Nearly every comparison of Copilot, ChatGPT and Claude asks the same question: which one is smartest? For a small business, that's the wrong question. The model leaderboard reshuffles faster than an annual commitment runs out. When we advise a company on its AI agents, two other questions almost always decide it: which office suite are you already paying for, and what does the business contract say about your data?
The second one matters more than people expect, because the subscription you pick will mostly be replacing the free accounts your staff already use, with no contract at all.
The short answer, for the busy
For a Quebec small business, the right AI subscription depends first on the suite you already pay for. If your team lives in Microsoft 365, Copilot Chat comes at no extra cost with eligible plans, and the Microsoft 365 Copilot Business add-on is listed at CAD $28.50 per user per month on an annual commitment (CAD $24.43 for the first year under a promotion running until December 31, 2026). If you're on Google Workspace, Gemini is built in from the Business Standard plan, at CAD $18.40 per user per month on an annual plan. Outside those suites, ChatGPT Business and Claude Team cost exactly the same: USD $20 per seat per month billed annually, USD $25 monthly, two-seat minimum. All four business offerings commit to not training their models on your data by default, unlike personal accounts. None of them exempts you from section 17 of Quebec's Law 25: as soon as personal information leaves Quebec, a privacy impact assessment is required.
The free account your staff already use
With no tool provided, some of your team is already pasting client emails and quotes into a personal ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude account. We covered that risk in our piece on shadow AI. What matters here is the contractual gap between those accounts and the business plans.
On personal accounts, training is the rule and opting out is the exception. OpenAI's help center says so plainly: on services for individuals, your content may be used to train its models unless the user turns off "Improve the model for everyone." Anthropic's pricing page lists model training as "Opt-out" on the Free, Pro and Max plans. Google's privacy notice for consumer Gemini says human reviewers read some conversations, and that reviewed chats are kept for up to three years even if the user deletes their activity.
On business plans, it flips. OpenAI doesn't train on ChatGPT Business data by default. Anthropic lists "None by default" for Claude Team and Enterprise. Microsoft states that Copilot prompts, responses and the data it accesses aren't used to train its foundation models. Google's Workspace terms commit to not training its generative models on customer data without the customer's permission.
So buying a sanctioned tool is, before anything else, the cheapest compliance measure you'll take this year. It only works alongside a one-page policy telling staff what to use, and that personal accounts are off limits for client data.
Start with the suite you already pay for
The most useful rule: your office suite's assistant already sees your email, files and calendar without connecting anything. Every other tool has to be wired in one integration at a time.
If you're on Microsoft 365. Microsoft has just renamed its products: its documentation now says "Microsoft Copilot," while the Canadian pricing page still sells "Microsoft 365 Copilot Business." First tier: Copilot Chat, a web-grounded assistant included at no extra cost with eligible Microsoft 365 plans, under the same data protection commitments. Second tier: the Copilot Business add-on, which puts Copilot inside Word, Excel, Outlook and Teams, grounded in your work data, at CAD $28.50 per user per month billed annually (CAD $24.43 for the first year if you subscribe by December 31, 2026). The bundles, Business Standard with Copilot and Business Premium with Copilot, list at CAD $31.90 and CAD $43.40. All of it caps at 300 users.
A warning that rarely gets made: Copilot honours your existing permissions and only shows an employee what they could already open. Reassuring in theory. In practice, if a payroll folder was shared with the whole company by mistake years ago, Copilot makes that mistake one question away. Clean up your sharing before rollout, not after.
If you're on Google Workspace. Gemini is already on your invoice. Business Starter (CAD $9.20 per user per month, annual) gets limited access. From Business Standard (CAD $18.40), Gemini joins Docs, Sheets, Drive, Meet and Chat. Used with a Workspace account, the Gemini app falls under your Workspace agreement, not the consumer terms. For a Google shop, "Gemini vs ChatGPT" becomes: is a second licence worth it when the first one is included?
ChatGPT Business and Claude Team, the two independents
If your team is on neither Microsoft nor Google, or if the work that matters happens in writing, analysis or code rather than in the inbox, the two independents come into play. Their prices match to the dollar, which takes price off the table.
