What changed on 1 July 2026
Microsoft announced the new pricing structure back on 4 December 2025; it took effect on 1 July 2026 for most Business, Enterprise, and Frontline plans. The specific increases: Business Basic rose from €6 to €7 per user per month (up 16 percent), Business Standard from €12.50 to €14, and the Frontline F1 plan by a third to €3. Some specialty versions without Microsoft Teams reportedly got up to 43 percent more expensive. Enterprise plans E3 and E5 now cost €39 and €60 respectively. Microsoft's official justification: the integration of Copilot AI features and ongoing product improvements.
For a company with, say, 40 Business Standard licenses, this single price adjustment alone means roughly €720 in additional annual cost - without a single employee needing to actively use Copilot to be paying for it. That cost arrives automatically with plan renewal, not through a deliberate purchasing decision for the new feature.
The number that undercuts the pricing justification
The more telling fact isn't in the price table - it's in Microsoft's own usage numbers. About three years after Microsoft 365 Copilot's market launch, current data shows notably weak adoption: of roughly 500 million Microsoft 365 customers, fewer than 4.5 percent actively pay for the paid Copilot features, and only around 1 percent of the total customer base uses them weekly. The price increase is justified by a feature the overwhelming majority of paying customers demonstrably don't use.
That's not a claim about Copilot's technical quality - low usage can have many causes, from insufficient training to a missing use case at a given company. The point is different: a blanket price increase applied to all customers, justified by a feature almost nobody actively uses, effectively shifts the cost of an optional add-on onto the entire customer base, regardless of whether an individual customer wants it or not.
What competition authorities in three countries are already examining
This pricing structure is now the subject of several regulatory proceedings - though not yet in Germany or at the EU level. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) opened an investigation on 29 July 2026 alleging 'bait-and-switch' practices: Microsoft reportedly first integrated Copilot into existing plans at no extra cost in January 2025, then automatically moved customers into pricier, Copilot-bundled plans at their next renewal, without clearly offering the cheaper non-AI plan as an alternative. Per reporting, Microsoft could face a penalty of up to 10 percent of global annual revenue if found in violation.
Australia's competition authority, the ACCC, is a step further and has been suing Microsoft in federal court since October 2025, alleging that roughly 2.7 million Australian subscribers were misled by hiding the cheaper Classic plan option until customers began a cancellation process. Italy's competition authority, the AGCM, opened its own case against Microsoft Ireland Operations and Microsoft Italia on 26 June 2026, which - beyond Copilot - also covers Microsoft Designer, the AI-powered design tool bundled into the same plan changes.
The gap for German customers
Current reporting shows no comparable regulatory investigation into this pricing for Germany or the EU as a whole. That doesn't mean the underlying practice works differently here - per several independent reports, the cheaper Classic plan without the Copilot surcharge remains practically hard to access for German customers too: the switch is often not clearly offered through the usual online channels, and instead has to be actively sought out or requested directly from support, with mixed reported success depending on plan and customer type.
For a German company, that means concretely: there's currently no authority in your own jurisdiction actively checking whether you were fairly informed about alternatives to the pricier plan - unlike a UK, Australian, or Italian customer, who can at least point to an ongoing proceeding. The only reliable check in this case is the company itself.
What this means in practice
This analysis isn't a call to abandon Microsoft 365 - for most companies, it remains a sensible, deeply integrated platform. But it's a concrete prompt to actively review your own license structure rather than letting automatic renewal run unquestioned.
- In the Microsoft admin center (or through your partner/reseller, if licenses run through one), specifically check which plan is currently active and whether it includes Copilot features that genuinely aren't being used.
- Actively ask about the Classic plan without the Copilot surcharge - with your Microsoft partner, in the admin center, or directly through support - rather than assuming it's visible online and easy to select.
- Measure actual Copilot usage in your own company over a defined period (Microsoft provides usage reports for this in the admin center) before the next renewal comes up, as a basis for deciding whether the Copilot surcharge is worth it for your own use.
- Keep an eye on how the foreign proceedings (CMA, ACCC, AGCM) develop: a ruling or settlement in one of these countries could change Microsoft's practice for German customers too, even without a German case of its own.
The real value of this analysis isn't a blanket verdict on Microsoft's pricing policy, but a very concrete call to action: where an automatic renewal justifies a price increase with a barely used feature, and no authority in your own jurisdiction is checking on your behalf, the only option left is your own active review in the admin center.