I would’ve preferred to test MS Copilot’s meeting notes myself, but Microsoft has made that as difficult as possible. Truth is, unless you’re on a Business plan and using the notes for internal business calls only, then you’ve got no chance of trying it out. That alone is a big drawback for lots of potential users, especially those who want to get notes from sales calls or other external meetings.
But I’m getting ahead of myself here. I couldn’t personally test it, so I did the next best thing: scoured the web to get honest reviews from real users. I looked on Reddit, YouTube, X, G2, ProductHunt, TrustPilot, Capterra, and more to find as many authentic viewpoints as possible.
Problem here is Copilot for Microsoft 365 – and the meeting notes feature in particular – is at the crossroads of Microsoft Teams (as just one section of Microsoft 365) and Copilot (as a standalone LLM). In short, most reviews are for one or the other, so I’ve had to dig super deep to sift through the advertisements and get the real diamonds: authentic reviews from real people that specifically talk about Copilot’s meeting notes. Spoiler alert: there aren’t that many.
However, combined with general Copilot reviews and discussions on Microsoft’s workflows, you can easily paint the picture of what to expect.
If you’re considering using MS Copilot for meeting notes, you’ll find this summary of raw reviews helpful. Let’s dive in!
TL;DR: Is Copilot For Teams Worth It?
Copilot for meeting notes on MS Teams has a number of drawbacks. Firstly, you can only use it if you:
- have a Microsoft 365 Copilot license;
- are using MS Teams;
- if Copilot is enabled by the meeting admin;
- if your meeting is internal and only includes participants from within your organization;
- if meeting transcription is enabled;
- if permissions are granted to access chats, call metadata, and various M365 documents.
In short, it’s a chaotic mess that’s difficult to wrap your head around. Microsoft offers so many meeting intelligence tools that I had no idea how to distinguish the difference between each one. It took unnecessary time and energy to wrap my head around the differences between:
- Live transcription
- Meeting recording and transcription
- Intelligent Recap
- Copilot in Teams
Believe it or not, these are all completely separate features you can enable (if you have the right licenses and admin capabilities – consider yourself lucky I’m here to explain them).
MS Copilot for Teams was also difficult to find reviews for because most people review either MS Teams or Copilot individually, both of which are separate tools. Copilot for Teams, however, is using the AI chatbot (Copilot) during the Teams meeting as well as streamlining post-meeting admin.
Nevertheless, I did manage to find some real user reviews. Out of everything I’ve tested, these were the most scathing.
What users like:
- It takes comprehensive notes automatically
- Post-meeting follow-ups are quick and generally accurate
- It lists action items for different team members
- You can chat with it mid-call
What users don’t like:
- Isn’t available for external calls
- Clunky set-up and can be confusing with so many different licenses and similar features
- Hallucinates a lot and makes mistakes
- Thinks that it’s right even when it’s wrong and struggles to see the logic
- Pricing was increased by over 40% to accommodate for Copilot, even if you just want a regular personal license without AI
Here’s a quick summary chart to make it clear whether or not you should be interested in Copilot for Teams.
| Best For | Look Elsewhere If |
|---|---|
| You run all meetings in MS Teams inside the Microsoft 365 ecosystem | You use Zoom, Google Meet, or mixed platforms |
| Your calls are internal-only | You need AI notes for client or external calls |
| You already pay for Teams Premium/Copilot licensing | You don’t have the right license or admin permissions |
Let’s take a closer look at Copilot for Teams.
What Exactly Is Microsoft Copilot for Teams?
If you’re just as confused as me by all the different meeting intelligence tools that Microsoft offers, each one buried away inside a different hidey hole, you might be wondering what on earth Copilot for Teams even is. How is it any different from Intelligent Recap or live transcription?
Well, to put it simply, it’s both – and more.
Copilot for Teams only works when transcription is enabled (and even then, only for internal MS Teams calls with a Copilot 365 license where the admin has enabled it), and what it does is provide an AI chatbot for you inside the meeting itself. That means it can catch you up on what’s happened in the conversation in real-time.
It also means it can help you identify gaps in the context or highlight new avenues to explore, especially during awkward silences. Essentially, it works like Copilot, but live during your meetings.
After the call is over, Copilot summarizes the conversation and provides meeting notes and action items for you to skim over. You can also speak with Copilot about past calls to quickly find information like who said what or when the deadline for a specific task is.
