Claude Cowork vs Copilot Cowork: The Cloud Isn’t the Whole Story

Back when Copilot Cowork was first announced, the distinction between it and its Claude Cowork cousin was clear. The Microsoft version worked in the cloud against your Microsoft 365 data. The Anthropic version worked locally in an app with access to your filesystem.

Over the last couple of months that line has blurred. Anthropic has added cloud-based Cowork sessions and MCP-based write access to Microsoft 365, and for organizations on Claude Team plans, where Cowork is still included per seat, it can look like a cheaper route to the same outcome.

Having spent the last several days on these updates, here's what I'd consider before concluding that Claude Cowork now shares the key advantages of Copilot Cowork.

1️⃣ What you can reach from the web or mobile depends on how you set it up. The common set-up for mixing Claude Cowork with Microsoft 365 is a local folder-based project pointed at a OneDrive synced folder. If your projects work that way, you can continue existing sessions from another device, but you can't start new sessions in the project, see its scheduled tasks, or review its instructions or chat list. Copilot Cowork is cloud-first by design, so every surface shows the same assets.

2️⃣ Even the local sessions you can see from the cloud stay tied to one device running the Claude app, powered on and reachable. In practice that gives you two tiers of Cowork task: those that depend on your hardware, and those that truly run in Anthropic's cloud. In Copilot Cowork every job works the same way.

3️⃣ Most importantly, if you're using Claude Cowork, you probably now have projects, scheduled tasks, and sessions spread across both approaches. Some are synced to your account. Others appear there but still live on one machine. If you have complex projects, detailed instructions, or business-critical scheduled tasks in the second group, where are they backed up? What happens if that device fails or is stolen? You'll still have the underlying files. Will you have the logic that makes the solution work? Anthropic seems to offer no supported way to export or back up these projects and task definitions and doesn't document where they're stored. With Copilot Cowork you can switch device tomorrow and everything is where you left it.

My point here isn't to assert that Copilot Cowork is better than Claude Cowork (I use both), just that there are differences we should be considering that aren't that obvious without digging beneath the surface.

If your organization uses Claude Cowork on local devices, how are you handling this? And if there's a migration or backup path I've missed, I'd like to hear about it.

First posted on Linkedin on 09/06/2026 → View Linkedin Post Here