Comparison
Kerna vs Microsoft 365 Copilot
Kerna sorts the Outlook inbox into the categories your team writes, lifts named fields out of the attachment into a file, and drafts the reply for you to check. Copilot puts an assistant across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams and Outlook. Every figure below is read from the vendor’s own pages and dated.
What Kerna brings to the day
- Your categories — Quote requested, Spec change, Chasing payment.
- Named fields lifted out of the attachment into a file you can open.
- No Microsoft 365 Copilot licence required underneath it.
Every Microsoft figure below was read on Microsoft’s own pages and carries the date it was checked. Last reviewed .
Who each is for
Two different jobs
Kerna is for one workflow
One job, done properly: the operational inbox where quotes, spec changes, invoices and complaints arrive from outside the company, and where somebody has to work out what each message needs before anything happens. It sorts that mail, gets the numbers out of the documents attached to it, and drafts the answer. Word and Excel are not part of it.
Copilot is for the whole suite
If the question is "can our people get AI help in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams and Outlook on one licence", Copilot answers it. Microsoft describes Copilot in Outlook as prioritising your inbox, scheduling meetings, drafting agendas and summarising threads. It is a breadth product, and the inbox is one surface among many.
Overlap
What both of them genuinely do
Worth being clear about, because the differences below only mean something once the overlap is named.
- Summarising a long thread you have not read.
- Drafting and rewriting a reply in your compose window.
- Working inside Outlook rather than asking you to move to a new client.
- Enterprise-grade data commitments and admin-managed deployment.
Differences
Where they actually diverge
Who defines the categories
Kerna
Five categories to start from — Urgent, Respond, Invoice, Waiting, Notification — which you can replace with up to six of your own, or with one of 20 sets built for specific industries. The inbox is sorted into those named categories.
Microsoft 365 Copilot
Copilot prioritises the inbox: it ranks messages by importance, using who is on the thread, their job titles and the content, and you can teach it what matters — Settings, Copilot, Prioritize takes instructions like "it is from a certain company" or "it is about certain topics". What it produces is a ranking rather than a set of named categories the mail is filed into.
What reaches the model
Kerna
Personal data is redacted from the message inside Kerna’s own processing, on every request, before any content is transmitted to the inference provider.
Microsoft 365 Copilot
Microsoft’s documentation sets out the EU Data Boundary and Enterprise Data Protection, and states that EU traffic stays within the boundary. What it does not describe is anything being removed from message content before the model call. Jurisdiction is not the difference; what reaches the model is.
What you have to own underneath it
Kerna
No Microsoft 365 Copilot licence and no upgrade to your Microsoft plan. Business is €69 a month for up to five seats sharing 7,500,000 tokens.
Microsoft 365 Copilot
Copilot cannot be bought on its own. It is an add-on requiring a qualifying Microsoft 365 licence, and the Business add-on is sold only to existing customers already on an eligible Business plan, capped at 300 users.
What it needs underneath it
Kerna
A mailbox hosted by Microsoft — Microsoft 365, Exchange Online or Outlook.com — on whatever plan you already have. Mailboxes on POP, IMAP or an on-premises Exchange server are not supported, and nothing has to be upgraded for the rest.
Microsoft 365 Copilot
A qualifying Microsoft 365 plan. Microsoft sells the Business add-on only to existing customers on an eligible Business plan, capped at 300 users.
What comes out of an attachment
Kerna
Structured extraction across PDF, DOC and XLS with 100 field presets — 20 industries by 5 document types — exporting to an Excel, Word or CSV file.
Microsoft 365 Copilot
Not documented as a named capability on the pages checked. So this is unknown rather than absent — Microsoft has not published an account of it either way.
Cost
What each one actually costs
Read from each vendor’s own pricing page, with the date. If a figure is not verified, it is not stated.
Kerna
- Entry price
- Standard: EUR 12 per month. Pro: EUR 22 per month. Free Starter available.
- Read on the vendor’s own page · checked 2026-08-22
- Five seats
- Business: EUR 69 per month for up to five users sharing 7,500,000 tokens.
