Microsoft Copilot: Deep Research ends, successor is paid only

Microsoft is folding its two Copilot apps into one. The consumer app Microsoft Copilot and the Microsoft 365 Copilot app become a single application, and account migrations begin on August 18, 2026. Chats, images and the content you created move with you. Files from the old standalone app land in OneDrive, and work and personal accounts stay separate. The same rebuild also takes the Mico avatar out of Copilot Voice.

Three features do not survive the move.

Deep Research is out, Researcher sits in the priciest plan

Deep Research turned a single question into a long, sourced report. Consumers cannot open it any more as of today. Microsoft points to Researcher as the successor, and Researcher belongs to Microsoft 365 Premium.

That is where it costs money. Microsoft 365 Premium runs at $19.99 a month or $199.99 a year in the US. Microsoft 365 Personal is $9.99 a month and Family is $12.99. Neither plan includes Researcher. If you used Deep Research on Personal or Family, you lose the feature and only get it back by moving up to Premium.

The old reports stay, though. Microsoft states plainly that saved research content is not deleted. Personal and Family subscribers reach their earlier Deep Research reports through their chat history, and any report can be opened in Word and saved from there. What ends is the ability to create new ones.

Podcasts are gone, group chats turn into one-to-one chats

The Podcasts feature, which turned research results into a spoken conversation, disappears completely. After August 18 you can neither create new podcasts nor play existing ones in Copilot. Anything worth keeping has to be downloaded first through the menu in the podcast library.

Group chats lose less at first glance, which makes the loss easier to miss. The conversations do not vanish. They are converted into one-to-one chats, and your own history stays readable. You can no longer continue them as a group, and everything other participants contributed becomes unreachable, shared images included. Microsoft advises downloading media from other participants before your own account is migrated.

What many reports get wrong

Since the announcement it has been claimed that Microsoft deletes the Deep Research reports and that podcasts cannot be saved. Microsoft's own documentation says otherwise. The reports remain, the Word export is intended, and podcasts have a download option. What disappears is the ability to create something new, and in group chats the share belonging to everyone else.

So three things are worth doing today: download your podcasts, save the images other people posted in group chats, and file the Deep Research reports you care about as Word documents. After that the only question left is whether Researcher is worth $19.99 a month to you. Microsoft itself recently explained why you should not lean on Copilot blindly.