In other words, it provides the basic functionality of any serious AI meeting assistant, only it buries it in licenses, admin settings, and similar-sounding features. Oh, and it only works for MS Teams.
If you run your meetings on Zoom or Google Meet, Copilot is useless. If you want to use it to summarize and take notes for client-facing calls, Copilot is useless. If you want to use it when you’re not an admin, you guessed it, Copilot is useless.
However, if you’re entrenched in the Microsoft ecosystem, you run all business calls through Teams, and you have A3 posters of Bill Gates plastered around your home office, Copilot could be perfect. It’s said to work seamlessly with other Microsoft products, but Microsoft’s version of seamless and my version of seamless are not the same thing.
But enough about what I think. Let’s take a look at the key features of Copilot.
Key Features of Copilot for Microsoft Teams
Copilot has a lot going for it, despite its complete absence of organization. As a quick side note, as if things weren’t already confusing enough, Microsoft 365 Copilot has now integrated with GPT-5. That’s because Copilot is actually a Microsoft wrapper for OpenAI tech (ChatGPT). It’s a common misconception that Copilot and GPT are competitors, but it’s more accurate to think of GPT-5 as the engine under Copilot’s hood.
This leads us onto our first key feature:
- GPT-5: Copilot uses GPT-5 to power its summaries, meeting notes, and in-call feedback.
- Summaries, notes, transcription, and action items. Copilot fulfills your basic meeting needs.
- Integrates well with Microsoft’s ecosystem. If you’re already using Microsoft’s ecosystem, Copilot slots right in.
- Mid-call catch ups. Copilot helps you catch up if you’re late, or suggests responses based on conversational context. It offers an interactive Q&A style chat inside the call.
- Searchable transcript. You get a full meeting transcript provided with speaker attribution and timestamps. Clicking a certain part will take you straight to that part of the recording.
- Mentions and attendance reports. You can view chat mentions from the meeting and download attendance data showing join/leave times.
- Follow up messages. Copilot can generate simple follow-up emails based on the context of the conversation.
As you can see, the key features are fairly thin on the ground. But if you just want a simple meeting summarizer baked into your everyday workflows, Copilot could still be a game changer.
For a breakdown of what benefits to expect when using Copilot, you can check out this video by Connie Clark.
Copilot for Teams vs Intelligent Recap: Why Is Copilot So Confusing?
So let’s break down Copilot’s most confusing aspect. Why does Microsoft have eight million different features that all sound like rip offs of one another?
Let’s take a closer look at:
- Live Transcription. Converts spoken dialogue into real-time text captions during a Teams meeting, showing speakers and timestamps.
- Meeting Recording. Captures audio, video, and screen-sharing, allowing playback and review later.
- Intelligent Recap. Generates post-meeting summaries with notes, chapters, action items, speaker info, and highlights, all via the Recap tab. This is available in Teams Premium and is essentially Copilot but without the in-call chat.
- Copilot for Teams. Offers real-time AI assistance during and after meetings, summarizing, identifying “who said what,” generating action items, and allowing private prompts/chat interaction.
The other awkward thing is that the Meeting Recording, Transcription, Intelligent Recap and Copilot for Teams are all separate features. This means they’re all available on different plans and each have to be applied separately. Copilot doesn’t work unless transcription is enabled, for example.
On specialized AI meeting assistants, like tl;dv, you’re getting the recording, transcription, summaries, notes, and action items all bundled into a single feature. There’s no fiddling around with different admin settings. No Teams-only use case. No internal calls only.
It’s an AI-powered note-taker built for you to use as suits you best, not built to force you into Microsoft’s ecosystem (or any ecosystem for that matter). It’s specifically designed to suit your current workflows, including your CRMs and project management tools. It syncs meeting note data into the necessary fields on your CRM system so your sales reps don’t even need to fill it anymore. Not only can Copilot not do this, but it doesn’t even work in calls with external prospects in the first place.
In short, Copilot’s Live Transcription transcribes in real-time, Meeting Recording and Transcription records and transcribes for you to check after the call, Intelligent Recap is an outdated feature that provides summaries alongside the transcript, while Copilot in teams provides transcripts, summaries, meeting notes, and enables you to use Copilot in the call, helping you catch up if you’re late or providing interesting avenues to explore based on the context of the conversation.
