Folio vs. Microsoft Copilot for PowerPoint: A Real Comparison

Disclosure: Folio is our product. We’ve done our best to be honest about where Copilot is better.

Microsoft Copilot for PowerPoint is the obvious comparison point for Folio. It’s built by the company that makes PowerPoint, it’s deeply integrated, and it’s backed by the world’s largest software company.

So how does it actually compare?

We ran both tools through identical tasks and documented the results. Copilot has real advantages in specific areas. So does Folio. The honest answer is that they’re built for different things — and by the end, that distinction is what matters most.

Setup and access

Copilot is available to any Microsoft 365 subscriber with a Copilot add-on, at $30 per user per month on top of M365. It requires no install and appears in the PowerPoint ribbon automatically. Folio is available as a free add-in from the Microsoft Office Store — a two-minute install, free to start with 200 credits.

The access story is simpler for Copilot. The cost story is simpler for Folio.

Task 1: Generate a 10-slide deck from a prompt

We prompted both tools identically: “Create a 10-slide presentation on the competitive landscape of the European electric vehicle market.”

Copilot generated a deck in about 45 seconds. The structure was reasonable. The content was generic — Wikipedia-level summaries rather than analysis. The design applied a default Microsoft theme, not our corporate template.

Folio took about 60 seconds. Structure was similar, content quality comparable. The meaningful difference: Folio used our existing template — our fonts, our color palette, our slide layouts. For teams working in a branded environment, that matters immediately.

Neither tool produced analytical content. Both produced a workable starting structure.

Task 2: Edit existing slides while preserving template

This is the test that separates tools built for professional workflows from tools built for casual use.

We asked both: “Restructure slide 4 into a three-column layout with supporting bullets under each column header.”

Copilot rewrote the text content but did not change the layout. When we pushed further, it created a new layout using default styling rather than our template’s column layout. The result required significant manual cleanup before it was usable.

Folio identified our template’s available three-column layout, applied it to the slide, distributed the content across the three columns, and maintained our template’s font sizes and colors throughout. No manual cleanup needed.

This is not a close comparison. Template-aware layout editing is where Copilot most visibly falls short, and it’s the task that professional users do constantly.

Task 3: Edit a chart

We asked both: “Change the bar chart on slide 7 to a stacked column chart and update the Q3 revenue figure to $42M.”

Copilot acknowledged the instruction but could not modify the chart data. It can describe charts and suggest changes, but executing them requires going into the chart editor manually. For financial and data-heavy decks, this is a significant limitation.

Folio changed the chart type to stacked column, updated the Q3 data point to $42M, and applied the change directly. The chart remained fully editable in PowerPoint afterward.

Task 4: Apply consistent formatting across a full deck

We asked both: “Apply consistent formatting to all slides: body text should be 11pt Calibri, all titles should be 24pt, and all text boxes should have 8pt left padding.”

Copilot applied the changes to the currently visible slide only. It does not support bulk operations across a full deck in a single instruction. For a 24-slide deck, that means running the same command 24 times.

Folio applied the formatting changes across all 24 slides in one pass, in about 30 seconds. Bulk formatting operations are among the most time-consuming tasks in large decks, and this is one of the clearest capability gaps between the two tools.

Task 5: Generate speaker notes

This is where Copilot is genuinely strong.

We asked: “Generate speaker notes for each slide that summarize the key point and suggest 2 talking points.” Copilot produced solid, contextually relevant notes across the full deck. Fast and useful.

Folio can generate speaker notes, but it’s not the tool’s primary focus. Copilot wins this task clearly, and for users whose primary AI use case is content generation and summarization, that matters.

Pricing

For an individual consultant, Copilot adds $360 per year on top of existing M365 costs. Folio’s Plus plan is approximately $108 per year and covers more complex editing tasks.

Summary

Our honest take

If you’re an M365 user who mostly uses AI for content generation, summarization, and speaker notes, Copilot is a reasonable choice. It’s already in your ribbon, it handles those tasks well, and you don’t need to install anything.

If you work with corporate templates, produce data-heavy decks with charts and tables, or need to make structural edits across large files, Copilot will frustrate you. The tasks it can’t do — chart editing, bulk formatting, template-aware layout changes — are the tasks that consume the most time in professional slide work.

The two tools are not competing for the same workflow. Copilot is a content assistant. Folio is a presentation editor.

Try Folio free: get-folio.ai