The free version of ChatGPT runs on the GPT-3.5 model, while the Plus subscription brings the GPT-4 model along. By comparison, the free version of Copilot is powered by GPT-4, and the paid version is the only mainstream chatbot to use GPT-4 Turbo. Somehow, Microsoft has managed to offer more powerful AI models in Copilot Pro than ChatGPT Plus provides. While Microsoft is an investor with close ties to OpenAI, it's still somewhat surprising that OpenAI's latest and greatest AI models are only available through Copilot Pro.

Using GPT-4 Turbo means that your responses from Copilot Pro will return faster and be of higher quality. It has a context window of roughly 300 pages of text and is OpenAI's most advanced AI model. It's also expensive to use, and the cheapest way for people who want to use it frequently to gain access is now via Copilot Pro. By objective metrics, Copilot Pro is a better AI chatbot than ChatGPT Plus.

Do you even need an AI subscription?

ChatGPT Plus was first, but it's fairly clear that Copilot Pro is best — at least for now. Perhaps the better question is whether you actually need to pay for an AI chatbot. People who need AI to analyze large data sets and use generative tools in Microsoft 365 might want Copilot Pro. Similarly, people who want access to GPT-4 Turbo via a subscription can only get it with Copilot Pro. However, I was satisfied with my experience using the free version of Copilot, and it should be good enough for most people.

Microsoft Copilot

Copilot is an artificial intelligence chatbot available for iOS and Android that uses the DALL-E 3 and GPT-4 models. The software is also built into Windows and can be accessed over the web.