Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 for a ten-person business in 2026: the bill after AI was bundled in

For years the choice between Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 came down to habit: Gmail people went one way, Outlook people the other, and the prices were close enough not to matter. In 2026 the list prices are not close. They are the same. Business Starter and Business Basic are both $7 a user a month on an annual plan, Business Standard is $14 on both sides, and Business Plus and Business Premium are both $22.

Both companies got there by raising prices and pointing at AI. Google folded Gemini into every Business plan in January 2025 and put Starter, Standard and Plus up by $1, $2 and $4. Microsoft added Copilot Chat improvements and more mailbox space and put Business Basic and Business Standard up on 1 July 2026. So the question for a ten-person office is no longer which suite is cheaper. It is what each tier gives you for the same money, what the AI that was bundled in actually does, and where the bill grows when you want more of it.

Below: the before-and-after prices with dates, a ten-seat yearly bill for every plan under each way of paying, what each tier adds (storage, archiving, device management, desktop apps, AI), the commitment rules that decide whether you can drop a seat, and what moving from one suite to the other involves. Prices are US list prices in dollars, before tax, checked between 27 October and 2 November 2026.

The prices before and after the AI bundling

Per user per month, annual commitment. Google's change reached new customers on 17 January 2025 and existing ones from 17 March 2025 or at their next annual renewal, whichever came later. Microsoft's took effect on 1 July 2026; its licensing page says "existing customers remain on current pricing until renewal", so many offices are meeting the new price only now, at their first renewal after July.

Two things stand out. Google's increase was the bigger one in percentage terms, but it came with the Gemini add-on thrown in: Google's own example is a Business Standard customer who paid $32 a user a month for Standard plus Gemini Business and now pays $14. Microsoft did the opposite with its paid AI. The full Microsoft 365 Copilot, the part that reads your mail and files, is still sold on top, but it fell from $30 to $21 for business plans of up to 300 seats, and the plans with Copilot built in cost $9.50 (Standard) and $10 (Premium) more than the plans without.

The "no Teams" versions exist because of an EU competition case; Microsoft sells them worldwide. For an office that already pays for Zoom or Google Meet and uses no Teams chat, they knock $1.60 to $3.21 a user a month off the price, which is $192 to $385 a year for ten people.

The ten-seat bill, plan by plan

Both suites sell three ways: commit for a year and pay up front, commit for a year and pay monthly, or pay month to month with no commitment. Google charges nothing extra for paying an annual plan monthly; its Flexible Plan (month to month) costs 20% more. Microsoft charges 5% extra for paying an annual commitment monthly (since 1 April 2025) and 20% more for a monthly commitment. Ten users, twelve months:

The same ten seats before the bundling, for comparison: Google Business Standard was $1,440 a year and Microsoft Business Standard $1,500, so the plain increase is $240 and $180 a year. If you had wanted the AI that reads your documents in 2024, Google Standard plus Gemini Business was $3,840 a year for ten people and Microsoft Business Standard plus Copilot at $30 was $5,100. Today the equivalents are $1,680 (Google Business Standard, Gemini included) and $2,820 (Business Standard with Copilot). For an office that wanted AI, the bill went down. For an office that never asked for it, it went up by 12 to 22%.

Where the two suites differ on the bill: mixing plans

Microsoft lets you mix business plans in one company, up to 300 licences in total. Google does not: its help page on switching editions says "everyone in your organization gets the same subscription". That matters in a ten-person office where two people live in desktop Excel and the rest work in a browser.

The same trick works for Copilot. You can buy the $21 add-on for the three people who will use it and leave the rest on Copilot Chat: ten Business Standard seats plus three Copilot Business add-ons is $1,680 + $756 = $2,436 a year ($2,328 with the $18 first-year offer), against $2,820 for ten Standard-with-Copilot seats. Microsoft reported more than 30 million paid Copilot seats in July 2026; No Jitter worked out that this is roughly 6.7% of its paid commercial seats. Most companies are buying the AI for a few people, not for everyone, and a ten-person office can do the same.

