Agent 365, Claude or Gemini Enterprise? A comparison

Agents instead of chat: how Microsoft, Anthropic, Google and OpenAI let you build, manage and pay for agents in 2026. Prices from vendor pages, plus five questions for choosing.

In May we put ChatGPT Enterprise, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Claude and Gemini side by side as chat assistants: our enterprise AI comparison for DACH. The question has shifted since then. If you compare "Copilot Studio vs Claude", you should look less at how well the chatbots write and more at where agents are created in the company, who manages them and how they are billed.

This post complements that comparison rather than repeating it. It is about the agent layer: Microsoft with Copilot Studio and Agent 365, Anthropic with Claude, Cowork and Claude Code, Google with the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, and OpenAI, which announced the discontinuation of two agent products in 2026. All prices and plan contents come from the vendors' pricing and documentation pages, retrieved on 5 October 2026.

TL;DR

Microsoft separates building from managing: agents are created in Copilot Studio (internal use at no extra cost for users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence) and managed in Agent 365 (according to the German pricing page, €13.00 per user per month excl. VAT, billed annually).
Anthropic and Google start per seat: Claude Team from USD 20 per seat per month on annual billing, with Cowork and Claude Code included; the Gemini Enterprise app from USD 21 per seat per month. OpenAI is shutting down its Agent Builder on 30 November 2026.
No recommendation for one vendor: the choice depends less on the best model than on five questions: where your identities and data live, who builds the agents, how you manage third-party agents, which pricing logic fits and what your exit looks like.

What this is about: agents instead of chat

A chat assistant answers questions; an agent completes tasks: it plans, uses tools such as files, mailboxes or business applications and delivers a result. We described the difference in detail in From chatbot to agent. For choosing a platform, this means you no longer assess just a model, but three layers.

Build: where are agents created, with clicks in the business department or with code in development?
Manage: is there a register of all agents, an identity per agent, permissions and logging of what an agent does?
Pay: per user, based on usage, or both?

All four major vendors added to exactly these areas in 2026. Microsoft made Agent 365 generally available on 1 May 2026. On 22 April 2026, Google introduced the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform as the evolution of Vertex AI. On 16 September 2026, Anthropic announced the merger of Cowork and Chat into a single Claude. On 29 September 2026, OpenAI introduced permanently running agents called "dots".

This comparison excludes agents embedded in business software. If you use SAP or Salesforce as your primary business system, you should look at them in addition: on 12 May 2026, SAP presented more than 50 Joule Assistants for specific business functions, and on 11 September 2026, Salesforce made Agentforce Coworker generally available.

Microsoft: Copilot Studio and Agent 365

Microsoft cleanly separates the tool in which agents are created (Copilot Studio) from the control layer in which IT manages them (Agent 365). Both are linked through the agents' identity in Microsoft Entra.

Copilot Studio: where agents are created

Copilot Studio is included in Microsoft 365 Copilot: licensed users can create and use internal agents in Microsoft 365, with Copilot Chat and the so-called standard harness, at no additional cost according to Microsoft. According to the German pricing page, Microsoft 365 Copilot costs €26.00 per user per month on annual billing, excl. VAT, and requires an eligible Microsoft 365 plan (as of 5 October 2026).

You need a standalone Copilot Studio licence when agents face outward: publishing on websites, in apps and on social platforms, use by people without a licence, or agents with the GitHub Copilot harness. For simple cases there is also the Agent Builder in Microsoft 365 Copilot, which Microsoft describes as meant for quick, lightweight agents from business users and small teams. Do not confuse it with OpenAI's product of the same name, which is currently being discontinued (see below).

Copilot Studio is billed in Copilot Credits. Billing is made up of components: a generative answer costs 2 credits, an agent action costs 5, and tenant graph grounding (answers based on Microsoft Graph) costs a further 10. If employees with a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence use internal agents under their own identity, no credits are incurred for this according to Microsoft, within fair-use limits and with exceptions such as Computer Use. The prices (as of 5 October 2026):

Capacity pack: €173.30 per pack per month for 25,000 Copilot Credits (German pricing page, excl. VAT). According to Microsoft, a prepurchase plan saves up to 20 percent.
Pay-as-you-go: USD 0.01 per credit, billed through an Azure subscription (Microsoft Learn).

A practical detail: if prepaid capacity is used up or exceeded, Microsoft can stop agents and agent flows. The exact rules (thresholds, exceptions for environments with remaining reserved capacity or with pay-as-you-go) are in Microsoft's billing documentation; check them before the rollout.

