Google Workspace vs Microsoft 365 pricing in 2026 (per-seat truth table)

At list price, the two suites sit within a dollar or two of each other at every comparable tier — Google Workspace runs roughly $8–$28/user/month, Microsoft 365 Business roughly $7–$22 after its July 1 price update this year. Read only that sentence and you'd conclude it doesn't matter which you pick. Add AI to the equation and it very much does.

| Tier | Google Workspace | Microsoft 365 Business |
|---|---|---|
| Entry | Business Starter — ~$8 | Business Basic — ~$7 |
| Standard | Business Standard — ~$16 (Gemini included) | Business Standard — ~$14 |
| Top | Business Plus — ~$28 | Business Premium — ~$22 |
| AI add-on | included in Standard+ | Copilot — +$21/user |

That $21/user Copilot add-on is the whole story. Google folded Gemini into Business Standard and above at no extra charge this year — the single biggest value shift between the two platforms, and it means a team that wants AI baked into email and documents pays a real premium on the Microsoft side that simply doesn't exist on Google's. Microsoft's own price increase in July, which touched most of its business tiers, made that gap wider rather than narrower.

None of that makes Microsoft the wrong choice, to be clear — it depends heavily on what your team already does all day. A team that lives in the browser, collaborates on documents in real time, and doesn't need the full depth of desktop Excel finds Google's simpler admin and included Gemini a genuinely better deal at the mid tier. A team that needs full desktop Office — Excel with real pivot tables and macros, PowerPoint for client decks, Teams as the actual hub of how the company communicates — gets more for the Windows-centric price, and Microsoft's native compliance and security tooling tends to be deeper out of the box.

Run the total-cost-of-ownership math rather than the sticker price and the picture shifts again: Google looks roughly 15–30% cheaper at list price, but that gap narrows to something like 5–15% once you price in the third-party backup and security tools Microsoft bundles natively that Google doesn't — and it widens right back out if your team actually needs Copilot, since Gemini's inclusion on Google's side is worth real money.

If your team is browser-native, take Google Workspace Business Standard specifically for the included Gemini — that's where the value shows up most clearly. If you're dependent on desktop Office or already a Windows shop, Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Premium is the more natural fit, and only add Copilot on top if people will genuinely use it — that $21/seat adds up fast across a team that mostly won't.