Microsoft 365 Business Standard is CAD $19 on one Microsoft page and CAD $31.90 on another. The difference is Copilot, and the default path buys it for you.
Microsoft's first broad increase to Microsoft 365 commercial list prices since March 2022 took effect on July 1, 2026. The increase itself is modest and Business Premium did not move at all. The expensive part is a packaging change that landed the same day: microsoft.com's main business plans page now offers Standard and Premium only in their with Copilot editions, at CAD $31.90 and CAD $43.40, while the base editions are still sold at CAD $19 and CAD $29.80 on other Microsoft pages. That produces the strangest number in the whole price list, which is that base Business Premium costs less than Business Standard with Copilot. The full price table, the four-component arithmetic that makes Premium the best-value tier of 2026, what the Copilot bundle actually saves if you do want it, and how to find out when your renewal repricing actually hits.
Most of the small businesses we work with have not noticed the Microsoft 365 price increase yet, and they are not being inattentive. It genuinely has not reached them.
The new list prices took effect on July 1, 2026. Existing subscriptions do not reprice on that date. They reprice at the first renewal after it. So a business that renewed its annual term in April 2026 is paying the old prices until April 2027 and has no reason to think anything changed. These are the first broad increases to Microsoft 365 commercial list prices since March 1, 2022, so for a lot of these plans the number on your invoice has not moved in four years.
That grace period is the useful part, because there is a decision waiting at the other end of it, and the decision is not really about the price increase. The increase is small. Business Premium did not increase at all. What changed on July 1 is which products Microsoft puts in front of you when you go to buy, and the gap between the default path and the cheapest correct path is now larger than the price increase everyone is writing about.
What actually went up
Microsoft announced the change on December 4, 2025, and published the full list on its licensing news page. These are the US list prices, per user per month, for annual commitment.
| Plan | Before July 1 | From July 1, 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Business Basic | $6.00 | $7.00 | +16% |
| Microsoft 365 Business Standard | $12.50 | $14.00 | +12% |
| Microsoft 365 Business Premium | $22.00 | $22.00 | no change |
| Microsoft 365 Apps for business | $8.25 | $10.00 | +21% |
| Office 365 E3 | $23.00 | $26.00 | +13% |
| Office 365 E5 | $38.00 | $41.00 | +8% |
| Microsoft 365 E3 | $36.00 | $39.00 | +8% |
| Microsoft 365 E5 | $57.00 | $60.00 | +5% |
| Microsoft Entra ID Plan 1 | $6.00 | $7.00 | +16% |
| Microsoft 365 F1 | $2.25 | $3.00 | +33% |
| Microsoft 365 F3 | $8.00 | $10.00 | +25% |
| Windows Enterprise (per device) | $5.85 | $7.63 | +31% |
Two things stand out immediately.
The first is that the heaviest increases land on the cheapest licences. Frontline F1 went up 33 percent and F3 went up 25 percent, which in absolute terms is 75 cents and two dollars, but in percentage terms is the sharpest move in the table. If you license shift workers, retail staff, or anyone who mostly needs Teams and a mailbox, you absorbed the largest relative increase in the set.
The second is the row we bolded. Microsoft 365 Business Premium, the tier most small businesses should be on, did not go up. It last moved on March 1, 2022, when it went from $20.00 to $22.00, and it has now held at $22.00 through a second round of increases. Business Standard went up 12 percent. That narrows the gap between the two tiers from $9.50 to $8.00 per user per month, and that $8.00 turns out to be the best arithmetic in the whole 2026 price list. We will come back to it.
In fairness to Microsoft, the increase came with additions rather than nothing. Basic, Standard and Premium each gained 50 GB of extra mailbox storage. Basic and Standard gained URL time-of-click protection, which checks links at the moment someone clicks them rather than at delivery, and which those tiers genuinely did not have before. E3 gained Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 outright. Whether that is worth what you are paying for it depends on your tier, but it is not a price increase for the same box of parts.
