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Microsoft 365 Enterprise Licensing
E3 vs E5 vs E7 Feature Comparison
An interactive guide for IT leaders evaluating Microsoft 365 tiers — prepared by US Signal
Microsoft introduced Microsoft 365 E7, branded as the Frontier Suite, on March 9, 2026, with general availability on May 1, 2026. E7 is the first enterprise SKU that bundles full E5 productivity, security, and compliance with Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Agent 365, and the Microsoft Entra Suite in a single per-user license at $99 per user per month.
For US Signal customers already on E3 or E5, E7 is best understood as three things at once: an AI productivity platform (Copilot plus Work IQ), an AI agent control plane (Agent 365), and a Zero Trust network and identity layer (Entra Suite). This page maps every major feature so the right SKU can be matched to the right user populations.
Purchased separately on top of E5 ($60 effective July 2026), the components included in E7 list at $117 per user per month. E7 is $99: a 15 percent saving versus standalone purchase, before any Enterprise Agreement discounts.
E7 is available with and without Teams to align with EU unbundling requirements. Tenants on Enterprise Agreement, MCA-E, or CSP can transact E7 through their existing channel.
Strip away the SKU names and this comparison comes down to three questions: How much security risk are you willing to carry? How fast do you want AI adoption to move? And how many separate tools are you already paying for that this could replace? Tap each term below for the plain-language version.
None of this changes the licensing math in the table below. It just gives you the business case to bring back to your CFO before you get lost in feature names.
“Included” means the capability is licensed in that tier with no separate purchase required. “Add-on” requires a separate per-user purchase. A dash means it isn’t available in that tier. Click a tier’s column header to spotlight it.
| Capability | M365 E3 | M365 E5 | M365 E7 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Productivity | |||
| Office 365 apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook) | ✓ Included | ✓ Included | ✓ Included |
| Exchange Online (100 GB mailbox, unlimited archive) | Plan 2 | Plan 2 | Plan 2 |
| SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business | ✓ Included | ✓ Included | ✓ Included |
| Microsoft Teams (where licensed) | ✓ Included | ✓ Included | ✓ Included |
| Teams Phone System and Audio Conferencing | — | ✓ Included | ✓ Included |
| Power BI Pro | — | ✓ Included | ✓ Included |
| Windows 11 Enterprise E5 (per user) | E3 | E5 | E5 |
| Identity and Access | |||
| Microsoft Entra ID Plan 1 (Conditional Access, SSO) | ✓ Included | ✓ Included | ✓ Included |
| Microsoft Entra ID Plan 2 (PIM, ID Protection, Access Reviews) | — | ✓ Included | ✓ Included |
| Entra Internet Access (Secure Web and AI Gateway) | — | — | ✓ Included |
| Entra Private Access (ZTNA, VPN replacement) | — | — | ✓ Included |
| Entra ID Governance (entitlement, lifecycle workflows) | — | — | ✓ Included |
| Entra Verified ID Premium (Face Check, 8 per user per month) | — | — | ✓ Included |
| Endpoint Management | |||
| Microsoft Intune Plan 1 | ✓ Included | ✓ Included | ✓ Included |
| Microsoft Intune Plan 2 (per July 2026 changes) | ✓ Included* | ✓ Included | ✓ Included |
| Intune Cloud Suite | — | ✓ Included | ✓ Included |
| Security and Threat Protection | |||
| Microsoft Defender for Office 365 (Plan 1) | ✓ Included* | ✓ Included | ✓ Included |
| Defender for Office 365 Plan 2 (attack simulator, threat explorer) | — | ✓ Included | ✓ Included |
| Defender for Endpoint Plan 2 | — | ✓ Included | ✓ Included |
| Defender for Identity | — | ✓ Included | ✓ Included |
| Defender for Cloud Apps | — | ✓ Included | ✓ Included |
| Compliance and Data Governance | |||
| Microsoft Purview eDiscovery Standard | ✓ Included | ✓ Included | ✓ Included |
| Purview eDiscovery Premium | — | ✓ Included | ✓ Included |
| Information Protection (manual labels) | ✓ Included | ✓ Included | ✓ Included |
| Information Protection (automatic labels, DLP for endpoint) | — | ✓ Included | ✓ Included |
| Insider Risk Management and Communication Compliance | — | ✓ Included | ✓ Included |
| AI and Agent Management | |||
| Microsoft 365 Copilot (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams) | Add-on $30 | Add-on $30 | ✓ Included |
| Copilot Chat and Work IQ (semantic graph context) | — | — | ✓ Included |
| Microsoft Agent 365 (registry, governance, lifecycle) | — | — | ✓ Included |
| Entra Agent ID (identity for AI agents) | Add-on | Add-on | ✓ Included |
| Shadow AI detection and blocking (preview) | — | — | ✓ Included |
| Conditional Access for agent identities | — | — | ✓ Included |
| List Pricing (USD, annual commit, per user/month) | |||
| Current public list (May 2026) | $36 | $57 | $99 |
| Effective July 1, 2026 (announced price update) | $39 | $60 | $99 |
* Microsoft has announced that effective July 1, 2026, Intune Plan 2 and Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 will be added to Microsoft 365 E3 at a list-price uplift to $39 per user per month. Confirm current contract pricing with US Signal before quoting.
Copilot in E7 is the same Copilot available as a $30 add-on to E3 or E5, with one major difference: in E7 it runs on top of Work IQ, an intelligence layer that ingests signals from Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive to build a semantic graph of people, projects, and timelines.
Agent 365 is Microsoft’s control plane for AI agents. It treats agents as first-class identities and gives administrators the same visibility, policy, and lifecycle controls they already use for users.
The Entra Suite is the five-product identity and network access bundle that until E7 was a $12 standalone add-on on top of P1. In E7 it’s included for every licensed user.
Answer three quick questions to get a starting recommendation for your primary user population. Most organizations end up mixing tiers — see the note after your result.