Best AI Assistants for Business in 2026

How We Chose the Best AI Assistant for Business

A business assistant has to do more than answer questions. It has to fit your existing software, respect who is allowed to see what, and give an administrator control. We grouped tools by the kind of help they give and compared each on fit, price, and data handling.

Where a vendor does not publish a price, we say so, and where a vendor page blocked us and we relied on search results or third-party reports instead, we mark that. For a practical starting point, see how to use AI at work and tasks to automate with AI.

ChatGPT Business: Best General-Purpose Assistant for Teams

ChatGPT Business gives a team a shared workspace with connected apps and agents. OpenAI's help center, as we could confirm through search results and third-party reports because OpenAI's pages blocked our fetch, lists about $20 per user per month on annual billing and $25 monthly, with a minimum of two standard seats, and the plan is described as excluding business data from training by default. Confirm with OpenAI. Enterprise adds more controls and is priced on request.

The limit: it mostly acts when asked and has no phone number or email of its own. See ChatGPT for work vs. Claude Cowork.

Claude Team: Best for Writing, Analysis, and Coding With Admin Controls

Claude's Team plan is $20 per standard seat per month on annual billing ($25 monthly) and $100 per premium seat ($125 monthly). It includes Claude Code, a Microsoft 365 integration, enterprise search across your organization, central billing, SSO, and admin controls for connectors. Anthropic states there is no model training on your content by default on Team plans. It is described as suited to teams of 2 to 150.

The limit: sessions are individual, and it has no phone or email identity of its own.

Microsoft Copilot: Best if Your Business Runs on Microsoft 365

Copilot puts AI inside Word, Excel, Outlook, and Teams. Microsoft lists the Microsoft 365 Copilot Business add-on at $18 per user per month as a promotional rate, and third-party reports say it is limited to organizations up to 300 users and must be added to a qualifying Microsoft 365 plan. Microsoft's pricing page lists the regular rate at $21 per user per month on annual billing, and says the promotion applies to the first year of purchases made through December 31, 2026.

The limit: its value depends on how much of your work is in Microsoft apps, and the add-on cost stacks on your existing licenses.

Gemini in Google Workspace: Best if Your Business Runs on Google

Google has folded Gemini into Workspace plans rather than selling it as a separate add-on, so Docs, Sheets, Slides, Meet, and Gmail include AI features. Google's pricing page lists Business Standard at $14 per user per month, with introductory discounts for new customers, and says it includes Gemini across Gmail, Docs, Meet, and other apps.

The limit: it is strongest inside Google apps, and plan tiers change what you get. Confirm with Google before budgeting.

Glean: Best for Searching Across Company Knowledge

Glean describes an AI platform for work that unifies enterprise search, assistants, and agents on your company's context, with a security layer called Glean Protect. It suits larger organizations whose knowledge is spread across many apps.

The limit: pricing is not published and the site points to a demo, so it is a bigger purchase than a seat-based chat tool.

Lindy: Best for Building a Custom Workflow Agent

Lindy is an AI teammate that works in Slack. It manages inboxes, drafts replies, schedules and records meetings, and runs scheduled routines across 1,500+ integrations. Plus is $29.99 per user per month, Pro is $99.99 with computer use, and Max is $199.99. Its site lists SOC 2, GDPR, and HIPAA (Enterprise with a signed BAA).

The limit: someone has to design and maintain the workflows, and usage is metered in credits.

Fyxer: Best Executive-Assistant Style Help With Email and Meetings

Fyxer organizes your inbox, drafts replies, records meetings, and drafts follow-ups. It connects to Gmail, Outlook, and the major meeting tools. There is a free plan, Pro at $37 per person per month billed annually, and Team at $64.

The limit: it covers email and meetings rather than every business task, and its credit-based pricing can add up with heavy use. See our best AI executive assistants roundup.

Town: Best New Always-On Assistant With Team Plans

Town gives each person an assistant (a "Townie") that learns how they work and acts proactively across email, calendar, Slack, and docs. It has its own @town.com email address, works in Slack, WhatsApp, and Telegram, and ships routines such as inbox triage, meeting briefings, and contact dossiers. Town announced a $55M Series A in June 2026. On the work-readiness side, it lists SOC 2 Type II, AI training off by default (on only with explicit opt-in), approval required for actions by default, and a full audit log. It has team plans with pooled credits and shared routines.

