Notes

Gemini vs Copilot for a Small Business in Singapore

21 September 2026

Two invoices side by side on a desk, one priced in Singapore dollars and the other in US dollars, the same decision billed two different ways.

Somebody in the company has asked whether you should be paying for AI. Here is the short answer for a Singapore business of five to fifty staff. If you are on Google Workspace, you are already paying for Gemini, because Google puts it in the plan price and charges nothing extra for it. If you are on Microsoft 365, Copilot is a separate decision with a separate bill: Microsoft 365 Business Standard with Copilot is US$23.50 per user a month, against US$14.00 for the plain plan. Almost nobody should move their whole company from one suite to the other just to get the AI. The number that decides this is the gap between the plan you are on and the next one up, not which assistant writes a nicer email.

One thing to declare. We set up both Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 for Singapore businesses, so we have no side to sell you here. Every vendor price below comes from Google’s or Microsoft’s own pages. Where a figure comes from somewhere else, we say so.

Google’s Singapore prices and Microsoft’s Copilot prices checked 20 September 2026. Microsoft’s plain business plan prices checked 11 September 2026. Neither vendor’s price includes GST.

What ten people actually pay

Start with the bill, because that is the part both vendors make you hunt for. Google publishes its Singapore prices in Singapore dollars. Microsoft publishes its Singapore business plans in US dollars. Neither figure includes tax, and Singapore’s current GST rate is 9 per cent, according to the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore. So every number below is what lands on the invoice before the tax line.

What the AI costs on each side, per user per month, in each vendor’s own currency, on an annual plan. Google prices and Microsoft Copilot prices checked 20 September 2026; Microsoft’s plain plan prices checked 11 September 2026.
	Google Workspace	Microsoft 365
The entry plan	Business Starter, S$9.40	Business Basic, US$7.00
The plan most small offices sit on	Business Standard, S$18.80	Business Standard, US$14.00
The plan where the AI reaches the whole suite	Business Standard, S$18.80, the same price	Business Standard with Copilot, US$23.50
What the AI adds to your bill	Nothing. It is inside the plan price.	US$9.50 per user a month, over the plain plan
A separate AI add-on	No priced Gemini add-on on Google’s Singapore pricing page. That page lists “AI expanded access” under “Add-ons sold separately”, with no price shown.	Microsoft 365 Copilot Business, “starting from” US$18.00, with a list price of US$21.00
You are billed in	Singapore dollars	US dollars
What each page says about tax	“Price is per user/month and does not include tax”	“Price does not include GST.”

Put ten people on it. Google Workspace Business Standard for ten comes to S$188.00 a month, so S$2,256 a year before tax. Microsoft 365 Business Standard with Copilot for ten comes to US$2,820 a year before tax, against US$1,680 for the same ten on the plain plan. The Copilot decision is therefore worth about US$1,140 a year to a ten-person office.

Now the sum behind those two figures. Those two headline plans are only level if one US dollar costs you less than 80 Singapore cents, because S$18.80 divided by US$23.50 is 0.80. That is the sum, and it is the one worth doing on the day you sign, with the rate your own bank gives you. We are not printing a converted figure here. A conversion printed on a page goes stale within months, and the reader who trusts it has no way of knowing that it has.

Google put the AI in the price. Microsoft kept it as a decision.

This is the whole difference, and it explains almost every other difference below.

Google folded Gemini into the plan. Google’s Singapore pricing page lists “Gemini AI assistant in Gmail” inside Business Starter at S$9.40, and “Gemini AI assistant in Gmail, Docs, Meet and more” inside Business Standard at S$18.80. There is no Gemini line item and no per-seat AI fee on that page. If you pay for a Workspace plan, the AI is already switched on in what you bought. Our guide to Gemini in Google Workspace goes through what it does in each app.

Microsoft kept Copilot as something you choose and pay for. There are two ways to buy it. You move onto a plan that has it built in, which is Microsoft 365 Business Standard with Copilot at US$23.50 a user a month, or Business Premium with Copilot at US$32.00. Or you keep the plan you have and bolt on Microsoft 365 Copilot Business, which Microsoft prices “starting from” US$18.00 against a list price of US$21.00. Our page on Microsoft 365 Copilot pricing in Singapore takes that apart properly.

The arithmetic on those two routes is worth a minute, because it is not what people expect. Plain Business Standard is US$14.00. Add the Copilot Business add-on at US$18.00 and you are at US$32.00 a user a month. The bundled plan is US$23.50, and Microsoft’s own Business Standard page describes that option as “Everything in Business Standard, plus” Copilot Business. On Microsoft’s published figures the bundle is the cheaper of the two routes by US$8.50 a user a month, which is US$1,020 a year across ten people. Microsoft does say that its offers “may vary between Microsoft 365 plans with Copilot and add-ons”, and the add-on price carries the words “starting from”, so confirm your own quote before you act on that gap.

Which plan do you need before the AI works everywhere?

This is the question that costs people money, and Google’s answer is more specific than its marketing suggests.

Google’s own comparison of the business editions ticks the Gemini features in Gmail for all three business plans: the side panel, Help me write, Suggested Replies, AI Overview for email threads, and Proofread. The Gemini features in Docs, Sheets, Slides, Meet and Chat are ticked for Business Standard and Business Plus only. Take notes for me in Meet, the side panel in Docs, the AI function in Sheets: none of those are on Business Starter.