What each tier adds

Same price, different contents. The rows below are the ones that decide most small-office choices. Google figures are from its Compare Business editions page and pricing page; Microsoft's from its business plan comparison and the July 2026 packaging update.

The storage row is the one people miss. Google's 30 GB on Starter is pooled across the company and covers mail and Drive together, so ten people get 300 GB between them. A design studio, a surveyor's office or anyone who keeps ten years of attachments will pass that, and the way out is Business Standard at twice the price. Microsoft Basic gives each person a 100 GB mailbox (it was 50 GB until the July 2026 update) and 1 TB of OneDrive at the same $7.

Going the other way, Google Business Standard at $14 gives Gemini inside Docs, Sheets, Gmail and Meet working on your own files, plus recorded meetings, eSignature and appointment booking pages. Microsoft Business Standard at $14 gives the desktop Office apps but only Copilot Chat, which Microsoft's own FAQ says "doesn't integrate with Microsoft 365 apps or organizational content such as files, emails, or chats". To get the Microsoft equivalent of what Google Standard includes, you are at $23.50.

At $22 the two top tiers aim at different worries. Google Business Plus adds Vault (retention rules, legal holds, eDiscovery exports) and advanced endpoint management. Microsoft Business Premium adds Intune device management, Entra ID P1 conditional access (block sign-ins from unmanaged laptops or other countries), Defender for Business on every laptop and a 1.5 TB archive mailbox. If a cyber insurer or a client's security questionnaire asks about endpoint protection and device management, Premium answers more of it in one licence; Defender for Business alone is $3 a user a month if you stay on Standard.

The AI you get without paying extra

Read the AI rows as three levels, because that is how both companies price them.

1. Chat with a model at work, with company data protection: included in every plan on both sides. Google calls it the Gemini app (standard access on Starter, Pro access with a one-million-token context on Standard and Plus); Microsoft calls it Copilot Chat. Since July 2026 Microsoft's version also knows your inbox and calendar and can call Word, Excel and PowerPoint agents, per its packaging update.

2. AI inside the apps, working on your own mail and documents: included from Google Business Standard ($14). On Microsoft it needs Copilot Business ($21 add-on, $18 for the first year on offers bought by 31 December 2026) or a "with Copilot" plan ($23.50 or $32).

3. Agents and long-running AI work: Microsoft's with-Copilot plans add Researcher, Analyst and Copilot Studio agents, and say that "some AI experiences require usage-based billing and may result in charges based on usage, beyond your license fees" (Cowork and Autopilot are marked usage-based). Budget for that as a separate line if you turn those on; neither suite's flat seat price covers unlimited agent work.

For a ten-person office the honest test is whether anyone would miss level 2 if it were switched off. If two people draft proposals and summarise long threads every day, the cheapest way to give them that is either Google Standard for everyone ($1,680) or Microsoft for everyone plus Copilot for those two ($840 to $1,680 for the base plus $504 for two add-ons at $21).

Annual or monthly: what you can undo

The 20% premium buys the right to shrink. Google's annual plan lets you add seats at any time but not remove them: "after you remove unnecessary licenses, your payment remains the same until it's time to renew your contract." Microsoft gives a seven-day window after purchase for a prorated refund; after that, annual seats paid up front are not refunded, annual seats paid monthly "may incur some penalties if canceled early", and only the monthly commitment can be cancelled at any time without penalty.

So for a stable team the annual plan is cheaper even with a couple of leavers. Month to month is worth it for a business expecting to shrink by a third, a seasonal team, or the first three months after a switch when you are not sure you will stay. Whatever you pick, put the renewal date in a calendar: on Google, set the renewal option to renew with fewer licences and remove leavers before that day; on Microsoft, reduce the seat count before the renewal, because the new July 2026 price is charged from the renewal on.

