Microsoft 365 price increased after introduction of Copilot

Ashwin
Jan 17, 2025
Updated • Jan 17, 2025
Microsoft
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Microsoft has increased the prices of Microsoft 365 subscriptions. But you get access to Copilot with the subscription.

You may be aware that the company launched a premium plan called Microsoft Copilot Pro, which allowed subscribers to access advanced AI models with higher usage limits.  Microsoft is pushing artificial intelligence more aggressively, by introducing Copilot

Bryan Rognier, Vice President, Microsoft 365 Consumer, announced on the company's blog, that the service now has 84 million consumer subscribers. Microsoft 365 users can now access Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, and via the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. Another new addition to the subscription is the new Microsoft Designer app, which you can use to create, i.e. generate images. The app comes with AI editing tools that can be helpful to erase unwanted objects from photos.

The announcement highlights various benefits of using AI in Office apps, but also mentions something that could be considered controversial, AI Credits. I explained how AI credits work in Notepad's Rewrite, well it's more of the same with Office apps.  Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers will be allocated AI credits to use across apps on a monthly basis. Need more? Well, you will have to subscribe to Copilot Pro to access the AI without usage limits.

Naturally, such advanced features come at a cost, to the user that is, hence the price hike.

Microsoft 365 Personal and Family prices increased

The price of Microsoft 365 subscriptions have been increased by $3 per month, and this change impacts both Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions. This is the first price hike for the subscription service, which debuted in 2013.

Prior to the price increase, users were able to subscribe to Microsoft 365 Personal for $69.99 per year, or Microsoft 365 Family plan for $99.99 per year. The latter lets up to 6 users access the service. The price hike is not exclusive to the U.S., it applies globally, and it has come into effect already.

Let's take a brief look at how much it costs in the U.S., U.K., and Europe. A Microsoft 365 Personal now costs $99.99/£84.99/€99,00 per year, while an annual subscription for Microsoft 365 Family costs $129.99/£104.99/€129,00. You can visit the official website to check the price of Microsoft 365 in your region. It is worth mentioning that users with an active subscription are not affected by the price increase, until the next renewal.

What about privacy? Is your data safe? Well, Microsoft says that it will not use your files, responses or prompts when you access Copilot in Microsoft 365 apps to train its AI models.

On a side note, the Redmond company has confirmed that Office and Microsoft 365 apps will not be supported on Windows 10, when the operating system reaches its end of life on October 14, 2025. That means users on Windows 10 will not get any feature and security updates for Office products. Ending support for Windows 10 is one thing, but denying support for a subscription that a user has paid for is really strange. It is unclear if the change affects OneDrive.

As a reminder, LibreOffice is free, open source, and a great alternative for Microsoft Office. It is available for Windows, macOS and Linux.

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Microsoft 365 price increased after introduction of Copilot
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Microsoft 365 plan prices have been increased globally.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. Anonymous said on January 20, 2025 at 3:50 pm
    Reply

    Microsoft currently have (at 30 Sept 2024) $78 billion in cash at hand.

    Rather than increase stock buy backs, dividends etc they invest huge sums of money in projects that may or may not provide an appropriate (for a ‘normal’ company) return on investment.

    They don’t have to be class leading because of their Windows ‘monopoly’.

    They simply rake in the cash and look to find ways to, in most cases, waste it.

  2. Sam said on January 18, 2025 at 9:24 pm
    Reply

    Office being installed cost Microsoft practically nothing besides bandwidth. Security updates were already a calculated expense they placed in a different budget I’m sure.

    Microsoft prior was making
    $671.16 million /month
    $8,053,920,000 /year (8+ billion a year)

    Microsoft is now making
    $839.16 million /month
    $10,069,920,000 /year (10+ billion a year)

    Almost a billion dollars a month, for an application some people use maybe once a month.
    Congrats Microsoft, you beat capitalism, you can stop being hot garbage now!

  3. MicrosoftSucksAtSoftware said on January 17, 2025 at 11:25 pm
    Reply

    I don’t use any Microsoft products or services anymore besides Windows. But Windows is on the way out soon at my home. Tired of Microsoft’s nonsense. Hopefully one day they can get back on the right track.

  4. yronnen said on January 17, 2025 at 11:09 pm
    Reply

    Fine, increase the prices, but can you please stop shoving the annoying copilot icon on every screen, toolbar, or wherever I freaking use my mouse to hover anything?

  5. Andy Prough said on January 17, 2025 at 6:41 pm
    Reply

    I’ve been using the free version of OnlyOffice recently and getting excellent compatibility with MS Office users. Can’t think of the last time I had an issue with compatibility between the two. MS Office may not be worth the money at this point.

  6. Anonymous said on January 17, 2025 at 4:27 pm
    Reply

    ‘As a reminder, LibreOffice is free, open source, and a great alternative for Microsoft Office.’

    What a shocking thing to publish.

    Take away MS profit and who will save all the kittens and puppies?

    And where will they get the money to donate to Trump’s inauguration?

    1. DayHey said on January 19, 2025 at 6:10 pm
      Reply

      Working on learning LibreOffice as I only use Word for work and my resume. From $69.99 to $99.99 annual, too much for me. I didn’t ask for nor want Co-Pilot.

  7. John said on January 17, 2025 at 2:11 pm
    Reply

    Microsoft investing way to much money in AI to ever make it profitable at this point. They have to find a way to make back some of that investment or risk AI eating away profits big time.

  8. Anonymous said on January 17, 2025 at 1:32 pm
    Reply

    Wondering when a bump would show up, after the recent 45% increase in the asia-pacific region.
    Apparently the backlash was not hard enough, so now it hits here as well.

    “What about privacy? Is your data safe? Well, Microsoft says that it will not use your files, responses or prompts when you access Copilot in Microsoft 365 apps to train its AI models.”

    That is just weaselwording. Lying by omission, just saying there is *one* thing they will not use it for.
    Then there are all the other things they could do. Immoral and illegal of course, but out of sight and what can you prove in court? And they almost certainly have a full copy of your every document (being “365” clouded or via onedrive harvesting) and those files and documents that others have that relate to you/your business, that they are already doing a lot of stuff with.
    Also that narrow “when you access copilot in 365 apps” legalese angle.

    Anyway, there is always that “WE aren’t doing it, we just hand it to someone else who does it for us, so nu-uh it was not us who did it.”, as if that exempts responsibility, same as government indirectly getting a lot of stuff via corporations and private companies that it is not allowed to collect directly. The thinking is clearly that if “gov” can use that kind of weaseling, then it is ok for big players too, specially a so connected player as MS.

    And this being restricted to the “365 copilot” models. Mmhm. What about other models then? Or other (ab)uses?
    Got to keep focus. They are making a very specific, narrow denial. You are not at all protected or private in a reasonable understanding of the words, from anything outside that denial.

    1. Quantum Leap said on January 18, 2025 at 10:56 am
      Reply

      TLDR;

  9. Carl Breen said on January 17, 2025 at 12:52 pm
    Reply

    This is good. People seem to forget there is an offline Office with legal phone activation that will not put you on a 10 year subscription for less money.

  10. No said on January 17, 2025 at 11:19 am
    Reply

    Can I get a cheaper version without your BS AI rubbish MFST ?

    1. Harro Glööckler said on January 17, 2025 at 10:47 pm
      Reply

      Same here and i don’t even care about the Office. I just want my 1TB (or more) Onedrive as a backup in case my house burns down or whatever.

    2. Du Hast said on January 17, 2025 at 12:00 pm
      Reply

      Yes, its name is LibreOffice. LOL.

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