Why they couldn’t group all of these features into one single feature, I have no idea.
I’m not the only one who’s confused either. There are plenty of users on Reddit asking for the best way to get meeting notes and summaries, with answers often providing long-winded methods such as copy and pasting the transcript into Copilot afterwards. It seems that not even Microsoft’s own user base fully understands the nuances between each of the different features.
Let’s take a closer look at what real everyday users think about Copilot for Teams.
Copilot for Teams: What Do the Reviews Say?
Broadly speaking, Copilot for Teams reviews are split into two categories:
- Near-flawless reviews that read like they’re paid promotions (they may not be, but certainly have that voice to them)
- Abysmal reviews that throw shade at Microsoft in every way possible
Both types have to be taken with a fat dollop of salt.
The other problem here is that Copilot for Teams is rarely reviewed as a standalone feature. Most reviews either cover Teams, Copilot, or the entire Microsoft suite. There’s not much room for middle ground.
As a quick example, let’s compare some X posts. You tell me which ones have the promo pack fresh on their desk from Microsoft, and which one actually used Copilot themselves before tweeting about how ‘awesome’ it was.
While three (1, 2, 3) of the tweets are from big profiles and essentially regurgitate the same promo pack, the fourth post highlights the incredibly stupid errors Copilot is still capable of, albeit in Excel. According to Copilot, we’re currently in the month of Auguary.
Similarly, on TrustPilot, you get two extreme sides of the spectrum. Just look at the percentage of 5 star and 1 star reviews to see the divide.
From 104 total reviews, only 18% were 5 stars, while a whopping 71% were 1 star. The funny thing is though, the majority of those reviews can be discarded as they appear to be heavily biased one way or the other.
Just to show you what I mean, check out these reviews:
As you can see here, the two positive reviews tend to be overly positive, with Paul Bommel being “stunned and baffled.” He also claimed there was “not a single moment in which it was obvious to [him, he] was NOT talking to a real human.” Paul also said he laughed and cried with the “flawless” AI. If that doesn’t sound like generic slop, I don’t know what does.
Bluey Heeler takes this a step further by writing: “I am a very proud and happy paying MS 365 customer, and I believe Copilot is amazing.” This sounds like something Copilot might have written itself.
While I can’t prove that either of these are not genuine, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that they are purposely vague and focusing on general things rather than anything specific.
Similarly, however, the bad reviews are just as weak. “Copilot is bad AI” and the one below it that says, “I HATE COPILOT IS VERY BAD” are not exactly selling their point. Craig’s one-star review at least has a bit more of a story to it: the customer support is appalling and the AI is not user friendly
Despite the lack of reliable reviews, I rummaged through all the relevant sites to find ones that spoke specifically about Copilot. Here’s what they have to say:
What Are Real Users Saying?
For our first honest review of Copilot, we’ve got Jason Samuel on TrustPilot.
Jason left a negative but fair review for Copilot. He gave it three stars, claiming “it was working great last week.” Somehow, things took a turn for the worse. It stopped responding how it had been before and it ended up actually making Jason’s tasks “harder instead of easier.” Not a good sign.
While Annikta admits it’s “pretty good for brainstorming,” she was baffled when she had to convince Copilot that there were three letter Rs in the word ‘strawberry’. She goes on to say that there are “lots of random flaws from time to time, usually noticable.” Again, not a great sign.
While neither of these reviews are specifically focusing on Copilot for Teams, the AI engine behind these mistakes is the same one that you’ll be trusting to capture your meeting notes accurately.
Over on Capterra, it receives more positive reviews, netting a total of 4.6/5 from a low 18 reviews. Barun, who rated Copilot 4 stars, says this:
He refers to MS Copilot as a “game-changer for productivity” and expresses his delight at it being a “truly intelligent assistant” as it can “understand context from emails, documents, and the calendar.” While he doesn’t specifically mention Copilot for Teams, that same intelligence can now understand context from your virtual meetings, taken directly from the transcript.
If you’re happy with the way it performs with your other contextual documents, then adding meeting transcripts to the mix will only improve that.
On G2, Copilot scores 4.4/5 from 106 reviews. Luca discusses how Copilot for MS Teams has helped him in his 5 star review.
Luca loves how Copilot integrates seamlessly with all the other Microsoft apps, like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams. It doesn’t even need to switch context or interface to continue operating between them.
