Copilot Chat now limits users without a Copilot license. What to do when you hit one

What changed on November 9

Microsoft’s Partner Center announcement of November 4 gives the dates: “Starting November 2, 2026, for organizations with 2,000 or fewer Microsoft 365 seats, and beginning November 9, 2026, for larger organizations, Microsoft is introducing fair use limits for additional Copilot Chat features and capabilities.” They apply to “Users without a Microsoft 365 Copilot license in commercial tenants, when using Copilot Chat on web, desktop, and mobile apps.” Admins were told on November 3, in Message Center posts MC1536158 and MC1536163; the links go to a public mirror, and the originals are in your admin center.

Copilot Chat isn’t going anywhere. It “remains included in Microsoft 365 subscriptions, and no admin action is required.” What changes is how much of it you can use. Image generation was already rationed, and Microsoft’s support article says “Features, such as image generation, already use limits. We are expanding this approach to additional Copilot Chat features,” without naming them.

Copilot Chat is the Copilot that comes with a work account at no extra cost. Microsoft’s overview lists where you meet it: copilot.cloud.microsoft, the Microsoft Copilot app on the web, desktop and phone, Copilot Chat in Edge, and Copilot Chat in Outlook and Teams.

Who it affects

If your organization has more than 2,000 Microsoft 365 seats, the limits start today; at 2,000 or fewer, they began a week ago. Either way they cover only people without a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. Microsoft shows a label in the Copilot app and in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote “to help users identify their Copilot experience,” so look there to see which of these you have:

Your Copilot, as Microsoft labels it, checked November 9, 2026	What it costs	Fair use limits	What it can work with
Copilot Chat (Basic)	Included with eligible Microsoft 365 plans	Yes	The web, and files or open content you give it; no Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint or OneNote
Microsoft 365 Copilot (Basic)	Included; no add-on license	Yes	The same, plus “standard access” to Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote
Microsoft 365 Copilot (Premium)	Microsoft 365 Copilot: $30 a user a month billed yearly, or $31.50 monthly with an annual commitment. Copilot Business add-on: $21 billed yearly, $18 for the first year if bought by December 31, 2026, or $25.20 monthly	Not covered; the limits are for users without a license	Your email, files, meetings and calendar, through Microsoft Graph and Work IQ, with “priority access”

The prices are from Microsoft’s enterprise and business pages; the Copilot Business promotion is “available only to existing Microsoft 365 customers with an eligible Business plan.” Microsoft’s partner notice names both as the step up.

At big organizations this follows an earlier cut. Message Center post MC1253858, as reposted, said that “Starting April 15, 2026, Copilot will no longer be available in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote for Copilot Chat users,” in tenants with more than 2,000 users. November’s limits come on top of that.

Not covered: GitHub Copilot, which Microsoft’s overview calls “independently licensed,” along with Security Copilot and Copilot Studio; and personal Microsoft accounts, which aren’t in a commercial tenant. The notices don’t mention education or government tenants.

What a limit looks like

“Fair use provides users with access to a feature with limits and can vary throughout the day. Reaching a limit is expected behavior,” Microsoft’s partner notice says. “Users are notified in the product, which shows when the feature will be available again.” A reply Copilot has already started finishes: “Responses already in progress aren’t interrupted when a limit is reached.” The support article adds that reaching one “isn’t an error or product malfunction.”

The notice also carries a way out, the partner notice says: “In most organizations, the limit notification includes an option to upgrade.”

What to do when you hit one

1. Wait for the time Copilot shows. IT can’t reset it for you: “Microsoft sets and manages these limits. Admins can’t view or adjust them.”
2. Ask for a license, with a reason. Select the upgrade option in the notice. “Users can select it to request a Microsoft 365 Copilot license from their admin, who can approve or deny requests in the Microsoft 365 admin center.” The strongest case is work that needs your email, files or meetings, which only the licensed Copilot reads on its own; without it, you upload or paste what Copilot should see.
3. Don’t buy one on your own card without asking. “If the organization allows users to buy licenses directly, users might also see an option to purchase a license.” Microsoft’s admin docs say self-service purchases “automatically renew at the end of the subscription term,” and an admin can take over the subscription and cancel it.
4. Use another tool only if it’s approved. Signed in with your work account, Copilot Chat has Microsoft’s enterprise data protection: “prompts and responses are protected by the same contractual terms and commitments that customers widely trust for their emails in Exchange and files in SharePoint.” A personal ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini account doesn’t come under your company’s contract with Microsoft, so ask IT which AI tools you may use for work.

What admins can do

• Tell the help desk. Microsoft recommends that admins “inform their help desk staff and review license request settings.” Otherwise a limit gets reported as an outage.
• Decide how requests reach you. Requests appear in the admin center under Billing, Licenses, on the Requests tab, where you approve or reject them; “Requests are held for 12 months.” To send people to your own process instead, choose Connect your request process and write the message they’ll see (Microsoft’s steps).
• Decide whether people can buy their own. Under Settings, Org settings, Services, Self-service trials and purchases, pick the product and choose Allow, Allow for trials only or Do not allow, or use the AllowSelfServicePurchase policy in the MSCommerce PowerShell module. “It can take up to 72 hours for the policy to be disabled and changes to occur,” and “all new products are set to allow users to make a self-service purchase.”
• Expect your reseller to call. Microsoft’s partner notice says the limits “create an upsell conversation with your customers,” and gives partners a Users Experiencing Usage Limits view that “shows which of your customers have users reaching Copilot usage limits.”

What Microsoft hasn’t said

• The numbers. It “doesn’t publish specific limits because they’re subject to change,” as The Register quoted it under the headline “Copilot Chat has usage caps, and Microsoft would rather you found them by hitting them.”
• Which features. Beyond image generation, the notices say only “additional Copilot Chat features and capabilities.”
• How long a wait lasts. Copilot shows a time when you hit a limit, but Microsoft publishes no reset schedule.
• What comes next. MC1536163 says the limits may expand over time, and the support article says Microsoft is “expanding this approach.” Microsoft Ignite runs November 17 to 20.
• Schools and government. The notices name commercial tenants only.

We’ll update this memo if Microsoft publishes the limits or widens them.