- Read on the vendor’s own page · checked 2026-08-22
- Free tier
- Yes. Starter includes all functions within its token allowance.
- Read on the vendor’s own page · checked 2026-08-22
Microsoft 365 Copilot
- Entry price
- Copilot Business: USD 21 per user/month equivalent with annual payment; the checked US page advertises USD 18 under promotional terms. An eligible Microsoft 365 plan is required.
- Read on the vendor’s own page · checked 2026-09-05
- Five seats
- Five Business add-ons: USD 1,260/year (USD 105/month equivalent), or USD 1,080/year at the advertised USD 18 promotion. Base Microsoft 365 licences are additional if not already held.
- Read on the vendor’s own page · checked 2026-09-05
- Free tier
- Copilot Chat is included with eligible licences. Its access and capabilities differ from the paid Copilot experience.
- Read on the vendor’s own page · checked 2026-09-05
For a team already on Microsoft 365, the question is what each adds on top of that. Copilot is an add-on that requires a qualifying plan, and Microsoft sells the Business add-on only to existing customers on an eligible Business plan, capped at 300 users. Kerna adds EUR 69 a month for five seats and asks nothing of your Microsoft plan.
Data handling
Where content goes on each side
Both positions are strong. They differ in one specific way, and it is not jurisdiction.
Kerna
- Processing
- The application runs on Google Cloud Run in Belgium, with Firestore in Poland. Kerna masks detected personal data before model processing and has a zero data retention agreement with OpenAI Ireland Limited. Account and usage data have separate retention rules. The model-processing location must be established from the applicable configuration and terms, not the contracting entity’s address.
- Read on the vendor’s own page · checked 2026-08-22
Microsoft 365 Copilot
- Processing
- Microsoft publishes enterprise data protection and access controls for Copilot. Data-boundary coverage, model providers and exceptions depend on the applicable service and configuration. The reviewed overview does not establish universal masking of personal data before model processing.
- Read on the vendor’s own page · checked 2026-09-05
Kerna’s full position, clause by clause, is on the trust page.
When Kerna is the better fit
- Work arrives by email from outside the company and has to be sorted before it can be actioned.
- The categories that matter are yours — Quote requested, Spec change, Chasing payment — rather than a ranking by importance.
- You want it on the Microsoft 365 plan you already have, rather than upgrading to a plan that qualifies for Copilot.
- Redaction before the model call is something your security review asks about.
- You want a flat five-seat price with nothing required underneath it.
Where Copilot already fits
- What you want is AI across Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Teams, not only the inbox. That is a suite licence, and Kerna does not try to be one.
- Your security review requires the assistant to be governed from the Microsoft 365 admin centre, with single sign-on and SCIM. Kerna has neither yet.
Try it on one morning’s inbox
The free tier costs nothing and installs in minutes. A single morning of real mail settles this faster than any comparison table.
Deployment
Getting it in front of a team
Time to value
One person installs Kerna from AppSource or the Google Workspace Marketplace in a couple of minutes. An administrator can also deploy it across the organisation from the admin centre, which is a larger piece of work. There is a free tier at €0, so putting it in front of somebody costs nothing. What each tier includes is on the pricing page.
What it needs
The Outlook add-in does not run in the Outlook mobile apps. The Gmail add-on does work in the Gmail mobile app.
The gap worth knowing first
What Kerna does not have: configurable company single sign-on (you sign in with your Microsoft or Google account, but there is no SAML or OIDC connection to your own identity provider), SCIM, and Outlook mobile. Stated here rather than left to be discovered, because a requirement is easier to check now than after an install.
Other comparisons
Comparing something else
Same method on each: figures read from the vendor’s own pages, dated, and the parts where they win stated plainly.
Still working out what to compare on? Seven questions to ask any vendor.
Try it against one morning’s inbox
Kerna’s Starter tier is €0, includes every feature, and carries a trial token allowance to run them on, alongside the Microsoft 365 licence you already hold. If the time goes on working out what arrived and moving numbers off a PDF, one morning’s inbox will show it.
Microsoft, Microsoft 365, Outlook and Copilot are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. Kerna is not affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft. Comparative statements reflect each vendor’s own published documentation on the date shown.