He also goes on to say that his “meeting efficiency improved significantly” while using Copilot’s automated transcription and summaries. He calls the meeting notes “comprehensive” and loves how it means they don’t need to pay someone specifically for manual note-taking. Additionally, he says, “This change enhanced participation levels and reduced post-meeting follow-up requirements.”
This is a great compliment for Copilot for Teams, however, it isn’t necessarily anything that you couldn’t get from another meeting assistant that also operates on platforms outside of the Microsoft ecosystem. If you’re not a Microsoft maxi, this praise doesn’t mean you need to sign up to MS 365. It just means that Copilot works well within the system.
Over on ProductHunt, Copilot scores 4.2 from a measly 6 reviews. Elisabeth Connan had this to say:
Elisabeth scored Copilot 4/5 and called it an “extraordinary help for meeting notes.” Talking specifically about Copilot in Teams, she said “If you spend long hours in meeting, you will love it.” However, she does concede that it didn’t score 5 stars because “results can be disappointing once in a while.”
While she didn’t go into any detail about what was specifically disappointing about her results, her praise is enough to suggest that she got a lot of benefit from using Copilot in Teams. If you’re already using MS Teams every day, having it there to summarize meetings, take notes, and ask questions mid-call is an overall big improvement.
Our next reviewer took to Reddit to vent/ask for suggestions on how to improve his workflow with Copilot after his boss recommended him to use it to summarize meetings.
User RozCDA1 posted about Copilot’s meeting notes summaries, explaining how his boss encouraged him to try it as the organization already had a license. He calls the process “a bit clunky” and goes on to explain how he would share the transcript with Copilot so that it could summarize it in a regular chat (something you could do for free with ChatGPT). This process wasn’t automated.
A commenter suggested he set meetings to record and transcribe so that Teams could use Copilot to summarize automatically, but it turns out his company uses Zoom to have business calls. Bizarre for them to have a Microsoft license only to use Zoom. So bizarre in fact, that another commenter suggested he should just use Zoom AI instead.
Talking of clunky processes, another Reddit post asks how to streamline his summary process.
This user, vitlyoshin, asks a simple question: “Does Copilot work with Teams?“
He already records his meetings but he wants to see if Copilot is integrated into Teams and can’t figure out how to make it join. I know the feeling. I spent three calls trying to figure it out too, before realizing I couldn’t do it without a business license and internal calls.
The comments try to explain all the hurdles he has to jump over to get what he wants:
- Licenses
- Turn transcription on
- Make sure your organization allows it
- Make sure you’re using the right aspect of Copilot
- Or do it the long-winded way and upload your transcript to Copilot for it to summarize
As you can see, there’s a stark contrast in the reviews: people either love Copilot or hate it. More often than not, the ones that love it are already using the Microsoft ecosystem everyday. But even some users in that category despise the addition of Copilot.
Next, we’ll take a look at Copilot’s pricing (and some users’ reactions to it).
Copilot for Microsoft 365 Pricing: How Much Does It Cost?
Just this year, Microsoft increased the price of Microsoft 365 by around 43%! And not everyone was happy about it. The Wall Street Journal made a post about how Microsoft was forcing its AI assistant onto its users, whether they wanted it or not, and then making them pay for it too.
Meanwhile, regular everyday users on the personal plan were hit hardest:
X user, Paden Cash, claims Copilot “STINKS” and isn’t worth the $30 per year increase. It’s hard to blame him. Small users on the personal plan are being forced to pay almost 50% more, whether they want the new feature or not.
But how much does Copilot cost? Let’s break it down.
There are two basic plans for Businesses:
- Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat: $0
- Microsoft 365 Copilot: $30 per user per month (paid yearly)
The third plan on the screenshot is just a bundle of Microsoft Copilot 365 and Microsoft 365 Business Basic (which includes licenses for things like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Excel).
Interestingly enough, there is a tab for Enterprise too, but the pricing and plans are exactly the same.
For users to get hold of Copilot for Teams, they’ll need to pay $30 per month. For more storage and use across all of Microsoft’s apps (which is kind of why you’d bother with Copilot in the first place), you’re looking at $36 per user per month.
For basic recording, transcribing, and summarizing (with in-call chat and seamless integrations across other MS tools), that’s not great compared to market alternatives. tl;dv, for instance, offers the same features: recording, transcription, summaries, action items, AI chat, and over 5,000 integrations (including with thousands of tools outside of Microsoft’s small ecosystem), all for half the price: $18 per user per month.
