Microsoft 365 Licence Audit 2026: Choosing the Right Plan After the Price Increases

Since 1 July 2026, new Microsoft 365 prices have been in effect — and many businesses are only feeling the impact now, when the first renewal invoice arrives. The increases range from 0 to 33 percent depending on the plan. Businesses that have not audited their licence estate by then end up paying the higher rates on licences that are no longer actively used.

The general pricing briefing has already been covered in our detailed price increase analysis. This article is about what comes next: which plans make sense for which employee profiles, how to run an audit in five steps, and where the hidden cost traps lurk after Microsoft's package restructuring.

What is driving the need for a licence audit?

The price adjustments did not hit all plans equally. Business Premium remains unchanged at $22.00; Business Standard rose 12% to $14.00; Business Basic rose 16.7% to $7.00. The steepest increases hit the Frontline plans: F1 (with Teams) went up 33%, F3 by 25%. In euros, the new Microsoft list prices for annual billing work out to roughly €6.07 for Business Basic and €12.13 for Business Standard — per user, per month (source: Microsoft 365 Licensing News, July 2026).

At the same time, Microsoft shifted features into existing plans: Business Basic and Standard gained 50 GB of additional mailbox storage, advanced safe-link checks, and Copilot Chat features. This changes the cost-benefit calculation: Business Premium now costs only $10.00 more than Business Standard — roughly €6.90 per user per month (€19.06 − €12.13). The security features that only Premium includes — Defender for Business, Intune, Entra ID P1 — have not changed in price.

The real savings potential, however, rarely comes from switching to a cheaper plan. It comes from cleaning up the licence estate. From the field experience of IT service providers: 20 to 25 percent of provisioned licences in typical SMBs are either unused or incorrectly sized — former employees who are still licensed, Business Premium assigned to staff who only read emails, or add-ons that carried over from a previous plan change.

Which plan fits which employee profile?

Plan selection depends on the actual usage profile. The following overview applies to Business plans (up to 300 users), annual billing, excluding VAT:

For businesses that need to maintain cyber insurance cover, Business Premium is often the more economical overall choice: it covers MFA enforcement via Conditional Access, endpoint protection, and mobile device management in a single licence — features that most insurance policies explicitly require. For details on exactly which measures insurers demand, see our article Cyber Insurance 2026: IT Measures Insurers Require from SMBs. Since the price gap between Standard and Premium has narrowed since the July increases, the upgrade decision is easier to justify today than it was before.

How does a licence audit work in five steps?

Step 1: Export your licence inventory. In the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, go to Billing > Your products for all provisioned licences. The usage report is under Reports > Usage > Microsoft 365 Activation Report. Export both as CSV — this is the foundation for everything that follows.

Step 2: Identify inactive accounts. Filter the activation report for accounts where the last activity was more than 90 days ago. Former employees, seasonal staff, and test accounts are the most common findings. Every cancelled licence saves money immediately.

Step 3: Match plans to user profiles. Anyone who does not need desktop Office apps and only uses Teams for meetings is well served by Business Basic — at roughly half the Business Standard price. The countercheck: anyone working regularly from home on company devices benefits from Intune and needs Premium.

Step 4: Calculate the savings in concrete numbers. A business with 20 users on Business Standard pays 20 × €12.13 = €242.60 per month after the increase — around €2,911 per year. If the audit reveals that five users only need email and web-based apps, those five switch to Business Basic (€6.07). Result: 15 × €12.13 + 5 × €6.07 = €212.30/month = €2,548/year — an annual saving of around €363, purely from right-sizing. Add two or three unused legacy licences and the saving quickly exceeds €500 per year.

Step 5: Mark the renewal date in your calendar. The new prices only take effect at the next renewal. Annual contracts renewed in spring 2026 are still on old rates until their 2027 anniversary. Set a reminder 30 days before the renewal date — licences generally cannot be reduced mid-term.

Where do the cost traps lie after the package restructuring?

Copilot Chat has been included in all Business plans since July 2026 — including Basic and Standard, without any separate activation required. If you want to restrict AI features for specific users or groups, you need to configure this actively in the Admin Center. Without any change, all licensed users have access to Copilot Chat — which raises DSGVO/GDPR data-processing questions if no internal AI usage policy is in place.

The consumer Copilot Pro subscription was discontinued on 1 August 2026. Employees who had a personal Copilot Pro subscription were migrated to a Microsoft 365 consumer plan. In such cases, check whether those employees' AI usage is correctly covered by your company policy and whether it should be managed through the business instead.

Frontline accounts on shared devices face an additional challenge: the steep increases to F1 and F3 make it worth reviewing the optimal licence structure carefully — particularly in light of the Entra ID requirements for shared endpoints that become relevant in the context of the September 2026 passkey rollout.

What does the free Copilot trial until end-2026 offer?

Since August 2026, Microsoft has offered a free 30-day pilot programme called "Copilot in 30" for Microsoft 365 Copilot — exclusively for companies with fewer than 300 employees, available only through a CSP partner (not self-service). The programme covers up to 25 users and runs until 31 December 2026. It includes a role-based "Copilot Success Planner" to guide each test user through onboarding.

Important: once the 30 days are up, the subscription automatically converts to a paid plan (Microsoft 365 Copilot at $30.00/user/month) unless you actively cancel within a 7-day window. The programme can only be used once per tenant; Enterprise SKUs (E3/E5/E7) are excluded.

For businesses wondering whether Copilot is worth the investment before committing to $30 per user per month, this window is worth using — but only after cleaning up the licence estate first. The deployment strategy for a successful pilot is covered in our article Introducing Microsoft 365 Copilot in SMBs.

Four questions from practice

Can I reduce licences during an active subscription term? On annual contracts, this is generally not possible — reductions take effect only at renewal. You can add licences at any time. The exact date and conditions are shown in the Admin Center under Billing > Your products > Change quantity.

What happens to data when a licence lapses? Microsoft typically holds deprovisioned account data in a locked state for 30 days before deletion — this is an emergency window, not a backup substitute. If you want a quick estimate of what an unexpected M365 outage costs your business per day, the downtime cost calculator gives you a starting point.

Do I need Business Premium to qualify for cyber insurance? Not necessarily — but most policies require MFA, endpoint protection, and patch management. Business Premium covers all three from a single licence. With the price gap to Standard now smaller, the upgrade decision is increasingly straightforward for security-conscious businesses.

How long does a licence audit take? For a business with 10 to 50 users, half a day is usually sufficient: export the reports, filter inactive accounts, review user profiles, document the outcome. For 100 or more users, or multiple sites, PowerShell support or the involvement of a Microsoft partner is worthwhile.

Would you like a professional review of your Microsoft 365 licence estate before your next renewal? We support IT projects and Microsoft 365 work across the Ruhr Area — in Recklinghausen, Gelsenkirchen, and the surrounding region — and help you find the right licence structure for your business.