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Microsoft 365 licensing calculator

Put in a seat mix, get an annual list-price total, a blended per-user cost, and the step-up suggestions a licensing specialist would make — E3 plus add-ons versus E5, Business Premium under the 300-seat cap, Copilot attach cost. Runs in your browser; nothing is sent anywhere.

Start from

Base licences

Every user needs exactly one of these.

Add-ons and step-ups

Seats here must be users who also hold a qualifying base licence.

What the numbers suggest

  • At 250 seats you are under the 300-seat cap. Business Premium ($22.00) includes Defender for Business, Intune, and Entra P1 for $17.00 less than E3 — E3 wins only if you need the 100 GB mailbox, Windows Enterprise, or Purview features Business Premium lacks.
  • Copilot on 7% of seats adds $9,000 a year. Most rollouts start at 5–15% (a named pilot cohort) before widening — see the Copilot licensing guide for the eligibility rules and the Copilot Chat tiers that need no add-on.

How to read the result

The total is list price × seats × 12. Real invoices are lower for almost everyone: Enterprise Agreements, CSP partners, and the nonprofit and education programmes all discount from list, and Microsoft's own price list changes — most recently in the July 2026 update. Treat the output as the shape of the decision, not the number on the purchase order.

The suggestions under the inputs are the standard traps: paying for E3 plus both E5 step-ups when E5 is cheaper, buying Teams Phone for E5 users who already have it, exceeding the Business-plan seat cap, and assigning add-ons to users without a qualifying base licence.

Where to go deeper