This plan also includes an email follow-up drafter, global transcript search (meaning you can find any moment from any meeting in seconds), team folders for better organization, as well as AI speaker insights and even the ability to schedule recurring AI reports on an entire batch of meetings at once. Oh, and you can do all of that on Zoom and Google Meet, in addition to MS Teams.
For $35 per user per month, still $1 cheaper than the MS Copilot Business Basic and MS 365 Copilot bundle, you can get tl;dv’s Business plan. This unlocks sales playbook coaching and monitoring, multi-meeting AI speaker insights, multi-meeting intelligence and reports, custom transcript glossary, auto-detect meeting language (and adjust the transcript accordingly), AI objection handling, and much, much more.
Copilot For Teams: The Verdict
Ultimately, whether or not Copilot for Teams works for you is down to a single factor: how reliant are you upon Microsoft?
If your team uses MS Teams every day and is fully entrenched in the Microsoft ecosystem, Copilot not only makes sense, but it’s also more budget friendly as you’re already spending in the Microsoft world.
If, however, your team occasionally uses Zoom or Google Meet or any platform other than Teams, it’s almost definitely not worth it. Similarly, if you do use MS Teams but you use it for outbound sales calls or any external call, Copilot will be utterly worthless to you. It cannot be used for non-internal calls.
For teams that require conversational intelligence on sales calls, customer support calls, or other external calls, tl;dv trumps Copilot at every turn. Copilot won’t even provide a summary for those calls (unless you upload the transcript manually), meanwhile tl;dv provides active ways for you to close more deals.
To judge whether or not it’s right for you, simply assess the following:
- How much do you rely on MS Teams?
- Do you need meeting intelligence for external calls?
If the answers to those questions are:
- A lot
- Not at all
Then Copilot might be right for you. It still depends on whether you actually gel with it, not to mention trust it. If you answered anything different, look elsewhere.
Here’s a full table for you to decide:
| Who Copilot for Teams is For | Who Should Look Elsewhere |
|---|---|
| Teams-heavy organizations fully embedded in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem | Teams users who run any external client/sales/support calls |
| Internal-only meeting workflows (no external participants) | Businesses using Zoom, Google Meet, or mixed platforms |
| Companies with admin control to enable transcription + Copilot | Users without the right Microsoft 365 Copilot license or admin permissions |
| Teams that value deep integration with Word, Excel, Outlook, etc. | Those who need flexible meeting intelligence across multiple tools and CRMs |
| Organizations already paying for Teams Premium or Copilot licensing | Users put off by Microsoft’s licensing complexity or the 43% price increase |
FAQs About Microsoft Copilot for Teams
What is Copilot for Teams?
Copilot for Microsoft Teams is an AI assistant built into Teams that can take meeting notes, identify action items, generate summaries, and answer questions in real-time during internal meetings. It’s part of Microsoft 365 Copilot and integrates with other Microsoft apps like Word, Excel, and Outlook.
Is Copilot for Teams free?
No. Copilot for Teams requires a paid Microsoft 365 Copilot license (currently $30 per user, per month) on top of your existing Microsoft 365 plan. It’s never included in the free version of Teams.
Can I use Copilot for Teams on external calls?
No. Copilot for Teams only works for internal calls within your organization’s Microsoft Teams environment. It will not capture or summarize meetings with external participants unless you manually upload the transcript afterwards.
How is Copilot different from Intelligent Recap?
Intelligent Recap generates post-meeting summaries, chapters, and action items from the transcript but doesn’t offer in-call AI chat or real-time Q&A. Copilot includes all the features of Intelligent Recap plus the ability to interact with the AI during the meeting.
Does Copilot work without transcription?
No. For Copilot to function, transcription must be enabled for the meeting, and your organization’s admin needs to allow Copilot access to meeting data.
Does Copilot work with Zoom or Google Meet?
No. Copilot for Teams is designed specifically for Microsoft Teams. If you run meetings on Zoom or Google Meet, you’ll need a third-party AI meeting assistant instead.
Who is Copilot for Teams best suited for?
It’s best for Teams-heavy organizations that run all meetings internally within Microsoft 365, have admin control to enable the required settings, and want deep integration with other Microsoft tools.
