Copilot Statistics 2026: Users, Seats, Adoption and Market Share

Microsoft now has over 30 million paid Microsoft 365 Copilot seats, with net seat adds more than doubling quarter over quarter, according to its earnings call for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2026 (Q4 FY26). That count stood at 15 million paid seats two quarters earlier, which makes seat growth the headline in this year’s Copilot statistics.

GitHub Copilot, the coding sibling, now has 50 million users. Yet Microsoft Copilot held only 1.79% of AI chatbot market share worldwide in September 2026, per Statcounter. That gap suggests most Copilot use happens inside Word, Outlook, Teams and code editors rather than on the open web. The figures below come from Microsoft’s earnings calls, GitHub, a UK government trial, academic research and independent traffic data, covering seats, users, pricing, productivity and market share.

Key Takeaways

• Microsoft 365 Copilot grew from 15 million paid seats in Q2 FY26 to over 30 million paid seats in Q4 FY26.
• GitHub Copilot climbed from 20 million users in Q4 FY25 to 50 million users in Q4 FY26.
• Statcounter puts Microsoft Copilot at 1.79% of AI chatbot market share worldwide in September 2026, against 6.64% in the United States.
• The UK government’s trial found that participants saved an average of 26 minutes a day using M365 Copilot.
• More than 90% of the Fortune 500 use Microsoft 365 Copilot, per Microsoft’s Q1 FY26 call.
• Microsoft 365 Copilot costs $30.00 user/month, paid yearly, while GitHub Copilot’s Pro+ plan costs $39 per month.

Editor’s Choice

• Paid Microsoft 365 Copilot seats: over 30 million in Q4 FY26.
• GitHub Copilot users: 50 million in Q4 FY26.
• Copilot family monthly active users: surpassed 150 million in Q1 FY26.
• Paid GitHub Copilot subscribers: over 4.7 million, up 75% year over year in Q2 FY26.
• Largest Copilot win as of Q3 FY26: Accenture with over 740,000 seats.
• Copilot interactions audited by Purview: over 50 billion.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Paid Seats

• Microsoft reported over 30 million paid Microsoft 365 Copilot seats in Q4 FY26, with net seat adds more than doubling quarter over quarter.
• In Q3 FY26, Microsoft 365 Copilot seat adds increased 250% year over year, its fastest growth since launch.
• Paid M365 Commercial seats grew 6% year over year in Q4 FY26.
• Customers with more than 50,000 seats increased over 7X year over year in Q4 FY26.

Source: Microsoft FY26 Q2, Q3 and Q4 earnings calls

How many Microsoft 365 Copilot seats are there?

Microsoft reports over 30 million paid Microsoft 365 Copilot seats as of Q4 FY26. Copilot Chat comes at no additional cost for Microsoft Entra account users with an eligible Microsoft 365 subscription, so free chat users sit outside the paid count.

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About This Data

Compiled from 18 sources: 6 Microsoft earnings calls and releases, 5 Microsoft and GitHub product and pricing pages, 3 Statcounter pages, 2 GitHub research posts, 1 government report and 1 academic paper. Sources date from February 2023 to September 2026. Only company, government, academic and independent measurement sources qualify. Figures are reviewed on a rolling basis and updated when sources publish new editions.

Copilot AI Chatbot Market Share

• Statcounter measures share of AI chatbot referrals to websites, not total users.
• Microsoft Copilot held 1.79% of AI chatbot market share worldwide in September 2026, behind ChatGPT at 80.48%.
• Google Gemini held 10.91% and Perplexity 5.85% worldwide in the same month.
• In the US, Microsoft Copilot reached 6.64% in September 2026, behind ChatGPT and Google Gemini, at 75.17% and 13.26%.

The worldwide split shows how far ChatGPT leads; Copilot holds a larger share in the US split than worldwide.

Why it matters: Copilot’s US share is 3.7 times its worldwide share. The measure counts clicks out to websites, so it likely misses Copilot use inside Microsoft 365 documents, mail and meetings. A small share and a fast-growing paid base can both be true. Weigh seat counts alongside traffic panels.

Recent Developments

• September 29, 2026: GPT-6.1 Sol, the latest model from OpenAI, became generally available in GitHub Copilot, billed at provider list pricing under usage-based billing.
• September 28, 2026: Claude Sonnet 5.5, Anthropic’s newest Sonnet model, became generally available in GitHub Copilot.
• September 25, 2026: Microsoft introduced the new Copilot with Home, Code and Autopilot, with Autopilot expanding to private preview at the end of the month.
• September 2026: Statcounter data put Microsoft Copilot at 1.79% of AI chatbot market share worldwide.
• July 29, 2026: Microsoft’s fiscal fourth-quarter results reported over 30 million paid Microsoft 365 Copilot seats, and GitHub Copilot reached 50 million users.

