ChatGPT, Claude and Copilot: a taste of each, from basic to advanced

Background

ChatGPT, Claude and Copilot do the same basic trick. You type something, it types something back, and a surprising amount of the time the answer is useful. This is a taste of all three at three levels, so you can try the same few things in each and see which one you'd reach for.

It's a taste and I haven't ranked them. These products change every few weeks (the names more often than the features), so I've stuck to what stays put: what each one can see, what's worth trying first, and where it gets risky. I checked the product details against each company's own help pages on 7 October 2026, and the links are at the end of the Setup section.

The difference that matters most isn't how clever each one is. It's what it can see.

At a glance	ChatGPT	Claude	Copilot
Starts with	What you type or upload	What you type or upload	What you type or upload, plus your emails, files, meetings and calendar if you have the paid add-on
Can be connected to	Apps for services such as Google Drive	Connectors such as Google Workspace and Microsoft 365	Your Microsoft 365 apps, and agents your organisation builds
Where you meet it	The ChatGPT site and apps	The Claude site and apps	The Copilot app, Edge, and inside Word, Excel, Outlook and Teams

Copilot comes in two flavours at work, and people mix them up. Copilot Chat comes with most work Microsoft 365 plans at no extra cost, and works from the web plus anything you paste, upload or have open (in Outlook and Teams that means the message or meeting in front of you). The paid add-on can also read your own work data. Microsoft has been renaming these. The paid one used to be called Microsoft 365 Copilot, and you'll still see that name, along with labels like "Basic" and "Premium". Go by what the app says.

Setup

Two things before you start

Use a work account for work. Signing in with your work Microsoft account is what gets you the protected version of Copilot, and a personal account is a different product with different terms.

Then find out what your organisation allows before you paste anything into anything. If it hasn't approved ChatGPT or Claude for work, use the tool it has and ask about the others. The Edge Cases section at the bottom has the detail on what's safe to paste.

Basic: five minutes, nothing to set up

Pick something you were about to do anyway. None of these is written for one tool, so paste them into whichever you've got:

Rewrite this email so it's shorter and friendlier. Keep every date and name exactly as they are.

[paste the email]

Explain this to me as if I'm new to it, then give me three questions I should ask before I agree to it.

[paste the text]

Here's a rough list of what has to happen before Friday. Put it in the order I should do it, and tell me what you assumed.

[paste the list]

ChatGPT and Claude both have free versions, and Copilot Chat comes with most work Microsoft 365 plans. Any of them is plenty for learning at this level, so practise on something that isn't confidential. For real work text, use the tool your organisation has approved. End any of these with "list your assumptions" and you'll see some of what it guessed. If you'd rather it asked before it wrote anything, tell it to ask you questions first.

Moderate: give it your material, and say what shape you want

Level two is the same idea with real material: a document, a spreadsheet, a long email thread. Real material is also where the data rule starts to bite, so use the approved tool and take names and personal details out first (there's a tip on how). Then say what shape you want back, whether that's a table, five bullets or a draft for one named person, because "summarise this" leaves it guessing what you need.

Below is a document. Pull out every decision and every action as a table with four columns: what, who, by when, and the sentence it came from. Where the document doesn't say who or when, write "no owner" or "no date". Don't guess.

[paste or upload the document]

Below is the brief I was given and my draft. Tell me where the draft misses the brief, and quote the line of the brief each time. Don't rewrite anything. If it covers everything, say so instead of finding something to criticise.

BRIEF: [paste]

DRAFT: [paste]

The second one uses the AI as a checker instead of a writer, which is a gentler way in. Got two versions of something? Ask for the differences, not a summary of each, and use Word's Compare or tracked changes first if you can.

Three habits do most of the work. Name who it's for. Show it three examples of what you want. And when a prompt works, keep it as a template. For meeting notes there's a fixed shape worth copying.

Each tool has its own way of stopping you retyping yourself. Copilot's is the simplest: you work on the file you've got open in Word, Excel, Outlook or Teams, so there's less to paste. Without the paid licence that's more limited, and with it Copilot can pull in your other files and emails as well. ChatGPT and Claude both have Projects, a workspace that keeps related chats, files and instructions together so you write the brief once. Claude's free plan allows a handful of them.

Spreadsheets get their own warning. Let the AI write or explain the formula, then do the sums in the spreadsheet, where you can see them. Exact counting, totals and matching don't belong in a prompt.

Advanced: a taste of letting it do a whole job

This is where the three start to look different, and where I'd slow down. What follows is only the flavour.

