So, today, you have a choice: you can buy a plan such as Office 365 E3 which includes Teams, or one called Office 365 E3 (no Teams) that doesn\u2019t. If you ONLY want Teams then you can buy a Teams Enterprise or a Teams Essentials license \u2013 or grab a free license: Teams Free for consumers, or Teams for Education for students or educators. There\u2019s another Teams-branded license too \u2013 Teams Premium \u2013 which adds a whole host of additional Teams functionality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Office 365 and Microsoft 365 plans<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
All of the following plans include<\/a> a certain amount of Teams capabilities:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Note that the use of Teams in the Microsoft 365 Business plans has a limit of hosting online meetings and video calls for up to 300 peo<\/a>p<\/a>le<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are a couple of places where you can see exactly which features are included in a particular plan: you can use the Modern Work Plan Comparison documents for Enterprise<\/a> customers or SMBs<\/a>, or the Teams service description page<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019re trying to work out the best plan that includes Teams you can use our interactive Microsoft 365\/Office 365 Plan Picker<\/a> \u2013 an intuitive tool that provides license suggestions based on features that you select.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The notion of a separate Teams license to license access to the Teams service<\/a> came into being when Microsoft removed Teams from the Office 365\/Microsoft 365 plans. They made this change in the EEA and Switzerland first and created<\/a> a license called Teams EEA in October 2023<\/strong>. That was followed<\/a> in April 2024<\/strong> by a license for the rest of the world called Teams Enterprise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today these licenses are equivalent, differing only in where you\u2019re located as to which one you buy. Microsoft are a little bit unspecific when they refer to these licenses, usually referring to \u201cTeams Enterprise\u201d when they actually mean both Teams Enterprise and Teams EEA licenses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can broadly consider that you get \u201cTeams Enterprise\u201d when you purchase an Office 365\/Microsoft 365 plan, with the \u201c300\u201d restrictions for the Business plans as described above. This table<\/a> in the Learn documentation is useful for comparing core feature availability between SMB, Enterprise, US Government, and Education plans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Note that Microsoft recommend<\/a> also licensing users for Exchange Online<\/a> and SharePoint Online<\/a> for full Teams functionality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Teams Essentials<\/a> was announced<\/a> on December 1, 2021<\/strong>, as a standalone Teams license for Small and Medium Business customers that don\u2019t need the additional productivity features provided by the Microsoft 365 Business<\/a> licenses. As you might expect, the number 300 is important<\/a>: you can only buy 300 of these licenses, and you\u2019re limited to hosting online meetings and video calls for up to 300 people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Teams Essentials was launched, there were two flavors: Teams Essentials and Teams Essentials (AAD Identity) which you can still see in the Product Terms<\/a>. If you purchased<\/a> your license through Microsoft\u2019s website you purchased the \u201cTeams Essentials\u201d flavor and used your Microsoft account identity, and if you purchased through a partner you were licensed with Teams Essentials (AAD Identity) which used Entra ID. Today, there\u2019s consolidation and only the term Teams Essentials is used, but it actually does use<\/a> Entra ID for identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Teams Free<\/a> is available through Microsoft\u2019s website. It provides a basic set of features<\/a> for individual home use<\/a>, with no Commercial Use Rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Teams for Education<\/a> is free for students and educators with an eligible, active education email address. It\u2019s available either through Microsoft\u2019s website<\/a> or included<\/a> in Office 365 A1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Teams Premium<\/a> is the last Teams-branded license to look at and it\u2019s slightly different in that it\u2019s an Add-on license. It can be purchased for any user already licensed<\/a> with Teams Enterprise\/EEA, Teams Essentials, or one of the Office 365\/Microsoft 365 plans that include Teams. It adds on all sorts of advanced<\/a> features which are detailed in the separate Chat<\/a>, Calling<\/a>, and Meetings and Events<\/a> sections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Teams Premium is the successor to the Advanced <\/a>C<\/a>ommunications<\/a> license, launched<\/a> by Microsoft in August 2020<\/strong>. Advanced Communications had similar sorts of aims to Teams Premium \u2013 to offer an advanced set of features<\/a> on top of the regular Teams features \u2013 but focused more on enhanced admin control with IT meeting customization capabilities. After the pandemic, work was done to evaluate what customers really needed for their set of advanced features and Teams Premium was made generally available<\/a> on February, 1, 2023<\/strong> while Advanced Communications faded quietly away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Find the availability of all the Teams licenses in the Product Terms<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These days, both Teams and Teams Premium licenses include certain AI capabilities, but of course a Microsoft 365 Copilot<\/a> license enables additional features. The following snippet from a Teams Premium and Copilot Overview deck<\/a> is useful to compare the AI capabilities across licenses:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
Teams Enterprise<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Teams Essentials<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Teams Free<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Teams for Education<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Teams Premium<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The Product Terms<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
AI capabilities<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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