The change nobody announced as a price change
On the same day the new prices took effect, Microsoft made two SKUs permanent: Microsoft 365 Business Standard with Copilot and Microsoft 365 Business Premium with Copilot. Microsoft’s own announcement on May 28, 2026 called them “the new standard for small business,” which is a fair description of the intent, and did not mention prices at all.
The prices are on the buy pages. We read them today, in both markets.
| Plan as offered | US, per user per month, annual | Canada, per user per month, annual |
|---|---|---|
| Business Basic | $7.00 | $9.50 |
| Business Standard with Copilot | $23.50 | $31.90 |
| Business Premium with Copilot | $32.00 | $43.40 |
Now compare that against the base editions of the same two plans, which Microsoft still sells and still lists on its security pricing page and on each plan’s own product page.
| Plan as offered | US | Canada |
|---|---|---|
| Business Standard (base) | $14.00 | $19.00 |
| Business Premium (base) | $22.00 | $29.80 |
Same tenant, same admin centre, same apps. The difference between the two tables is Copilot, and it is CAD $12.90 per user per month on Standard and CAD $13.60 on Premium.
Here is the part that matters operationally. The main Microsoft 365 business plans comparison page, the one you land on if you search for Microsoft 365 pricing and click the obvious result, now lists Standard and Premium only in their with Copilot editions. Business Basic is still there in its plain form. Standard and Premium are not. To buy the base editions you have to arrive at the individual plan page, the SMB security pricing page, or go through a partner.
So a business owner doing exactly what a reasonable person would do, opening Microsoft’s pricing page and picking the tier they were told they need, buys Copilot. Nobody misled them. The base product simply is not on the page they were on.
The number that should make you stop
Put the four prices side by side, US first because the effect is cleanest there.
| US | Canada | |
|---|---|---|
| Business Standard with Copilot | $23.50 | $31.90 |
| Business Premium (base) | $22.00 | $29.80 |
In the United States, the Copilot edition of the lower tier costs more than the base edition of the higher tier. In Canada the base higher tier is CAD $2.10 cheaper.
For CAD $2.10 less per user per month than Business Standard with Copilot, base Business Premium gives you Microsoft Intune for device management, Microsoft Entra ID Plan 1 for conditional access, Microsoft Defender for Business for endpoint protection, Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 for mail security, and sensitivity labelling for documents. It does not give you Copilot.
We are not going to tell you Copilot has no value. For some teams it clearly does, and we will get to the arithmetic of buying it properly in a moment. But if you are a fifteen person business that has not yet enforced multifactor authentication with conditional access, does not centrally manage the laptops that hold your client data, and cannot wipe a device that walks out of a coffee shop, then those five capabilities are worth more to you this year than a writing assistant, and they cost you less than the writing assistant does.
Why Business Premium is the best-value tier of 2026
The reason is not marketing. It is that Microsoft publishes the à la carte prices of Premium’s components, so you can check the bundle discount yourself. These are from Microsoft’s SMB security pricing page, read today.
| Component included in Premium but not Standard | US | Canada |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Entra ID Plan 1 | $7.00 | $9.50 |
| Microsoft Intune Plan 1 | $8.00 | $10.90 |
| Microsoft Defender for Business | $3.00 | $4.10 |
| Microsoft Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 | $2.00 | $2.70 |
| Bought separately | $20.00 | $27.20 |
| Actual cost of moving Standard to Premium | $22.00 minus $14.00 = $8.00 | $29.80 minus $19.00 = $10.80 |
Twenty dollars of components for eight dollars. In Canada, CAD $27.20 of components for CAD $10.80. The step from Standard to Premium prices those four products at roughly 40 percent of what they cost individually, and that ratio got better on July 1, because Standard went up and Premium did not.
There is a sharper version of this test for anyone already paying for a security add-on. Microsoft Entra ID Plan 1 on its own is now $7.00, up from $6.00. Moving from Business Standard to Business Premium costs $8.00. If you are currently on Business Standard and buying Entra ID Plan 1 separately so you can run conditional access, you are one dollar per user per month away from also getting Intune, Defender for Business and Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 for nothing. Check your bill for that line. We have found it more than once.
