| Item | Seats | Per user / month | Per year |
|---|---|---|---|
Microsoft 365 Business Premium Not increased on 1 July 2026. Capped at 300 seats. | 25 | £16.90 | £5,070.00 |
| Total | £5,070.00 |
The bill is rarely wrong because the price is wrong
Microsoft 365 list prices are public, so almost nobody is overpaying because they were quoted the wrong number. They overpay because of the structure around the number: a bundle that already contains the thing they just bought separately, a cap that arrives without warning at seat 301, two products with nearly the same name and a 43% price gap, or a dollar figure quietly turned into pounds at a rate that was never Microsoft’s. This calculator is built around those structural traps rather than around the price list — the prices are just the arithmetic underneath.
It also refuses to guess. Microsoft publishes GBP prices for the plans and for a handful of add-ons, and publishes nothing in GBP for many of the rest; Enterprise and Frontline plans have no published month-to-month price at all. Where there is no published figure, the line reads price on application and we confirm it on quote. That is less satisfying than a complete-looking table, and considerably more useful than one built on invented numbers.
Six ways Microsoft 365 licensing goes wrong
Each of these is encoded in the calculator above, so you don’t have to remember it.
Business Basic, Standard and Premium share ONE 300-seat limit per tenant. It is the family total, not a limit per plan — and seats bought direct or through another partner still count. Companies discover this at seat 301, mid-onboarding.
Business Premium already entitles Entra ID P1, Intune Plan 1, Defender for Business and Defender for Office 365 P1. Microsoft 365 E5 already entitles Power BI Pro, Teams Phone, Entra ID P2, the Defender Suite and the Purview Suite. Buying them again is pure waste, and it is common.
Microsoft 365 Copilot ($30) and Microsoft 365 Copilot Business ($21) are different products with different eligibility. Quoting the enterprise SKU to a Business Premium customer over-quotes by roughly 43%.
They are different products. Office 365 E3 has no Intune, no Entra ID P1 and no Defender for Endpoint. Picking it to save money and then buying those three back separately usually costs more than Microsoft 365 E3 in the first place.
Intune Plan 2 is ADDITIVE — the real cost is P1 + P2. But Entra ID P2 and Defender for Office 365 P2 are supersets that replace P1. One mental model does not fit all three, so the tool encodes each separately.
Microsoft publishes separate USD and GBP tables and the implied ratio differs by family — roughly 0.77 for Business, 0.86 for Microsoft 365 Enterprise, 0.896 for Office 365. A converted price is a wrong price, so this calculator refuses to convert and shows "price on application" instead.
Microsoft 365 plan prices (public list)
Annual term paid yearly, per user per month. GBP is ex-VAT from Microsoft’s UK pages; USD from the US pages. The two are separate published tables — the implied ratio is not constant, so neither column is derived from the other.
| Plan | GBP (ex-VAT) | USD | Counts to 300 cap | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Business Basic | £5.40 | $7.00 | Yes | Web/mobile Office apps only — no installed desktop apps. |
| Microsoft 365 Business Standard | £10.80 | $14.00 | Yes | — |
| Microsoft 365 Business Premium | £16.90 | $22.00 | Yes | Not increased on 1 July 2026. Capped at 300 seats. |
| Microsoft 365 Apps for business | £9.80 | $10.00 | No | No hosted mailbox and no Teams — not a substitute for Business Basic. |
| Microsoft 365 E3 | £33.50 | $39.00 | No | Includes 4 entitlements you don’t buy separately |
| Microsoft 365 E5 | £51.60 | $60.00 | No | Includes 10 entitlements you don’t buy separately |
| Microsoft 365 E7 | £81.60 | $99.00 | No | Bundles Microsoft 365 Copilot. Price unchanged on 1 July 2026. |
| Office 365 E1 | £7.70 | $10.00 | No | Price unchanged on 1 July 2026. |
| Office 365 E3 | £23.30 | $26.00 | No | No Intune, no Entra ID P1, no Defender for Endpoint — this is NOT Microsoft 365 E3. |
| Office 365 E5 | £36.80 | $41.00 | No | Includes 4 entitlements you don’t buy separately |
| Microsoft 365 F1 | £2.30 | $3.00 | No | No hosted mailbox. Office for the web is read-only. |
| Microsoft 365 F3 | £7.70 | $10.00 | No | — |
Captured 27 July 2026 from: Microsoft · Microsoft · Microsoft · Microsoft UK · Microsoft · Microsoft UK · Microsoft · Microsoft UK · Microsoft · Microsoft UK · Microsoft Licensing news · Microsoft Partner Center announcements, July 2026 · Microsoft · Microsoft Learn · Microsoft · Microsoft · Microsoft · Microsoft · Microsoft Learn · Microsoft · Microsoft · Microsoft · Microsoft blog. List prices are anchors for comparison, not a quotation, and never a distributor or partner net price.
