Microsoft is adding fair-use limits to more Copilot Chat features for people at work who do not have a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence. It sets the limits, will not publish them, and admins cannot see or change them.
CTRL + ALT News | Artificial Intelligence | Information checked on 9 November 2026
A note on transparency: Ctrl + Alt News uses Anthropic’s Claude in its work, and Microsoft’s Copilot competes with it. We have kept to what Microsoft’s own notices say and marked what they leave out.
If your employer gives you Microsoft 365, you probably have access to Copilot Chat, Microsoft’s AI chat that comes included with the subscription in the web, desktop and mobile apps. A Microsoft notice says that for people without the paid Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, more of its features now come with usage limits. The change began on 2 November for organisations with 2,000 or fewer Microsoft 365 seats and begins today, 9 November, for larger ones.
The notices are short. Here is what they say, and what they leave open.
What Microsoft says is changing
Microsoft uses what it calls “fair use” limits on some Copilot features for users without a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, such as image generation. It is now applying the same approach to “additional Copilot Chat features and capabilities”, according to its Partner Center announcement of 4 November and a Message Center post dated 3 November (MC1536163). The Message Center is the channel Microsoft uses to tell administrators about changes.
The main points:
- Who is affected: users without a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence in commercial tenants (a “tenant” is an organisation’s own Microsoft 365 setup), using Copilot Chat on the web, desktop and mobile apps. Users with the licence get additional features.
- When: from 2 November 2026 for organisations with 2,000 or fewer Microsoft 365 seats, and from 9 November 2026 for larger organisations.
- What a limit is: fair use gives access to a feature “with limits”, and the limits can vary through the day. Reaching one, Microsoft says, is expected behaviour. The user is told in the product and shown when the feature will be available again.
- Work in progress: a response already being produced is not interrupted when a limit is reached.
- Copilot Chat stays included: Microsoft says it remains part of Microsoft 365 subscriptions, and that no administrator action is required.
What administrators can and cannot do
According to Microsoft, it “sets and manages” the limits. Administrators cannot view or adjust them, and Microsoft does not publish specific figures “because they’re subject to change”.
Its advice to administrators is modest: tell help desk staff that some Copilot Chat capabilities will be limited for users without the licence, and review the licence-request settings.
Those settings matter because of the upgrade route. Microsoft says that in most organisations the limit notice includes an option to upgrade. A user can use it to ask the administrator for a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, which the administrator can approve or deny in the Microsoft 365 admin center. If the organisation lets people buy licences directly, the user may also see an option to buy one. Administrators can turn off direct purchases for each product.
The sales angle, in Microsoft’s own words
The Partner Center page is written for Microsoft’s partners, the companies that resell and support its products. Its headline says the new limits “create an upsell conversation” with customers. The text adds that when users reach the limits “it might indicate interest in additional Copilot capabilities”, and it points partners to a view in Microsoft’s partner tools that shows which of their customers have users reaching the limits.
That is Microsoft describing how it sees the change commercially. It does not mean the limits were designed only to sell licences, and the notices do not say so. It does explain why the upgrade prompt is part of the experience.
What we could not find out
Microsoft’s notices leave several things open:
- Which features are limited. Image generation is named as an existing example. The Message Center post says limits are used for some capabilities “and may expand to additional capabilities over time”. The list is not published.
- How much you can do before hitting a limit. No figures, and no explanation of how the limits vary through the day.
- Whether the limits differ by country. The pages we read do not mention the UK or any other country.
- Whether people are hitting limits in practice. We found no independent testing or reporting that we could open.
What it means in practice
This is our reading, not a recommendation from Microsoft. If you use Copilot Chat at work without the paid licence, expect that a request may sometimes be refused with a message about limits, and that trying again later is the path Microsoft describes. If you are an administrator or in IT support, Microsoft’s own suggestions are to brief the help desk and check the licence-request and direct-purchase settings.
If you are weighing which AI assistant to use for work more generally, see our guide to choosing between Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini.
Frequently asked questions
Is Copilot Chat being removed from Microsoft 365? No. Microsoft says Copilot Chat remains included in Microsoft 365 subscriptions. What changes is that more of its features have usage limits for people without the paid Copilot licence.
Does it apply to me? It applies to work or organisation accounts without a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence, in commercial tenants. Organisations with 2,000 or fewer seats were affected from 2 November, larger ones from 9 November. We found nothing in the notices about personal accounts.
Can my IT admin change the limits? No. According to Microsoft, admins cannot view or adjust them.
What happens if I reach a limit mid-answer? Microsoft says responses already in progress are not interrupted.
How many requests can I make? Microsoft has not published that.
What we could not confirm
- The full list of Copilot Chat features that have limits, and how many requests trigger them.
- Whether anything differs for UK organisations or users.
- The second Message Center post (MC1536158) and Microsoft’s support page on standard and priority access to Copilot Chat, which we did not open.
- Any independent report of how the limits work in practice.
Sources: Microsoft Partner Center announcements, November 2026; Microsoft 365 Message Center post MC1536163, 3 November 2026 (public mirror).
Leave a Reply