The reason this matters beyond the invoice is that the identity layer is where the incidents happen. When Microsoft fixed nine perfect-10 flaws in its own cloud this month, the ones that reached customers reached them through identity and provisioning services. Conditional access is not a nice-to-have on that surface, and neither is knowing which devices are allowed to hold your mail.
If you do want Copilot, buy it the right way
This is where the bundling is genuinely in your favour, and we want to be even-handed about it, because the same repackaging that overcharges a business that does not want Copilot undercharges one that does.
Copilot can be bought as an add-on called Microsoft 365 Copilot Business. It requires a qualifying Business plan underneath it and it is capped at 300 seats per tenant. Here is what each route costs, per user per month, annual commitment.
| Route to Copilot | US | Canada |
|---|---|---|
| Base Standard plus Copilot Business at promotional rate | $14.00 + $18.00 = $32.00 | $19.00 + $24.43 = $43.43 |
| Base Standard plus Copilot Business at regular rate | $14.00 + $21.00 = $35.00 | $19.00 + $28.50 = $47.50 |
| Business Standard with Copilot | $23.50 | $31.90 |
| Base Premium plus Copilot Business at promotional rate | $22.00 + $18.00 = $40.00 | $29.80 + $24.43 = $54.23 |
| Business Premium with Copilot | $32.00 | $43.40 |
The bundle wins by a wide margin in every row. On Standard it saves CAD $11.53 per user per month against the promotional add-on rate and CAD $15.60 against the regular rate. If you have decided your team is using Copilot, do not assemble it from parts. Buy the bundled SKU.
Two dates matter if you are considering it. The promotional rate on the standalone add-on is first-year only, and the end date differs by market: Microsoft’s Canadian page currently shows September 30, 2026, and its US page shows December 31, 2026. Read your own market’s page before you plan around either. And Copilot Business tops out at 300 seats, so if you are near that number the enterprise Copilot licence is the path, not this one.
The harder question is not which SKU. It is whether the seats will be used. Copilot at CAD $12.90 per user per month over base pricing is CAD $154.80 per seat per year, so a twenty-five person business is committing CAD $3,870 a year. The Canadian data on which SME AI deployments actually produce value is fairly clear that the deciding factor is not the tool. Buy it for the eight people who will open it daily, leave the rest on base licences, and revisit in six months. Mixed licensing in one tenant is normal and Microsoft supports it.
One caution worth stating plainly, since Copilot reads your mail and files by design: giving an assistant broad read access to a mailbox changes your threat model, and the rule that keeps that from becoming an incident is the same one we wrote up for AI agents that read your email. Sensitivity labelling, which is in Premium and not in Standard, is the control that makes the difference here. That is another reason the Premium tier is the better base for a Copilot rollout even though it costs more.
Find out when this actually hits you
Everything above is a decision you make at renewal, not today. Microsoft’s own FAQ is unambiguous on the mechanics:
- New pricing applies at the next renewal after July 1, 2026, for both annual and monthly billing plans.
- Customers on multi-year agreements stay at current pricing until that agreement renews.
- Anyone who renewed before July 1, 2026 locked in the old pricing until their next renewal after that date.
So the first thing to do is not a pricing exercise. It is a lookup. In the Microsoft 365 admin centre, go to Billing, then Your products, and read the renewal date on each subscription. That date is when your bill changes, and it is also the only moment you get to change tiers cleanly without a mid-term licence transition.
While you are on that screen, check one more thing: whether you are on annual or monthly commitment. Monthly commitment costs exactly 20 percent more across every plan we checked. Business Standard is $14.00 annual and $16.80 monthly. Business Premium is $22.00 annual and $26.40 monthly. In Canada, CAD $19.00 versus CAD $22.80, and CAD $29.80 versus CAD $35.76. Copilot Business is CAD $28.50 versus CAD $34.20. Businesses end up on monthly commitment during a growth period when headcount is uncertain and then never move back, and it is a 20 percent tax on a decision nobody revisited.
