An analysis of project data from the matching service for freelance engineers "Freelance Job" reveals that Copilot-related projects have increased approximately 13-fold, growing from 5 projects in January 2025 to 65 projects in May 2026.
Freelance Copilot Projects Surge 13x in 1.5 Years: Demand Expanding from Coding Assistance to Business Implementation and Operation
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Looking at the breakdown of projects, the expansion of demand is evident. In projects involving coding assistance via GitHub Copilot, 52% of projects co-occur with "GitHub," indicating that demand in development environments remains high. On the other hand, demand is also expanding in areas focused on integrating Copilot into corporate business environments, such as implementation into various Microsoft 365 applications, support for employee utilization, tenant management, and governance establishment.
In particular, projects related to "Copilot Studio"—a tool that allows companies to build AI agents tailored to their own business operations and internal knowledge—are standing out. In this survey, the co-occurrence rate with Copilot Studio in project descriptions reached 13%, surpassing "ChatGPT" (4%) and "Dify" (5%).
Regarding project unit prices, the average monthly rate for projects related to Microsoft 365 and Copilot Studio was 78.2 million yen. Along with GitHub Copilot-related projects at 82.1 million yen, these exceeded the overall median project price of 67.5 million yen.
These trends suggest that corporate AI utilization is transitioning from the stage of simply "employees using generative AI" to the stage of "integrating AI into the business processes themselves." Accordingly, the required skills are expanding beyond traditional development skills to include knowledge of Power Platform and SharePoint, as well as operational aspects such as implementation support and governance establishment.
Sources
- 「Copilot案件」が急増、1年半で13倍に フリーランスに求められるニーズの変化 （ITmedia AI+、2026-09-24）