Comparison
Microsoft 365 Business Standard vs Premium: what the extra buys you
Premium costs about £6 more per user per month than Standard. You get no extra Office apps and no extra storage for it - the entire difference is security and device management.
By Claire Donnelly · Last reviewed 11 August 2026 · 4 min read
The short version
- The apps are identical - Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams and your storage are the same in both
- Premium adds device management, endpoint protection and proper email threat filtering
- List price is £10.80 against £16.90 per user per month, ex VAT, paid yearly
- Premium often replaces tools you already buy separately, so compare the total spend
- A Premium licence protects nobody until somebody actually configures it
The difference is not what most people expect
People assume the more expensive plan means more Office. It does not. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams are the same in both, and so are your mailbox and your file storage. If all you want is the software, Standard already has it.
What Premium adds is a security and device management stack that Standard has almost none of. Microsoft’s spam and malware filtering is in both. Everything beyond that – controlling company laptops, stopping a convincing phishing link, protecting machines from ransomware, labelling sensitive documents – arrives with Premium.
That is why the comparison is really a question about your risk and your existing tooling, not about features you will notice day to day.
Office apps, email and storage
Business Standard
Full desktop, web and mobile apps
Business Premium
Identical to Standard
Email threat protection
Business Standard
Spam and malware filtering only
Business Premium
Scans links and attachments as they are opened
Endpoint protection
Business Standard
Not included
Business Premium
Defender for Business across your machines
Device management
Business Standard
Not included
Business Premium
Intune - enforce settings, wipe a lost laptop
Identity and access control
Business Standard
Core identity only
Business Premium
Conditional access, so risky sign-ins are blocked
Sensitive data labelling
Business Standard
Not included
Business Premium
Classify and protect confidential documents
List price per user, per month
Business Standard
£10.80
Business Premium
£16.90
Maximum users
Business Standard
300
Business Premium
300
| Business Standard | Business Premium | |
|---|---|---|
| Office apps, email and storage | Full desktop, web and mobile apps | Identical to Standard |
| Email threat protection | Spam and malware filtering only | Scans links and attachments as they are opened |
| Endpoint protection | Not included | Defender for Business across your machines |
| Device management | Not included | Intune - enforce settings, wipe a lost laptop |
| Identity and access control | Core identity only | Conditional access, so risky sign-ins are blocked |
| Sensitive data labelling | Not included | Classify and protect confidential documents |
| List price per user, per month | £10.80 | £16.90 |
| Maximum users | 300 | 300 |
Which should you choose?
If you already buy decent endpoint protection, device management and email filtering elsewhere, Standard plus those tools may cost the same or less. If you buy none of that, Premium is better value at roughly £6 more per user per month - far cheaper than assembling the same protection separately. The catch is that none of it works until it is set up.
What you are actually getting
Device management lets you require a PIN, encrypt the disk, push settings to a new starter’s laptop, and remotely wipe a device that goes missing. Without it, a lost laptop is a phone call and a hope.
Endpoint protection is a step beyond antivirus: it watches behaviour, so ransomware encrypting files in an unusual pattern gets stopped rather than matched against a list of known threats.
Advanced email protection checks links at the moment someone clicks them and opens attachments in a sandbox first. This is the layer that catches the well-written invoice fraud that ordinary spam filtering waves through.
Conditional access lets you set rules about who can sign in from where, and demand a second factor when something looks wrong – a sign-in from an unfamiliar country, for instance.
Sensitive data labelling tags documents as confidential and can stop them being forwarded outside the business.
When Standard is genuinely enough
Standard is a reasonable choice if a separate provider already handles your endpoint protection and device management properly, and you have no plans to change that. It is also fine if your business holds little sensitive data, everyone works on company-managed machines, and you have another way of handling phishing.
Where Standard stops being defensible is when it is chosen purely on price and nothing else is bought instead. That is not a saving, it is an uninsured risk – and it is increasingly the thing an insurer or a larger client will ask you about.
Questions to answer before you decide
- What are we paying today for antivirus, device management and email filtering?
- Could somebody wipe a company laptop remotely this afternoon if it went missing?
- Do we hold client data that would matter if it left the business?
- Does anyone sign in from personal or unmanaged devices?
- If we bought Premium, who would configure it, and when?
Common questions
Can we have Standard for some people and Premium for others?
Yes. Licences are assigned per user, so it is common to put Premium on the people handling money, data or admin accounts and Standard on everyone else. Be careful though: the protections that depend on device management work best when they cover everybody.
Do we lose anything by moving from Standard to Premium?
No. Premium contains everything Standard has, so it is an upgrade rather than a swap. Files, mailboxes and Teams are unaffected.
Does buying Premium mean we are secure?
No, and this is the most common and expensive misunderstanding. Premium is a set of tools that ship largely switched off or on default settings. Conditional access rules, device policies and labelling all have to be designed and applied. An unconfigured Premium tenant is little safer than Standard.
What about the cheaper versions without Teams?
Microsoft sells both plans in a variant that excludes Teams, at a lower price, for customers who use something else for meetings and chat. The security difference between Standard and Premium is exactly the same in those variants.
Is Premium enough on its own for Cyber Essentials?
It covers a good deal of what is asked about - access control, malware protection, device configuration - but certification depends on how things are set up and on kit outside Microsoft 365, such as firewalls and unsupported devices.
Written by Claire Donnelly
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