Moving from one to the other

Same prices also mean switching no longer saves money by itself, so the effort has to be paid for by a feature you need. Both suites ship free migration tools: Microsoft's Exchange admin center has a Google Workspace migration for mail, calendar and contacts, and its Migration Manager moves Google Drive into OneDrive; Google has its data migration service in the admin console on every plan and the Google Workspace Migrate tool on Business Standard and up. Paid tools such as BitTitan's MigrationWiz user bundle cost about $17.50 a user, so $175 for ten people, and are worth it mainly when someone else is doing the move.

What does not move cleanly in either direction: Google Docs, Sheets and Slides convert to Office files and some comments, suggestions and links between files break; Google Forms and Apps Script automations have no direct equivalent and need rebuilding in Microsoft Forms and Power Automate; Teams chats do not go to Google Chat; shared drive and SharePoint permissions need checking by hand; and every phone and laptop has to be signed in again. The money trap is the overlap: if your current annual term runs to March and you move in November, you pay for four months of both. Move in the month before the old renewal.

Before you choose: what your staff actually use

Both admin consoles will tell you in ten minutes what people use, and the answer usually decides the plan.

1. Storage. Google: Admin console, Reporting, then Apps reports, Accounts, and sort by storage used. Microsoft: admin center, Reports, Usage, Exchange mailbox usage and OneDrive usage. On Google, if the company total is near 30 GB a head, Starter will not last; on Microsoft, anyone near 100 GB of mail needs the archive.

2. Desktop Office. Microsoft: Reports, Usage, Microsoft 365 Apps usage shows who opened desktop Word, Excel or Outlook in the last 30, 90 or 180 days. Anyone who did not can go to Business Basic at renewal; on a mixed plan that is $84 a year per person saved.

3. AI. Microsoft: Copilot Chat analytics (added to every business plan in July 2026) shows who used Copilot Chat. Google: the Gemini usage reports under Reporting show use per app. If fewer than half the office used the included AI last month, do not buy the paid tier for everyone; buy add-ons for the people who did.

4. Meetings. If nobody records meetings on Google Starter because it cannot, and nobody asks for recordings, you do not need Standard for that reason.

Which plan for which ten-person office

If you are already on one suite and none of those rows pushes you across, stay. The prices are identical, the migration costs a weekend and a month of confusion, and the money is in the plan level and the seat count, not in the brand. The usual waste is elsewhere: Standard seats for people who would be fine on Basic, and seats still paid for people who left in the spring.

Related reading: Backups for a ten-person business: what Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 don't keep covers the retention gaps neither plan closes, One page on AI at work is the short policy to write before you switch on the AI tiers, and Forty subscriptions and nobody owns them is the wider audit this bill is part of.

Sources

Google: The future of AI-powered work for every business (January 2025: $32 to $14 example, 17 January / 17 March 2025 dates); 9to5Google: Workspace price increase (Starter $6 to $7, Standard $12 to $14, Plus $18 to $22; Flexible $8.40, $16.80, $26.40); Compare Business editions (storage, meeting sizes, Vault, endpoint management, Gemini access); Switch to Business Standard edition ("everyone in your organization gets the same subscription"); Reduce user licenses and Annual/Fixed-Term Plan (no reductions before renewal). US list prices cross-checked against Justin McKelvey's Workspace pricing guide, checked 27 October 2026; Google's own pricing page shows local currency, which from our office is not dollars.

Microsoft: Microsoft 365 pricing and packaging updates, July 2026 (all old and new prices, with and without Teams; features added per plan; "existing customers remain on current pricing until renewal"); Compare all Microsoft 365 business products, checked 2 November 2026 (bundle prices, Copilot Business $21 and $18 offer terms, storage and archive, device limits, usage-based billing footnote, Copilot Chat FAQ, cancellation terms, 300-licence mixing rule); Microsoft 365 Copilot Business for small businesses (December 2025); The Register on the 2026 price rise; Ingram Micro: monthly billing for annual terms, April 2025 (5%); T-Minus365 on the 2026 changes (monthly commitment 20% more).

Adoption and migration: UC Today: Copilot passes 30 million paid seats and No Jitter: Copilot adoption jumps 50% (share of paid seats); BitTitan MigrationWiz pricing (User Migration Bundle $17.50 since June 2025).