ChatGPT Business, called ChatGPT Team until August 29, 2025, costs USD $20 per seat per month billed annually or USD $25 monthly, two-seat minimum. A Standard seat includes ChatGPT, ChatGPT Work (OpenAI's agentic work product) and Codex. A Premium seat, with five times the usage, costs USD $100 annually or USD $125 monthly. Admins manage members, roles and retention, and can view, export and delete members' conversations. Tell your staff.
Claude Team covers teams of 2 to 150 at the same price: USD $20 per Standard seat per month billed annually, USD $25 monthly, USD $100 or $125 for a Premium seat, and seat types can be mixed. The plan includes single sign-on (SSO) and admin control over connectors; audit logs and custom data retention are reserved for Enterprise.
To decide, give both the same three real tasks from your week, and keep whichever one your team reaches for unprompted the following Friday.
Where your data goes: storage can stay in Canada, processing rarely does
All four vendors offer some form of data residency. At the price tier a small business buys, it covers storage at best, never the computation.
At OpenAI, ChatGPT Business now lets you pick, at checkout, the region where your workspace's prompts and responses are stored. It is rolling out gradually, and the help center doesn't say which regions this tier offers (Canada is on ChatGPT's general list). Two limits: a copy of every prompt and response is also kept in the United States for a limited time for abuse monitoring, and the choice doesn't cover inference, meaning the computation itself. In-region inference is reserved for eligible Enterprise and Edu customers, and only in Europe, the United States and the United Arab Emirates.
At Microsoft, a Canadian customer's Copilot history can be stored in Canada, like the rest of Microsoft 365. Processing is another matter: outside the European Union, queries may be processed in the US, the EU or elsewhere, and local inference for Canada is announced for 2027. Anthropic models offered inside Copilot are excluded from in-country processing commitments.
At Google, Workspace data regions are limited to the United States and Europe. Canada isn't an option.
At Anthropic, regional residency, Canada included, runs through AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex and Microsoft Foundry. Those are cloud platforms for building solutions, not the Claude Team subscription.
What Law 25 asks, whichever tool you pick
Section 17 of Quebec's private-sector privacy act covers communication "outside Québec," not outside Canada. A server in Toronto is outside Quebec. Canadian residency makes your analysis easier; it doesn't remove the obligation.
Before communicating personal information outside Quebec, a business must conduct a privacy impact assessment (PIA) that weighs the sensitivity of the information, the purpose, the protection measures and the legal regime at the destination, then sign a written agreement. The same rule applies when you entrust a third party outside Quebec with using or storing that information on your behalf, which is a fair description of an AI subscription. Section 3.3 requires the assessment to be "proportionate" to the sensitivity and volume of the data: for a team drafting emails, it can stay short.
The written agreement usually exists already: OpenAI signs a Data Processing Addendum for ChatGPT Business, Microsoft covers Copilot under its Data Protection Addendum, Google under its Cloud Data Processing Addendum. Your job is to read it, file it and document the PIA. We walk through the mechanics in our piece on data leaving Quebec.
Where the subscription stops
An AI subscription is an assistant a person drives: it makes each employee faster, but the employee decides what to hand it, and the result stays in their window. That's the distinction we draw in the difference between an AI agent and ChatGPT.
Three signals tell you you've outgrown the subscription. The same task comes up fifty times a week, always with the same steps. The result has to land in your systems (CRM, invoicing, calendar) rather than a chat window. And you want control over what data goes to the model, instead of depending on what each employee pastes. At that point you're talking about an agent, with a different cost and structure.
Often the two coexist: a subscription for everyone, an agent for the one process that justifies it.
If you're torn between two subscriptions, or a task seems to need more, write to us. We'll look at your suite and how your team works, and tell you plainly what to buy, including when the answer is "the one you're already paying for."
Prices, product names and terms were read on the vendors' official pages on September 23, 2026; they change often. This article explains Law 25 obligations in plain language to help a business ask the right questions. It is not legal advice.
Written byXavier Peich