So if you are on Business Starter at S$9.40 and someone tells you the company already has AI, they are right about Gmail and wrong about everything else. Getting the rest means moving to Business Standard, which is a step of S$9.40 a user a month, or S$1,128 a year across ten people. That is a plan upgrade with more storage and better meetings attached, not an AI purchase, and it is worth reading our comparison of Business Starter and Business Standard before you decide it is about the AI at all.

Microsoft’s version of this question is simpler and blunter. Without a Copilot licence there is no Copilot inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams. What you do get, at no extra cost, is Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat: Microsoft’s own page says that if you do not have Copilot licences yet, you can still sign in to Copilot Chat with your work account. That is the honest first move for a Microsoft office, and it is the advice we give our own clients. Switch on the free chat, see who actually uses it after the novelty wears off, then buy seats for those people.

Does either one train on your email and your files?

No, and both vendors say so in writing. The wording is not identical, and the difference is worth reading slowly.

Microsoft’s is flat. Its Copilot privacy page states: “Prompts, responses, and data accessed through Microsoft Graph aren’t used to train foundation LLMs, including those used by Microsoft Copilot.” No conditions attached to that sentence.

Google’s carries two qualifiers, and they are in the sentence itself. Google’s Gemini privacy page states: “Your content is not human reviewed or otherwise used for Generative AI model training outside your domain without permission.” Read “outside your domain” and “without permission” as the load-bearing words, because they are.

Neither of those sentences is a reason to pick one suite over the other. Both are reasons to check what your own staff are doing with the consumer versions of these tools, which sit outside both promises entirely.

On the Singapore side of this, the Personal Data Protection Commission published its Advisory Guidelines on Use of Personal Data in Generative AI on 20 July 2026, described on its own page as guidance on how personal data can be used in generative AI models and systems. Read it before you let staff put customer records into either assistant, and take proper advice if your business handles anything sensitive. What neither vendor’s page settles for you is what your own duties are under the Personal Data Protection Act, Singapore’s law on handling other people’s personal information.

Two Singapore details nobody prices in

The tax line moves the comparison, and it moves both sides the same way. Google says its price “does not include tax”. Microsoft says “Price does not include GST.” Singapore’s current GST rate is 9 per cent. Whatever the two numbers are, add the tax to both before you compare them, and remember that only one of the two is quoted in the currency your revenue arrives in.

There is a Singapore programme on the Google side, and none on the Microsoft side that we can point you to. Google and Enterprise Singapore have run a Gemini for Google Workspace programme for local SMEs. The terms Google gave, as reported by GovInsider, were up to 50 per cent off Gemini for Google Workspace licence costs, capped at 50 licences per company for a twelve-month subscription. We cannot tell you from Google’s or Enterprise Singapore’s own pages whether sign-ups are open today, so treat this as one email to send before you commit to a year of licences, not as a discount to put in the budget.

So should you move suites for the AI?

Here is our own answer, and it is not the one that sells a migration.

Moving is worth considering if

You are already unhappy with the suite you are on, for reasons that have nothing to do with AI, and the AI is the excuse that finally gets the project funded.
Your team is small enough that the mailbox move is a weekend, not a quarter.
You are on Microsoft 365 Business Basic and were going to have to move plans anyway to get anything at all.
You have checked the Singapore programme above and it lands you a year of Gemini at half price.

Moving is not worth it if

The only thing pulling you is the AI, and the AI is not a reason to rebuild your email.
Your staff know the suite they are on, and the cost of teaching them a new one lands on you, not on the licence line.
You run anything that only speaks to one of the two: a line-of-business app, an accounting package, a CRM your team lives inside.
You have not yet tried what you already own.

Our advice to our own clients is almost always the same, and it is boring on purpose. Stay where you are. Spend the money on the plan step that unlocks the AI in the apps your people actually open, which for a Google office is Starter to Standard and for a Microsoft office is plain Standard to Standard with Copilot. Then wait three months and count who used it. The honest test is whether the hours it saves your specific team cover the bill, and you cannot know that from a comparison page, including this one.

Questions we get asked

We are on Microsoft 365 Business Basic. Can we just add Copilot?

Microsoft’s own terms say the Copilot Business add-on is available “only to existing Microsoft 365 customers with an eligible Business plan”, and its pricing page does not list which plans count as eligible. Ask Microsoft or your provider before you assume Basic qualifies. If it does not, your real comparison is Business Basic at US$7.00 against Business Standard with Copilot at US$23.50, which is a much larger step than the Copilot price alone suggests.

Can we try either one before we pay?

Both, in different ways. Google’s Singapore pricing page offers 14 days at no cost on each business plan. On the Microsoft side, Copilot Chat is open to anyone with a work account and no Copilot licence, which means most Microsoft 365 offices can try the chat part today without buying anything. Neither trial tells you much in week one. Give it a month and watch who keeps going back.

Do we have to commit for a year?

For the advertised prices, mostly yes. Google’s Singapore prices above are its annual plan, which it describes as saving 16 per cent for a one-year commitment, billed monthly. Microsoft’s prices above are all “paid yearly”; its Business Standard page also offers a monthly subscription at US$16.80 instead of US$14.00, so the flexibility costs about 20 per cent. For the Copilot add-on promotion Microsoft states plainly that an annual commitment is required, with a seven-day cancellation window in which you get back the part you have not used.

What to do next

If you want this settled rather than read about, book a short call with us. Tell us which suite you are on, how many staff you have, and which plan you are paying for. We will work out what the AI step actually costs your company at your headcount, tell you whether the plan change is worth it, and say so plainly if the answer is that you should leave things alone. We set up Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 for Singapore businesses, and our Google Workspace pricing page has the Singapore figures if you would rather check them yourself first.