Microsoft 365 licensing FAQs
How much does Microsoft 365 cost per user in the UK?
Microsoft's UK public list prices, ex-VAT, annual term paid yearly, as at 27 July 2026: Business Basic £5.40, Business Standard £10.80, Business Premium £16.90, Microsoft 365 E3 £33.50, Microsoft 365 E5 £51.60, Office 365 E1 £7.70, Office 365 E3 £23.30, Frontline F3 £7.70. Those are list anchors, not what an organisation necessarily pays — term, seat count and the add-ons you genuinely need all move the real figure, which is why the calculator prices a mix rather than a single SKU.
What is the 300-seat limit on Microsoft 365 Business plans?
Business Basic, Business Standard and Business Premium share a single 300-seat cap, and it applies to the FAMILY TOTAL in one tenant — not 300 of each. Seats already provisioned through another partner or bought direct count toward it too. Past 300 you have two legitimate routes, both of which Microsoft permits: keep 300 on Business and put the remainder on an Enterprise SKU in the same tenant, or move everyone to Microsoft 365 E3. The calculator costs both at list so you can see which is actually cheaper for your headcount, because the mixed route is not always the winner once add-ons are counted.
Is Microsoft 365 E5 worth it over E3?
It depends entirely on how many E5 capabilities you would otherwise buy as add-ons. The US-list step-up from Microsoft 365 E3 to E5 is $21 per user per month. Defender Suite is $12, Purview Suite $12, Power BI Pro $14, Teams Phone Standard $10. Any single one of those is cheaper than stepping up; any two exceed it — at which point E5 is cheaper AND brings the rest of the suite. The calculator runs this comparison against the add-ons you have actually selected. It runs in USD only, deliberately: Microsoft publishes no GBP list prices for those add-ons, and back-converting the dollar figures would produce a wrong answer.
What is the difference between Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot Business?
They are two different SKUs. Microsoft 365 Copilot is the enterprise add-on at $30.00 per user per month (£23.10 UK list). Microsoft 365 Copilot Business is the SMB add-on at $21.00 (£16.10), attachable to Business Basic, Standard, Premium or Apps for business, capped at 300 users. Quoting the enterprise product to an SMB over-quotes by about 43%. In both cases Copilot seats must not exceed the qualifying base licences the customer owns, counted across every subscription including ones bought elsewhere — the calculator flags it when they do.
Did Microsoft 365 prices go up in 2026?
Yes — announced 4 December 2025, effective 2026-07-01, alongside packaging changes. Not every SKU moved: Business Premium, Microsoft 365 E7 and Office 365 E1 were unchanged, while Business Basic, Business Standard, Microsoft 365 E3/E5, Office 365 E3/E5 and the Frontline plans all rose. Existing customers stay on their current price until the first renewal after that date — but packaging (feature) changes apply regardless of the price being paid. Tick the pre-increase box in the calculator to see the before-and-after on your base plans; that comparison is USD-only, because Microsoft published the "was" table in dollars and GBP reprices on its own cycle.
Can I mix Microsoft 365 Business and Enterprise plans in one tenant?
Yes, and it is often the cheapest answer just past 300 seats. Microsoft explicitly permits mixing Business and Enterprise SKUs within one tenant, so a 340-person organisation can run 300 Business Premium seats plus 40 Microsoft 365 E3 seats. The trade-off is administrative: two entitlement sets, two sets of policies to keep straight, and any add-on with a Microsoft 365 E3 prerequisite (Defender Suite, Purview Suite) can only attach to the E3 seats. The calculator costs the split route and the everyone-on-E3 route side by side.
Why does the calculator say "price on application" instead of showing a price?
Because Microsoft does not publish a list price for that item in that currency, and inventing one would be worse than admitting it. Several add-ons have published USD prices but no published GBP price; Enterprise and Frontline plans have no published month-to-month price at all. Rather than derive a figure by conversion or by extrapolating the observed annual-to-monthly ratio, those lines read "price on application" and we confirm them on quote. Everything else on the page is a public Microsoft price with a dated source link.
Can I reduce seats mid-term on an annual subscription?
Only within 7 calendar days of when those specific licences were added, and each addition carries its own clock. Increases are allowed at any time. That asymmetry is why an annual-term figure should be read as a genuine 12-month liability rather than a flexible budget — and it is a strong argument for licensing to your real headcount rather than your optimistic one, then adding seats as you grow.
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