Claude Sonnet 4.6, Claude Opus 4.6 and Claude Opus 4.7 can also be selected as models in Copilot Studio. Important for DACH: according to Microsoft, Anthropic models in Microsoft offerings are excluded from the EU Data Boundary and are switched off by default for tenants in the EU, EFTA and the United Kingdom. The administration has to enable them deliberately in the Microsoft 365 admin centre.

Agent 365: where agents are managed

Agent 365 is Microsoft's control layer for observing, steering and securing agents. It has been generally available since 1 May 2026 and bundles the agent registry with controls from Entra, Defender, Purview and Intune. It is licensed per user, recommended for everyone who interacts with agents, owns them, manages them or looks after them as a sponsor.

The price according to the German pricing page: €13.00 per user per month, billed annually, excl. VAT. The US page and Microsoft's announcement state USD 15 per user per month. Agent 365 is also included in Microsoft 365 E7, which according to the German page costs €91.92 per user per month on annual billing, excl. VAT (as of 5 October 2026).

The identity comes automatically: since May 2026, Copilot Studio creates a Microsoft Entra Agent ID for every new agent, and there is no longer an opt-out. According to Microsoft, this gives you audit logs in Entra ID, lifecycle management and the ability to control an agent's connector permissions with conditional access. Agents that are published through Microsoft 365 channels and registered with Entra Agent ID appear automatically in the Agent 365 inventory.

Agents from other vendors can be connected. According to Microsoft's documentation (as of 28 September 2026), Agent 365 syncs agents from Amazon Bedrock, Google Vertex AI, Salesforce Agentforce, Databricks Genie, Anthropic Claude Managed Agents, Oracle Generative AI Agents and Snowflake Cortex into the registry. You start the sync manually, and observability differs from platform to platform.

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Anthropic: Claude with Cowork and Claude Code

Anthropic bundles knowledge work and development in one subscription: according to the pricing page, the Team plan includes Claude Code and Claude Cowork. In September, Anthropic announced the merger of Cowork and Chat; it is being rolled out in stages by plan.

Cowork is now Claude

On 16 September 2026, Anthropic announced the merger of Cowork and Chat into a single Claude. In future you no longer choose a mode; Claude accesses files, tools and connectors depending on the task and asks before an action by default. Claude Docs and Claude Slides launch in beta. The changeover is being rolled out first for Pro and Max, with Team following; Enterprise admins will be informed at least 30 days before changes. What this means for teams is covered in Cowork is now Claude, and the basics in Claude Cowork explained.

According to the pricing page, Claude Code is included in all paid plans and shares its usage limits with the rest of the plan.

Plans and prices (as of 5 October 2026)

Team (2 to 150 people): standard seat USD 20 per seat per month on annual billing (USD 25 monthly), premium seat with five times the usage USD 100 (USD 125 monthly). Included are, among other things, Claude Code and Cowork, the Microsoft 365 connector, SSO, admin controls for connectors, and no model training on your content by default.
Enterprise: USD 20 per seat per month, billed annually, plus usage at API prices. In addition there are spending limits, role-based permissions, SCIM, audit logs, the Compliance API, custom retention periods and IP allowlisting.

Anthropic quotes the prices excluding taxes.

Management and governance

At Anthropic, management and governance run through the plan's admin functions: admins control local and remote connectors and distribute skills to the whole organisation. Since 10 September 2026, Claude Enterprise has had "Smart Reports" as a beta: they show, per team, what Claude is used for in Chat, Claude Code and Cowork, what it costs and where teams encounter difficulties. Anthropic explicitly states that the reports are not intended for evaluating individual people.

On 1 September 2026, Anthropic also announced the Enterprise Frontier Safeguards: data for misuse monitoring can be stored in the customer's own cloud storage, under their own keys. Anthropic charges nothing for this; the rollout is announced in phases for the autumn.

Claude does not run only at Anthropic. According to Anthropic, Claude Opus 5.5 is also available via AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, and Agent 365 can take agents that run as Claude Managed Agents into its registry. The Microsoft 365 connector searches SharePoint, OneDrive, Outlook and Teams; write functions such as sending mail or changing files exist only if an admin enables them.

Google: Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform

Google distinguishes between a platform for developers (Agent Platform) and an app for all employees (Gemini Enterprise app). According to Google, the Agent Platform is the evolution of Vertex AI, introduced on 22 April 2026 at Cloud Next.

