Twice a week somebody asks us which AI product to buy. The honest answer is not what most clients want to hear, which is that it depends on the stack you already run and the work the team actually does. Four products genuinely compete for SME budget in 2026, Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude, OpenAI ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, and each one has a place where it earns its seat cost cleanly and other places where it is the wrong answer. We thought it was worth writing down how we think about it before the next call.
This is not a benchmark piece, and it is not about model quality. Models change quarterly. What does not change is the shape of an SME stack, the tools the team uses every day, and the workflows where AI is actually doing useful work rather than being demoed.
The frame
Every AI product is sold on its model, but the seat cost is paid on its integration. For an SME, the question is rarely "is this model good" and usually "does this AI live where my team already works". Three pieces of that:
- Where the data is. If most of the team's documents are in Google Workspace, the friction of pulling them into ChatGPT Enterprise is real. If they are in SharePoint, the friction of pulling them into Gemini is real.
- Where the user is. A meeting summariser that lives in Teams is used. A meeting summariser that lives in a browser tab is opened occasionally and forgotten.
- What the work shape is. Long-form analysis is different from short drafting which is different from data extraction which is different from agentic workflow.
With that frame, here is how the four products land.
Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365
The default answer if the business already runs on Microsoft 365. Copilot lives inside Outlook, Word, Excel, Teams, OneDrive and SharePoint, so the friction is close to zero. The licence is roughly £24.70 per user per month at the time of writing, on top of an existing M365 Business Standard or Premium seat, and it is sold annually.
Where Copilot earns its seat: meeting transcription and summarisation inside Teams, drafting first-pass replies in Outlook, summarising long Word documents, querying across SharePoint and OneDrive for content the user knows exists but cannot find. The Excel work is improving but still narrow; do not buy Copilot expecting it to replace a financial analyst.
Where Copilot is the wrong answer: businesses on Google Workspace (the integrations do not exist), workflows that need very long context windows (Copilot's context is shorter than Claude's), and any work that benefits from being on a non-Microsoft model. Also, the cleanup tax is real; Copilot exposes how badly your SharePoint is organised. Some of the value our clients get from the rollout is actually from the cleanup the rollout forces.
The pilot pattern that works: five to ten power users for three months, weekly check-ins, then a structured 90-day review. We have written more about that elsewhere on this site.
Google Gemini for Workspace
The default answer if the business runs on Google Workspace. Gemini for Workspace lives inside Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Meet and Drive, and the integration is now substantially good, which was not true 18 months ago. Pricing sits around £19 per user per month on top of a Business Standard or Plus seat, again sold annually.
Where Gemini earns its seat: drafting in Gmail and Docs, "help me understand this spreadsheet" inside Sheets, video-call summaries in Meet (often the cleanest of the four for this), and Drive-wide search across content the user owns or has access to. The Workspace integration is the point; trying to use Gemini meaningfully without Workspace is harder than it looks.
Where Gemini is the wrong answer: M365 shops (no real integration), regulated workflows where Anthropic or OpenAI's enterprise data-handling commitments matter more than Google's, and any work that benefits from being on a non-Google model. The standalone Gemini app is fine, but if the business is paying Google for Workspace already, the value is in the integration, not the app.
Anthropic Claude Team
The default answer when the work is analytical, long-form, or document-heavy and the integrations matter less than the model. Claude Team runs at $30 per seat per month (about £24), billed annually, with a five-seat minimum. It plugs into Slack, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace via connectors, but the natural home is the Claude app itself.
Where Claude earns its seat: long-document analysis (lease reviews, regulatory submissions, contract diffs), structured drafting where consistency matters more than speed, research synthesis across multiple sources, and any work where a 200,000-token context window meaningfully changes what is possible. We have property-management clients running lease summarisation through Claude that would not work on either Copilot or Gemini because the documents are too long.
Where Claude is the wrong answer: businesses that need AI inside their existing apps rather than as a separate tool, sales workflows where the user wants email-and-go (Copilot wins on that), and anything where the user is unlikely to open a separate app every day.
OpenAI ChatGPT Team and Enterprise
The default answer when the work is varied, the team wants a single capable tool, and the integration story is fine but not the point. ChatGPT Team is $30 per seat per month (about £24), annual, two-seat minimum. ChatGPT Enterprise prices on application and adds SSO, audit logs, longer retention controls, and a larger context window.
Where ChatGPT earns its seat: general-purpose drafting and ideation, custom GPTs (light internal tools), data-extraction work (turning a messy PDF into a clean table), image generation when the team needs it, and code assistance when the team has a developer. ChatGPT also has the largest connector ecosystem of the four, which matters for a business with a heterogeneous stack.
Where ChatGPT is the wrong answer: businesses that are already paying Microsoft for Copilot and would be paying twice for substantially overlapping capability, regulated workflows where Microsoft's or Google's enterprise commitments are easier to sign off, and any work that benefits from the deep Office or Workspace integration the other two offer.
How this lands on an invoice
For a 25-person SME, the rough monthly cost is similar across the four:
- Copilot for M365: 25 × £24.70 = £617.50
- Gemini for Workspace: 25 × £19 = £475
- Claude Team: 25 × £24 = £600
- ChatGPT Team: 25 × £24 = £600
The numbers are close enough that the decision is rarely about price. It is about fit, and about whether you are buying one tool or two.
The split we see working: one stack-native product (Copilot or Gemini, depending on the M365/Google answer) for the integrated everyday work, plus one analytical product (Claude or ChatGPT) for the deeper work that does not fit cleanly inside Office or Workspace. About a third of our AI clients run this two-tool pattern. The rest run one and are satisfied.
How we help the decision
Most SMEs do not need a 40-page comparison deck. They need three calls:
- What stack are you on? M365, Google Workspace, or split. That answer narrows the integration story to one or two products.
- What is the highest-value workflow? If it is meeting summaries and Outlook drafting, the answer is probably Copilot or Gemini. If it is long-document analysis or research synthesis, the answer is probably Claude or ChatGPT.
- Who runs the pilot? Five to ten people, three months, with someone owning the review. Without that, the answer is "do not buy yet".
That sequence usually lands on a single product in under an hour. We then run the pilot, set up the policy and security backing, and review the rollout at 90 days. If the answer is wrong, the licence is monthly enough that the cost of being wrong is small.
Where this lands with us
This is the work our AI Enablement practice runs every week. We are vendor-independent across the four products, we configure the deployment so the data-handling commitments are contractually clear rather than just assumed, and we sit alongside the team during the rollout. The seat cost is real, but the bigger cost is the wrong product picked for the wrong reason and the lost months of rollout work that follows.
The four products are good. The decision about which one fits is the work.
Trying to pick between two AI vendors and not sure how to frame the call? Drop us a note at info@jmopartners.co.uk and we will do an initial fit review.
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