The limits: pricing is credit-metered, which is hard to predict, and Starter is billed monthly while higher tiers are billed annually, so check the credit allowance before budgeting. Reviewers also flag prompt-injection risk for any agent that reads an inbox. We did not find SSO, and the retention period is not published.

OpenAI Dots: Watch It if Your Team Lives in ChatGPT, Slack, or Teams

OpenAI announced Dots on September 29, 2026: always-on personal agents inside ChatGPT, each with its own cloud computer, reachable in Slack and Microsoft Teams, with 4,000+ app plugins. Per SiliconANGLE's report, it is rolling out to ChatGPT Pro and Business Premium in eligible markets, Pro excludes the EEA, Switzerland, and the UK at launch, and Enterprise, Edu, and Healthcare are in a beta that needs workspace admin enablement. The first dot is included in the plan. Actions that touch accounts or share data go through auto-review, and users can set custom rules to allow, block, or require approval.

The limits: availability is staged, one dot per user at launch, extra-dot pricing is not published, texting is described as arriving later, and we did not find a published phone number or email identity or training defaults for Dots. OpenAI's own pages blocked our fetch, so this rests on press reports and search excerpts.

Microsoft Autopilot (Formerly Scout): For Microsoft 365 Shops That Can Join a Preview

Microsoft announced Scout in June 2026 and renamed it Autopilot on September 25, 2026. Microsoft's September 25 post says it lives in your tenant with its own identity, memory, computer, and workspace, and that colleagues can @mention it with permissions, audit, and governance behind it. Its docs say it works with Outlook, Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint, asks for approval before sensitive actions such as sending email, and tracks sensitivity labels on content it accesses.

The limits: it is in private preview, enrollment needs Frontier program access, admin attestation, Intune policy, and a GitHub Copilot seat, and the docs warn some data can route through third-party inference paths. Usage is billed through a GitHub account per the docs, with amounts not published. It is for organizations already on Microsoft 365, not a general-availability product yet.

OpenAssistant: Best for Work That Involves Other People

We build OpenAssistant, so weigh this entry accordingly. It is an executive assistant with its own name, phone number, and email (or one on your company domain). It handles scheduling across many calendars, multi-person email threads, follow-ups, hand-offs and approvals, shared tasks, and plain-English workflows that run on demand, on a schedule, or on a trigger, over calls, iMessage, SMS, WhatsApp, and email. See the teams page and the product page.

It is in private beta, so you request access. It does not replace a company-wide chat assistant or enterprise search, and many businesses will pair it with one.

Privacy and Data Handling: Questions to Ask Before You Roll Out

This is general information, not legal or compliance advice. An assistant that reads email, files, and calls touches sensitive data, so check the terms for each tool.

• Training: is your content used to train models by default? Several business plans say no, but confirm in writing.
• Access: does the assistant respect existing permissions, and can admins control connectors?
• Certifications: ask for current reports such as SOC 2, and for HIPAA or GDPR terms if you need them.
• Identity controls: look for SSO, role-based access, and audit logs at your plan level.
• Recordings: if the tool records meetings or calls, check consent rules where you and your participants are located.

Our guide to how to know if an AI tool is safe goes deeper, and the OpenAssistant Trust Center shows how one vendor documents its answers.

How to Choose an AI Assistant for Work

• Small business owner on a budget: start with the AI already in your Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, or a $20 seat of ChatGPT or Claude. See AI tools for small business owners.
• Growing team with scattered knowledge: add Glean when search across apps is the pain.
• Repeatable processes: Lindy, if you have someone to build and tune them.
• An overloaded executive or founder: Fyxer or OpenAssistant. See AI tools for startup founders.
• Regulated data: shortlist by certifications and contract terms first, features second.

Perplexity Computer is another agent aimed at work: a cloud agent that runs multi-step research and file tasks, with an Enterprise version offering audit logs, admin permissions, and no training on customer data. Perplexity's pages blocked our check, so confirm Enterprise pricing and credit limits with the vendor. Poke, Instinct, Meta Muse, and similar consumer agents are better treated as personal tools unless your security team approves them.

For more on options beyond one chatbot, read AI beyond ChatGPT for business.