Microsoft has launched Microsoft 365 Premium, a US$20 ($30) subscription positioned directly against OpenAI’s ChatGPT Plus.

The new tier bundles Word, Excel, PowerPoint and the wider Office suite with 1TB of OneDrive storage and expanded AI usage limits.

It also includes Microsoft’s latest Copilot features powered by GPT-5 and GPT-4o, plus new AI agents dubbed ‘Actions’, ‘Researcher’ and ‘Analyst’.

Microsoft is pitching Premium as a better deal than ChatGPT Plus, which costs the same but offers no productivity software or cloud storage.

Premium members will receive early access to upcoming AI tools but won’t get OpenAI’s custom GPTs or its Sora video generation platform. The launch coincides with Microsoft hiking GamePass Ultimate to US$30 ($45) per month, signalling a wider subscription shake-up.

For Microsoft, the strategy appears to be to tie premium AI tightly to its productivity ecosystem, while undercutting rivals by bundling advanced models with familiar software tools.