GitHub Copilot Users and Paid Subscribers

• GitHub Copilot now has 50 million users, and GitHub as a whole has 225 million users in total.
• Microsoft reported over 4.7 million paid Copilot subscribers in Q2 FY26, up 75% year over year.
• Copilot Pro+ subscriptions for individual developers increased 77% quarter over quarter in Q2 FY26.
• Nearly 140,000 organizations used GitHub Copilot in Q3 FY26, and enterprise subscribers nearly tripled year over year.
• One in three pull requests on GitHub now involves an agent.

Source: Microsoft earnings calls, FY25 Q4 to FY26 Q4

How many people use GitHub Copilot?

GitHub Copilot has 50 million users, according to Microsoft’s Q4 FY26 earnings call. The paid tier is smaller: Microsoft last disclosed over 4.7 million paid subscribers in Q2 FY26. Rival coding tools such as Cursor chase the same developers, which makes the paid count the figure to watch.

Copilot Monthly Active Users and Consumer Growth

• Microsoft’s family of Copilots surpassed 150 million monthly active users in Q1 FY26, across information work, coding, security, science, health and consumer.
• Daily users of the Copilot consumer app increased nearly 50% quarter over quarter in Q1 FY26.
• By Q2 FY26, daily users of the Copilot app had increased nearly 3X year over year.

Source: Microsoft FY25 Q4 and FY26 Q1 earnings calls

The paid seat counts reported for later quarters are the more recent measure of scale.

Largest Microsoft 365 Copilot Deployments

• Accenture has over 740,000 seats, Microsoft’s largest Copilot win to date as of Q3 FY26.
• NHS England is rolling out Copilot to 505,000 clinicians and staff.
• EY deployed the E7 suite to 400,000 employees, in what Microsoft called its largest win to date.
• HSBC committed to 200,000 seats, and PwC has over 200,000 deployed across its global operations.
• AstraZeneca, Boeing, Infosys, Koch Inc., Procter & Gamble, Stellantis, Tata Consultancy Services, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Wells Fargo and Wipro each purchased 60,000 or more.
• Bayer, Johnson & Johnson, Mercedes and Roche each committed to 90,000 or more seats.

Source: Microsoft earnings calls, FY25 Q4 to FY26 Q4

By the numbers: Barclays planned to roll out Microsoft 365 Copilot to 100,000 employees after an initial deployment of 15,000. Publicis bought over 95,000 seats for nearly all its employees. Both commitments run well past pilot scale: Barclays planned a rollout several times its first deployment, and Publicis bought for nearly all its staff.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Usage and Engagement

• Over the last three quarters, Copilot user satisfaction scores have doubled and are now at an all-time high.
• Microsoft cut Copilot latency by 25% in Q4 FY26 alone.
• Average weekly engagement is on par with Outlook and Teams.
• Purview has audited over 50 billion Copilot interactions, up nearly 360% year over year.

Source: Microsoft FY26 Q3 and Q4 earnings calls

Microsoft defines high usage as monthly active usage above 80% across a customer’s user base, and says reaching it has fallen from months to just days over the past year. Engagement claims like these come from Microsoft alone, so the independent trial data in the next section is the useful cross-check.

Copilot Time Savings and Productivity

• The UK Government Digital Service (GDS) ran a cross-government M365 Copilot trial with 20,000 employees from September 30, 2024, to December 31, 2024.
• Trial participants saved an average of 26 minutes a day when using M365 Copilot.
• Over 70% of users agreed M365 Copilot reduced time spent searching for information and on mundane tasks.
• 82% of users said they would not want to return to their pre-Copilot working conditions.
• Lloyds Banking Group deployed 30,000 seats, saving each employee an average of 46 minutes daily.
• An NHS England trial showed Copilot saved employees an average of 43 minutes per day.

Key finding: The UK government trial rated satisfaction at 7.7 and recommendation at 8.2 out of 10. It also found limitations with complex, nuanced or data-heavy work. Its time saving comes from a government-run trial; the higher Lloyds and NHS England figures come from Microsoft’s earnings calls. Lloyds’ reported saving is 20 minutes a day above the government trial’s average.

GitHub Copilot Developer Productivity Research

• In a controlled experiment, developers with GitHub Copilot completed an HTTP server task 55.8% faster than the control group.
• In GitHub’s study with Accenture, 90% of developers felt more fulfilled with their job using GitHub Copilot, and 95% enjoyed coding more.
• 67% of participants used GitHub Copilot at least 5 days per week, averaging 3.4 days weekly.
• 81.4% of developers in the Accenture study installed the GitHub Copilot extension on the same day they received a license.
• Nearly 80% of new developers on GitHub use GitHub Copilot within their first week, per Octoverse.

