Compare
Convira vs Microsoft 365 Copilot
Microsoft 365 Copilot information last checked: 28 July 2026
This is the closest comparison on the site, because both products are aimed at the same thing: getting real work done in documents rather than talking about it. If your organisation lives in Microsoft 365, Copilot sits inside the apps your colleagues already have open, understands your tenant, and comes with Microsoft's enterprise agreements behind it. Convira is for the cases that sit outside that: files on a disk regardless of what created them, work that has to happen with no network, and material that must not go to anyone's cloud.
What Microsoft 365 Copilot is
Microsoft 365 Copilot is AI built into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams, sold per user on top of a Microsoft 365 subscription. It draws on your organisation's own content through Microsoft Graph, so it can reason across the documents, mail and meetings your account can already reach.
For an organisation already standardised on Microsoft 365, that integration is difficult to beat. It is in the app you are already in, it inherits the permissions your tenant already enforces, and it comes with the contractual and compliance apparatus large buyers need.
What Convira does differently
The first difference is the boundary of the work. Copilot is strongest inside the Microsoft estate. Convira starts from the filesystem: a .docx someone emailed you, an .xlsx exported from a finance system, a stack of PDFs in a folder. It does not care which application produced the file or whether it is stored in a Microsoft service.
The second is where processing happens. Copilot runs in Microsoft's cloud under Microsoft's tenant commitments, which are substantial and which many organisations are entirely satisfied with. Convira lets you decide per session: Local runs an Ollama-compatible model on your own machine and works fully offline once models are downloaded, a Private Box runs a larger model on hardware you control on your own network, and Cloud reaches hosted frontier models when the material is not sensitive.
The third is what the agent is allowed to do outside the document. Convira drives a visible browser and over a thousand connected services, and the guard rails around that are enforced rather than described. Agent actions run under operating-system-level isolation - Bubblewrap with Landlock and seccomp on Linux, a deny-by-default Seatbelt profile on macOS, and a Job Object constraining the process tree on Windows. Outbound actions that post, send or change records pause for approval under rules you control. An automatic local backup is taken before a session modifies or removes a file, and restoring recovers a copy rather than overwriting anything.
Where Convira loses is worth being blunt about. It is a separate application rather than a pane inside Word. It has no Outlook or Teams surface. It has no SSO today, claims no SOC 2 or ISO certification, and is a small Estonian company rather than Microsoft. For a large regulated buyer, those are not small things.
Side by side
| Convira | Microsoft 365 Copilot | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it lives | A separate desktop app on macOS, Windows and Linux | Inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams |
| Which files it works on | Any file on your disk, whatever produced it | Your Microsoft 365 content, through Microsoft Graph |
| Where processing happens | Your machine, a Private Box on your LAN, or hosted models | Microsoft's cloud, under tenant commitments |
| Works with no internet | Yes, on the Local runtime | No |
| PDF work | Merge, fill forms, redact | Focused on Office formats |
| Browser automation | Yes, a browser you can watch | Not in these terms |
| OS-level sandboxing of agent actions | Landlock and seccomp, Seatbelt, Job Object | Tenant and Graph permissions instead |
| Automatic backup before a file changes | Yes | Version history |
| Working together | Team Hub: end-to-end encrypted channels, DMs and boards | Teams and SharePoint, readable by the tenant |
| SSO | Not yet | Entra ID |
| Compliance certifications | None claimed | Extensive |
| Price | From $9/month standalone | Per user, on top of Microsoft 365 |
When Microsoft 365 Copilot is the better choice
- Your organisation runs on Microsoft 365 and the work happens in Office apps and Outlook.
- You need the AI to reason across mail, meetings and documents your account already has access to.
- You need SSO, tenant-level administration and formal compliance certifications.
- Procurement needs a vendor with the scale and contractual apparatus of Microsoft.
When Convira is the better choice
- The material must not leave your machine, and you want that enforced by where the model runs rather than by a policy commitment.
- The files are just files: exported, emailed, scanned, or produced by something that is not Microsoft.
- You need it to keep working with no network connection.
- You want an agent that can also drive a browser and connect to services beyond Microsoft's, with approvals in front of anything outbound.
- You are an individual or a small team and do not want to buy an enterprise suite to get one capability.
Using both
They are not mutually exclusive, and in practice the split tends to fall along sensitivity. Copilot handles the everyday work inside the Microsoft estate; Convira handles the documents that arrive from outside it and the material that is not allowed to be uploaded anywhere. Convira also connects to Outlook, Microsoft Teams and SharePoint among its connectors on paid plans, so the two can meet in the middle.
Common questions
Does Convira work with Microsoft 365 files?
Yes. Word, Excel and PowerPoint files are the core of what it does, and it edits them in place on your disk. It also connects to Outlook, Microsoft Teams and SharePoint through its connector catalog on paid plans.
Is Convira SOC 2 or ISO certified?
No. Convira claims no certifications today. What it publishes instead is the architecture: where each runtime processes data, what is and is not retained, the sandboxing model, and the full subprocessor list. If certification is a procurement requirement, that is a genuine reason to choose an established vendor.
Does Convira support single sign-on?
Not today. Sign-in is email and password with an emailed six-digit code. Team plans have role-based access with owner, admin, operator and viewer roles, per-member credit caps and a credit-usage audit log.
Can a team share one Private Box?
Yes, on Ultra, Team and Enterprise plans. A Private Box runs a larger 32B or 70B-class model on a machine you control on your own network, with credentials sealed per member so the cloud never sees them in plaintext.
Convira facts on this page come from How it works, Security and Pricing, and are the same ones published there. If anything about Microsoft 365 Copilot is out of date or unfair, tell us at support@convira.ai and we will correct it.