The platform for developers

According to Google, the Agent Platform includes Agent Studio, the Agent Development Kit (ADK), an Agent Identity with a verifiable cryptographic ID and a traceable action trail, an Agent Registry, an Agent Gateway with Model Armor and a generally available Agent Sandbox. At I/O on 20 May 2026, the generally available Managed Agents API and ADK 2.0 were added. For the Managed Agents API, Google announced there, as "coming soon", full integration with the Agent-to-Agent protocol A2A and with the governance and security of the Agent Platform. MCP vs A2A explains what A2A is.

Billing is based on usage: according to the product page, you pay for tools used, storage, compute and cloud resources. In the Model Garden, Anthropic's Claude models are available alongside Gemini.

The app for all employees

The Gemini Enterprise app is the interface for business departments: chat, prebuilt Google agents, a workflow builder for agents without code, and connectors to OneDrive, SharePoint, Jira and HubSpot, among others. According to Google, agents you build yourself in the Agent Platform can be registered, managed and controlled there. According to Google, customer data is not used to train models.

The editions according to Google (as of 5 October 2026):

Business: from USD 21 per seat per month, up to 300 seats, no IT setup.
Standard / Plus: from USD 30 per seat per month, unlimited seats, custom agents from the ADK and third-party agents, VPC-SC, customer-managed keys and data residency.
Pay-as-you-go: USD 0 seat fee, billed by usage; for organisations from 20 seats; according to Google, available only to a limited group of customers so far.

OpenAI: what changed in 2026

At OpenAI, the most important news for planning is not a new product but two products whose discontinuation was announced. Two new agent offerings have also arrived.

Discontinuation announced: Agent Builder and Atlas

The Agent Builder, OpenAI's no-code tool for agents, launched on 6 October 2025 together with AgentKit. On 3 June 2026, OpenAI announced its deprecation; it will be shut down on 30 November 2026. As the way forward, OpenAI names the Agents SDK or the Workspace Agents in ChatGPT; ChatKit remains available. On the same date the Evals platform ends, which is read-only from 31 October 2026.

The browser ChatGPT Atlas has already been shut down. It launched on 21 October 2025 and has not worked since 9 August 2026; its agent functions are meant to be absorbed into ChatGPT and Codex.

New: Agents API and dots

Since 10 September 2026, the Agents API has been available as a public beta: agents with a managed Codex harness, persistent sessions and their own tools and MCP servers. Since 29 September 2026, these agents can also operate a browser hosted by OpenAI, with approvals for individual websites.

On the same day, OpenAI introduced "dots" at DevDay: permanently running agents with their own cloud computer, which remember notes across conversations and connect to more than 4,000 apps through plugins. Custom rules define which actions a dot may take, which need approval and which are blocked. Dots come first for Pro and Business Premium in eligible markets; Enterprise can use the beta if a workspace admin switches it on.

On pricing logic: in the API, tokens are billed at the rate of the chosen model. The pricing page for the ChatGPT plans was not retrievable for us on 5 October 2026, so we do not state plan prices here.

Comparison table

All information as of 5 October 2026, according to the linked vendor pages. Prices net or excluding taxes, as stated by the vendor.

Vendor	Target group	Agent management	Identity and governance	Pricing logic	Source
Microsoft	Companies on Microsoft 365 and Entra ID	Agent 365 as registry and control layer, sync with seven third-party platforms	Entra Agent ID for every new Copilot Studio agent, Defender, Purview, Intune	Copilot €26.00 per user per month (annual billing); Studio €173.30 per month per 25,000 credits or USD 0.01 per credit; Agent 365 €13.00 per user per month (annual billing)	Copilot Studio, Agent 365
Anthropic	Knowledge work (Cowork) and development (Claude Code) in the same plan	Admin controls for connectors, skills for the whole organisation, Smart Reports (beta, Enterprise)	SSO from Team; SCIM, role-based permissions, audit logs, Compliance API in Enterprise	Team from USD 20 per seat per month (annual); Enterprise USD 20 per seat per month plus usage at API prices	Claude pricing
Google	App: Business for teams up to 300 seats, Standard/Plus for stricter IT requirements; Agent Platform for developers	Agent Registry in the Agent Platform, central overview in the Gemini Enterprise app	Agent Identity, Agent Gateway with Model Armor; A2A and governance for the Managed Agents API announced	App from USD 21 (Business) or USD 30 (Standard/Plus) per seat per month; Agent Platform by usage	Gemini Enterprise, Agent Platform
OpenAI	ChatGPT users and developers on the OpenAI API	Workspace Agents in ChatGPT, Agents API (beta); Agent Builder ends on 30 November 2026	Rules per dot (allow, approval, block); website approvals for Computer Use	API: tokens at model price; ChatGPT plan prices not retrievable	Deprecations, API pricing

How to choose: five questions

We deliberately give no recommendation for one vendor here. Which platform fits depends on your company, and these five questions clarify that faster than any feature list.

