SharePoint Embedded

SharePoint Embedded is the developer-targeted version of SharePoint — letting you use SharePoint's storage, search, AI, and governance capabilities inside your own custom applications without those applications being part of Microsoft 365 directly. It's how Microsoft is opening up SharePoint as a platform for app developers.

What SharePoint Embedded provides

A custom application built on SharePoint Embedded can:

• Store files in customer-isolated containers backed by SharePoint storage.
• Use SharePoint search for content discovery within the application.
• Leverage Microsoft Purview for content classification, retention, eDiscovery.
• Use Microsoft Graph for programmatic file operations.
• Apply sensitivity labels to stored content.
• Use Microsoft 365 Copilot to ground answers on the embedded content.
• Inherit Microsoft 365 identity and security — Entra ID, Conditional Access apply.

The customer-isolated container is a unit of storage and governance, similar to a SharePoint site but designed for the embedded application model. Each container is created and owned by the app, scoped to specific users or organisational scope.

Why this exists

Historically, app developers building content-centric apps faced a choice:

• Roll their own storage (S3, Azure Blob, custom file servers) — significant engineering burden for compliance, governance, search.
• Build on the existing Microsoft 365 surface — but that surface (SharePoint sites and lists) wasn't designed for embedded use.

SharePoint Embedded fills the gap: the underlying SharePoint storage and capabilities, but with a developer-first API and an app-controlled model.

Use cases

• Customer-facing applications that handle documents — contract management, claims processing, document collaboration tools.
• Industry-specific applications — health records, legal case management, compliance dashboards.
• Partner-built solutions — ISV applications that ship to many Microsoft 365 customers.
• Custom enterprise apps that need richer content handling than building from scratch.

How it differs from SharePoint Online

• SharePoint Online sites are the user-facing surface inside the Microsoft 365 admin model.
• SharePoint Embedded containers are isolated app-controlled containers, not visible in the user's SharePoint navigation by default. The application surfaces them through its own UI.

The underlying storage technology is the same; the access model differs.

Licensing

SharePoint Embedded is billed on a pay-as-you-go consumption model based on storage and operations, separate from Microsoft 365 plan licensing. The application doesn't require its end users to have specific Microsoft 365 plans for many scenarios.

Where this fits in 2026

SharePoint Embedded is a relatively new Microsoft platform — most actively adopted by:

• ISVs building line-of-business apps for Microsoft 365 customers.
• Microsoft itself — Microsoft 365 Copilot containers, Loop workspaces, and other Microsoft products are built on SharePoint Embedded under the hood.
• Enterprises building custom content-heavy applications.

For most Microsoft 365 administrators, SharePoint Embedded is "interesting but not directly relevant" — it's a developer platform, not an admin surface. For developers building apps on Microsoft 365 infrastructure, it's increasingly the right answer for content storage.