An AI employee is a role with a fixed remit that works inside the tools you already have and hands over as soon as a human has to decide. Copilot is a tool for employees.
Everything else follows from that. The role is paid for per task and acts on its own; Copilot is licensed per seat and acts when a person opens it and asks for something. So your bill grows with the number of tasks you hand over on our side, and with the number of heads on the Copilot side.
The question is not which one is cheaper, but where your bottleneck is. If a task sits with one person and stalls whenever that person is on holiday or chronically overloaded, you need someone to take the task on; that is what a role is for, and it costs the same regardless of how many heads you have. If instead your people lack support while writing in their own documents, the answer is licences.
Microsoft 365 Copilot Business currently costs €15.60 per user and month with annual billing, net, as an annual subscription that renews automatically. That is a promotional price which, according to Microsoft, runs until 31 December 2026. The regular price is €18.20. If you want to stay cancellable monthly, it is €21.84 per user and month.
On top of that, Copilot Business is an add-on rather than a product of its own. It requires a licence for a qualifying Microsoft 365 plan and is aimed at existing Microsoft 365 customers on an eligible business plan, for up to 300 users. Buying the plan along with it costs €20.36 for Business Standard and €27.73 for Business Premium with annual billing, each bundled with Copilot.
Source: Microsoft 365 Copilot plans and pricing, list prices for Germany, read on . All amounts exclude VAT. Microsoft can change its prices at any time.
The licence fee is not the whole cost. The annual subscription ties you in for twelve months, and the monthly, cancellable tariff sits about forty per cent above it. If you do not have the base plan yet, add it. And the largest item appears on no invoice at all: an assistant nobody uses still costs money. Rolling it out in the team, meaning training, examples and somebody who answers questions, is the part companies regularly underestimate.
Copilot is an assistant for one person. It drafts text, summarises meetings, explains spreadsheets and writes emails, built, according to Microsoft, into Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, Teams and further Microsoft 365 apps. There are also pre-built agents from Microsoft, for research and analysis among other things.
It covers that work, and that work comes up daily in many companies. Whether the licence fee pays for itself depends on how many of your people genuinely write and analyse every day, not on how many of them are given access.
Copilot helps one person with their own work. It does not take a task off anyone. Incoming invoices do not check themselves as long as nobody asks Copilot to. The open quote stays open if nobody thinks of it. And you pay per head, including for the colleagues who open the assistant twice a month.
An example: Hauke, the document desk, reads your manuals, procedures and filed cases once and answers questions from them in Teams, citing the source for every answer. Where the documents give nothing, he says so instead of inventing an answer. Nobody has to open him to do that, and nobody needs a licence of their own to ask him.
A calculation for a company with 40 workplaces, all amounts net:
Hainzelman
€1,788 per year. No setup fee in self-service. Have us set the role up and a one-off €500 is added, so €2,288 in the first year.
One recurring task is taken on permanently. How many people work with the role does not change the price.
Microsoft 365 Copilot
€7,488 per year at the promotional price, €8,736 at the regular price.
Every workplace gets an assistant. What happens with it is up to each person.
The two figures are not a direct comparison, and you should not read them as one. They buy different things. Which of the two calculations is the right one for you is decided by your bottleneck, not by the amount.
| Aspect | AI employees from Hainzelman | Microsoft 365 Copilot |
|---|---|---|
| Billing | Per role and month. How many people work with the role does not change the price. | Per user and month. Every account that is to work with Copilot needs a licence of its own. |
| Who starts the work | The role. It carries out its task on its own and puts the result up for approval. | The person who opens the assistant and asks it for something. |
| Scope of the work | One defined, recurring task with clear handover points to a human. | General support across changing tasks, depending on what is asked at the time. |
| Work inside a single document | Not provided. Our roles work on a task, not alongside you in the open document. | According to Microsoft, built into Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, Teams and further Microsoft 365 apps. |
| Time until it is in use | Set up by you in minutes to a few hours in self-service. A few days if we do it. Only larger roles need a Specification Sprint. | The licence is assigned, after which the assistant is ready. |
| Prerequisites | No particular Office contract needed. The role works in the mailbox or chat you already have. | Requires a licence for a qualifying Microsoft 365 plan. The add-on is aimed at existing Microsoft 365 customers on an eligible business plan, for up to 300 users. |
| Where the data runs | Infrastructure within the EU, primarily in Germany. In your own data centre on request. | Part of your Microsoft 365 tenant, under the terms set by Microsoft. |
| Commitment | Cancellable monthly, with seven days’ notice to the end of the month, in text form. | Annual subscription with automatic renewal, or a monthly subscription at the higher price of €21.84. |
The Copilot details come from the Microsoft pricing page linked above, as read on 5 October 2026. The details on our roles are on the pricing page and in the individual role profiles. How the platform behind them is built, meaning hosting, models and evidence, is described on the page for IT departments.
An AI employee fits when a recurring task sits with one person today. The same sequence every time, the same questions every time, and when that person is away the work piles up. An assistant that waits to be asked does not solve this, because somebody would still have to ask it. A role takes the task on and brings a human in only where a decision is needed. You pay for it once, no matter how many colleagues deal with it.
Copilot fits when you have many knowledge workers who write, analyse and present every day. Quotes, reports, analyses, meeting minutes: work that looks different each time and that a person with judgement carries out. That is where the assistant can help inside the document, and our offer does not cover it.
Both can run side by side, and in many companies they do. Licences for the team that writes a lot, and alongside them a role for the task that would otherwise be left undone. This is not an either-or.
Neither replaces the other, because they do different things. An AI employee takes on a recurring task for the company and is paid for per role. Copilot helps one person with their work inside a document and is licensed per seat. If you want to hand over a task that sits with one person, you need a role. If your people write and analyse a great deal, you may need licences as well. In many companies both run side by side.
Yes. Our roles work in the tools you already use: Microsoft 365, common ERP and CRM systems, email and Teams. There is no new interface your team has to learn first. The AI employee comes to you, not the other way round.
Your data stays your data. Processing and storage take place on infrastructure within the EU, primarily in Germany. On request, operation in your own data centre is also possible. We process personal data exclusively on your behalf and do not use it for our own purposes. Before going live we conclude a data-processing agreement under Art. 28 GDPR.
The AI employee learns from your processes, not with your data. Your content does not flow into the training of third-party models. Whatever we improve in generic patterns never reveals your confidential information.
That depends on the role. In self-service you set a catalogue role up yourself in minutes to a few hours, with no setup fee. If we take on the setup, it is in use within a few days, at a fixed price. Only larger roles need a Specification Sprint and cost accordingly more. Every role is then fine-tuned to your formats and decision criteria in a guided phase.
For 40 workplaces, Copilot licences cost €7,488 per year at the current promotional price, and €8,736 at the regular price. A catalogue role costs €149 per month, so €1,788 per year. Nothing is added in self-service; if we are to set the role up, a one-off €500. The two amounts buy different things, though: the licences give 40 people an assistant, the role takes on a task. Which calculation works out for you depends on what you need.
Tell us which task regularly gets left undone at your company. Then we work out together whether a role is worth it, or whether something else would help you more.