The 55.8% result comes from recruited developers implementing an HTTP server in JavaScript, a narrow task. Speed on a greenfield exercise says nothing about security flaws in AI-generated code, which need their own review.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Pricing

• Microsoft 365 Copilot (add-on) costs $30.00 user/month, paid yearly on an annual subscription.
• Copilot Chat is available at no additional cost for Microsoft Entra account users with an eligible Microsoft 365 subscription.
• Agents are priced on a metered basis, and an Azure subscription is required to use them.
• Microsoft made Cowork generally available in Q4 FY26, helping customers complete multi-step tasks grounded in their work data.

Source: Microsoft 365 Copilot enterprise pricing page, October 2026

At list price, a $30 seat across the paid base implies a large revenue stream, yet Microsoft’s calls give seat counts rather than a Copilot revenue line.

GitHub Copilot Pricing and AI Credits

• GitHub Copilot offers Free at $0, Pro at $10 per month, Pro+ at $39 per month and Max at $100 per month.
• Agent mode, code review, Copilot in the cloud, Copilot CLI and the Copilot app consume GitHub AI Credits.
• Microsoft announced a move to a usage-based pricing model for GitHub Copilot to align pricing to actual usage and costs.
• GitHub Copilot revenue accelerated over 60% quarter over quarter in Q4 FY26, the quarter GitHub introduced usage-based billing.

Source: GitHub Copilot plans and pricing page, October 2026

Pro+ includes 1.79 times its price in monthly AI credits, while Max includes 2 times its price.

Copilot Adoption in the Fortune 500

• More than 90% of the Fortune 500 use Microsoft 365 Copilot, per Microsoft’s Q1 FY26 call.
• Nearly 90% of the Fortune 500 had active agents built with Microsoft’s low-code tools in Q3 FY26.
• Enterprise customers deploying Copilot to the majority of their information workers grew nearly 75% quarter over quarter in Q4 FY26.
• Microsoft’s Copilot Credit consumptive offer was up nearly 2X quarter over quarter in Q3 FY26.

Source: Microsoft earnings calls, FY25 Q4 to FY26 Q3

What is the Copilot adoption rate?

As of Q1 FY26, more than 90% of Fortune 500 companies use Microsoft 365 Copilot, though use inside a company is not the same as licensing every employee. Paid M365 Commercial seats grew 6% year over year in Q4 FY26. The calls give no Copilot share of that commercial base, so a true penetration rate cannot be worked out from public figures.

Dragon Copilot and Security Copilot Statistics

• Microsoft is on pace to automate over 100 million patient encounters this calendar year, including 28 million in Q4 FY26, up 2X year over year.
• Dragon Copilot helped document over 17 million patient encounters in Q1 FY26, up nearly 5X year over year.
• As of Q1 FY26, more than 650 healthcare organizations have purchased Microsoft’s ambient listening tech.
• Mass General Brigham rolled out Dragon Copilot to over 4,000 providers after a study found ambient AI reduced burnout by 21%.
• Icertis’ security team used Security Copilot agents to reduce manual triage time by 75%.

Source: Microsoft FY25 Q4, FY26 Q1 and FY26 Q4 earnings calls

Microsoft is rolling out Security Copilot to all E5 customers, folding it into an existing suite.

Microsoft Revenue Behind Copilot

• Microsoft’s revenue was $90.0 billion, up 18%, for the quarter ended June 30, 2026.
• Intelligent Cloud revenue was $39.3 billion and grew 32%, helped by Azure.
• Revenue from Productivity and Business Processes was $37.8 billion, up 14%.
• M365 Commercial cloud revenue increased 16% on an adjusted basis and 14% on a reported basis.
• More Personal Computing revenue was $12.9 billion and declined 4%.

The takeaway: Average revenue per user (ARPU) is where Copilot shows up. Premium offerings, including Copilot, E5 and early traction in E7, drove ARPU growth in Q4 FY26. Copilot appears in Microsoft’s results as higher revenue per user in the productivity segment, not as its own line, so read the seat counts with that in mind.

Conclusion

Microsoft 365 Copilot reached over 30 million paid seats in Q4 FY26, and GitHub Copilot reached 50 million users. Seat growth, large deployments and engagement all point the same way, while independent data paints a more modest picture: a smaller daily saving in the government trial and a small slice of chatbot market share on the open web.

The next test is pricing. With seats plus consumption billing across Microsoft 365 and GitHub, the useful numbers will be usage revenue and paid penetration of the commercial base, if Microsoft starts to report them.