There is a Canadian detail worth noting too, because it comes up every time exchange rates move: Microsoft bills Canadian tenants in Canadian dollars at Canadian list prices, so the number on your invoice does not follow the dollar day to day. Taxes are added on top of every figure above.
What we would actually do
For a small business in Toronto with somewhere between five and fifty people, here is the sequence, in order.
- Look up your renewal date. Nothing else is urgent until you know it. If it is more than six months out, put a calendar reminder for sixty days before it and stop reading.
- Check whether you are paying for Entra ID Plan 1, Intune, or Defender for Business as separate line items on top of Business Standard. If you are, moving to Business Premium is almost certainly cheaper than what you pay now, and gets you more.
- Default to base Business Premium. At $22.00 US or CAD $29.80 it is the strongest value in Microsoft’s 2026 catalogue by a distance, and it is cheaper than or within CAD $2.10 of the Standard with Copilot bundle that the pricing page will steer you toward.
- Decide about Copilot separately, per person, not per company. If the answer is yes for some of the team, buy the bundled with Copilot SKU for those seats rather than the add-on. The bundle is materially cheaper than assembling the same thing.
- Move monthly commitment to annual for the seats you are confident about. That is a 20 percent reduction on those seats for a decision that takes one click.
- If you have frontline or shift staff on F1 or F3, re-count those seats. Those licences took the largest percentage increase in the table, and shift-worker seat counts are the ones most likely to be stale.
None of this is exotic licensing work. It is reading two numbers off the admin centre and comparing them to a public price list. The reason it is worth an hour is that the default path Microsoft now presents costs a twenty-five person business roughly CAD $3,870 a year more than the base path, for a product they have not yet decided they want, and the moment that gets locked in is a renewal date that arrives without a phone call.
If you want a second pair of eyes on your tenant before a renewal, send us a note. Reading a Microsoft 365 bill against what the tenant actually uses takes us about an hour, and the answer is frequently that you are paying for something twice. That conversation is also where the end-of-support dates on the rest of your Microsoft estate tend to surface, because they are almost never on the same calendar as the licence renewal.
Sources
All prices were read directly from Microsoft’s own pages on August 26, 2026. Prices change and promotional rates expire, so verify against the live pages before committing.
- Microsoft 365 Pricing and Packaging Updates, Microsoft Licensing Resources, the source of the complete before and after list price table effective July 1, 2026
- Microsoft 365 Packaging and Pricing Updates Public FAQ, Microsoft, for the renewal mechanics, the multi-year agreement treatment, and the pre-July lock-in
- Advancing Microsoft 365: New capabilities and pricing update, Microsoft 365 Blog, December 4, 2025, the original announcement
- Introducing Microsoft 365 Business with Copilot: The new standard for small business, Microsoft 365 Blog, May 28, 2026, announcing the July 1 general availability of the bundled SKUs
- Microsoft 365 Business plans and pricing and the Canadian equivalent, the comparison pages that now list Standard and Premium only in their with Copilot editions
- Microsoft 365 security pricing for small and medium business and the Canadian equivalent, the source of the base Business Standard and Business Premium prices and of the standalone component prices for Entra ID Plan 1, Intune Plan 1, Defender for Business and Defender for Office 365 Plan 1
- Microsoft 365 Business Premium product page, confirming the base edition is still sold at $22.00 alongside the $32.00 with Copilot edition
- Microsoft 365 Copilot for business pricing and the Canadian page, for the Copilot Business add-on rates, the promotional rates and their differing end dates by market, and the monthly commitment premiums
- Why choose Microsoft 365 Business Premium, Microsoft Learn, for the list of security and device management products included in the tier
- June 2026 Partner Center announcements, Microsoft Learn, for the partner-facing guidance to close renewals before July 1 to retain current pricing
- New pricing for Microsoft 365, Microsoft 365 Blog, August 19, 2021, the previous commercial increase, effective March 1, 2022, which is where Business Premium’s $22.00 came from