The first step up is an assistant for one job. You write its instructions once, give it the documents it should use, and keep coming back to it. In ChatGPT that's a Project (custom GPTs are being retired in December 2026), in Claude it's a Project, and in Copilot it's an agent your organisation sets up. A good first one answers questions from your handbook and from nothing else (there's a tip on that). If someone's building one in Copilot Studio, the guide on keeping a person approving the risky steps is worth reading first.

The next is pointing it at your own files and apps. Copilot with the paid add-on already reads your Microsoft 365 data, with nothing to connect. Claude has connectors for things like Google Drive and Gmail, and a Microsoft 365 one that reads SharePoint, OneDrive, Outlook and Teams, and if your admin allows it, can draft and send as well. ChatGPT has apps that do the same sort of thing with services like Google Drive. If you build things, there's a finance report made by wiring Copilot into a real data source, though it's a builder's guide, so it's no place to start.

The last is a bigger errand. All three can go away for a few minutes (sometimes half an hour) and come back with a researched report with sources: deep research in ChatGPT, Research in Claude (paid plans only), and the Researcher agent in Copilot (paid add-on). Some will also take actions for you, such as ChatGPT Work, which replaced the ChatGPT agent, and Microsoft's Copilot Cowork. Both are meant to stop and ask before something consequential, like sending an email or making a payment. I'd still read each approval request before clicking yes.

Two prompts to try at this level. The first designs the assistant for you:

I want an assistant that [does one specific job] for [named people]. Before you write anything, ask me questions one at a time until you have what you need. Then write its instructions: what it should do, what it must not do, and what it should say when it doesn't know. Finish with five questions I can use to test it, and leave the answers blank so I can fill them in from the real documents.

The second turns a research tool into something you can check:

Research [question] for [who it's for]. Give me a short answer first, then a table of each claim with its source link, and mark anything you could not verify.

Then open the sources and check each one says what the table says. A link that loads only proves the page exists.

How I split them

For what it's worth, here's my split. Copilot is what I use for work, because of the security and because what goes in is retained in our tenant. Claude is where I scope things, write code and build prototypes. ChatGPT is where I go for design. All three are worth having, and the split says as much about my habits as about the tools, so take it as one person's picks.

Here's what the vendors say that fits each pick. Microsoft says Copilot runs inside the Microsoft 365 service boundary, stores its interaction data in Microsoft 365 services, and lets you search, audit and retain that data with Purview under your own retention policies. It also only reaches what the person asking is allowed to open. There's one catch: web searches go to Bing, which is handled separately, so ask IT whether web search is switched on.

Anthropic describes Claude Code as a tool that reads your codebase, edits files and runs commands, plans the approach, writes the code and checks it works. Artifacts open beside the chat, so a prototype is something you can use and ask it to change. OpenAI describes ChatGPT Images as generating and editing images in a chat, for things like UI assets, banners, backgrounds and illustrations, and its own advice is to start with the core idea, then make small, focused changes one at a time. That suits design, where you're nudging something towards right rather than asking for it finished.

A split like this works as a safe default too. Keep work data in the tool that keeps it in your tenant, and give the others things with no real data in them, like scoping notes, code and design ideas.

Which one for what

If you want	Start with	Why
A quick rewrite, summary or first draft	Whichever you've already got open	All three are fine at this
Anything for work, or with work data in it	Copilot, signed in with your work account	Its interaction data stays inside Microsoft 365 and follows your retention and audit policies
To work inside a Word document, a spreadsheet, your inbox or a Teams meeting	Copilot	It's already in the app, and with a licence it can see the rest of your work
To scope an idea, write code or build a prototype	Claude	Claude Code works on your codebase, and artifacts show the prototype beside the chat
Design: UI assets, banners, illustrations and images to react to	ChatGPT	You describe it, it makes the image, and you change one thing at a time
A general assistant away from your work data	ChatGPT or Claude	Try the same prompt in both and keep the one whose answer you'd rather edit
Something to search your own files and meetings	Copilot with the paid add-on, or ChatGPT or Claude connected to your files	It only works if the connection is allowed, and it only reaches what your account can
A researched report with sources	Any of the three	Check each source says what the report says

For more prompts by job (admin, finance, IT, new starters), there's a map of the tips and guides.

Where the details come from

Checked on 7 October 2026. These pages move, so go to them for anything you're about to rely on.

• Microsoft: What is Microsoft Copilot?, Manage Microsoft Copilot Chat, data protection architecture, enterprise data protection, retention for Copilot and Copilot Cowork
• OpenAI: Projects in ChatGPT, connected apps, ChatGPT Work, custom GPT retirement, image generation, and keeping your data out of training
• Anthropic: What are projects?, connectors, Research, Claude Code, artifacts, and is my data used for model training?