1. Where do identities and documents live today?

Agents need access to mailboxes, files and business systems, and they need an identity under which that access runs. If both live in Microsoft 365 and Entra ID, you get the agent identity automatically with Microsoft. Claude and Gemini Enterprise connect to Microsoft 365 through connectors; with Claude, a Global Administrator in Entra has to grant consent for the whole tenant.

2. Who builds the agents?

For business departments there is the Agent Builder in Microsoft 365 Copilot, the workflow builder in Gemini Enterprise or Claude with Cowork. For development there are Claude Code, Google's ADK or OpenAI's Agents SDK and Agents API. Copilot Studio ranges from internal agents to agents for external channels. Plan the enablement for both groups: Article 4 of the AI Act requires measures to build AI literacy, but no specific level, no mandatory training and no certificate (what Article 4 means after the Digital Omnibus).

3. How do you manage agents that do not come from your main vendor?

If you use several vendors, this becomes a question. Agent 365 syncs agents from seven third-party platforms, and Google has announced A2A integration for its Managed Agents API. Regardless of the tool, an agent register of your own helps: our free AI policy template contains one in Annex A, together with permission levels and rules for connectors and MCP servers. How much autonomy an agent should get is described in Human-in-the-loop.

4. Which pricing logic fits your usage?

Per-user licences are predictable; usage-based billing grows with use. With Copilot Studio, the agent's design determines how many credits are incurred; if prepaid capacity is used up, Microsoft can stop agents (exceptions according to Microsoft's documentation). With Claude Enterprise, usage at API prices comes on top of the seat price, and admins set spending limits. Calculate with your real scenarios rather than just list prices: What AI costs per team in 2026.

5. What happens if a product is discontinued?

OpenAI shut down Atlas after less than ten months and deprecated the Agent Builder less than eight months after launch. Document agents, instructions and workflows so that a move remains possible, and where you can, rely on open connections such as MCP. Contracts should also include exit provisions; see Avoiding vendor lock-in.

If you first want to know where your company stands before the platform question, the AI readiness check helps. For a concrete decision, you can also talk to us for 30 minutes.

FAQ

What is the difference between Copilot and Copilot Studio?

Microsoft 365 Copilot (in parts of the Microsoft documentation now called "Microsoft Copilot") is the AI assistant for work in Microsoft 365, with Copilot Chat and Copilot in the Microsoft 365 apps. Copilot Studio is the tool with which you build your own agents. For quick, lightweight agents there is also the Agent Builder directly in Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Is Copilot Studio included in Microsoft 365 Copilot?

Partly. According to Microsoft, users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence can create and use internal agents in Microsoft 365 at no extra cost. For agents on websites, in apps, for people without a licence or with the GitHub Copilot harness, you need the standalone Copilot Studio licence.

How much does Copilot Studio cost?

According to the German pricing page, €173.30 per month for a pack of 25,000 Copilot Credits, excl. VAT; with pay-as-you-go, one credit costs USD 0.01 according to Microsoft Learn (as of 5 October 2026). How many credits an agent consumes depends on its design: a generative answer costs 2 credits, an agent action 5, and tenant graph grounding a further 10.

How much does Agent 365 cost?

According to the German pricing page, €13.00 per user per month on annual billing, excl. VAT; the US page states USD 15. Agent 365 is also included in Microsoft 365 E7, according to the German page €91.92 per user per month on annual billing, excl. VAT (as of 5 October 2026).

Can Claude Cowork access Microsoft 365?

Yes. With the announced merger of Cowork and Chat, Claude uses connectors depending on the task, including the Microsoft 365 connector: it searches and analyses content from SharePoint, OneDrive, Outlook and Teams. Claude can send mail, manage appointments or change files only if an admin enables the write functions. The prerequisite is a work account in an Entra tenant and the consent of a Global Administrator.

Can Claude and Microsoft Copilot be used together?

Yes, in several ways. Claude models can be selected in Copilot Studio, but in the EU only after approval by the administration and outside the EU Data Boundary. Claude accesses Microsoft 365 through a connector, and Agent 365 can sync Claude Managed Agents into its registry.