Buyer’s guide: How to choose between Microsoft 365 and Office 2024

Microsoft Office — best known for its Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook productivity applications — is how billions of people around the world work and study, whether they do it from home, an office, a classroom, or a combination of those. This suite of productivity tools is used by people working in more than 100 languages in nearly every country in the world, and it’s available in versions for personal, small business, enterprise, and educational use.

But there is more than one way to buy Office — or, rather, to buy the license to use it. There’s the “perpetual” version of Office that’s available as a one-time purchase: the current version is Office 2024. Then there’s the subscription version: originally called Office 365, Microsoft 365 plans are available in both personal and business subscriptions. At the enterprise level, both Microsoft 365 and Office 365 plans are available.

Microsoft has left no doubt: it wants you to use Microsoft 365, its cloud productivity platform. However, it also realizes that not all of its customers want to or can move to the cloud. For that reason, the company recently announced the release of Office 2024, almost apologetically:

Microsoft 365 is the best way to access the latest versions of the productivity apps that millions of people use every day to bring their ideas to life and power through tasks. But we know some of our customers still prefer a non-subscription way to access our familiar apps, which is why we’re releasing Office 2024 on October 1.

Available in consumer and small-business editions, this one-time purchase includes desktop versions of the core Office applications for a single Windows PC or Mac. For companies with more than five users, Microsoft offers Office LTSC 2024 to cater to organizations prioritizing an on-premises model. Office 2024 lacks many of the collaborative and cloud-powered features of Microsoft 365 apps, and its “locked-in-time” status means you won’t receive any new application features, just bug fixes and security updates.

Why choose to buy it one way and not the other? The answer can be complicated, especially because each suite of tools includes the same core applications, give or take. Here’s help deciding which version of Office is right for you or your company.

In this article:

Office 2024 vs. Microsoft 365: Plans and pricing

Office 2024 vs. Microsoft 365: Payment and licensing

Office 2024 vs. Microsoft 365: Servicing

Office 2024 vs. Microsoft 365: Do you want Microsoft to be your copilot?

Office 2024 vs. Microsoft 365: Why your internet connection matters

Office 2024 vs. Microsoft 365: Key questions to ask

Office 2024 vs. Microsoft 365: Plans and pricing

For personal use

Office Home 2024: $150, one-time purchase for use on one computer; includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote for Windows or macOS.

Microsoft 365 Personal: $70 a year or $7 a month (1 user, 5 devices); includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Teams, Editor, Clipchamp, Access*, Publisher*, Microsoft Defender, and OneDrive with 1TB cloud storage; apps available for Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, and web. Microsoft Copilot Pro is available as an add-on.

Microsoft 365 Family: $100 a year or $10 a month (6 users, 5 devices each); includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Teams, Editor, Clipchamp, Access*, Publisher*, Microsoft Defender, and OneDrive with 1TB cloud storage per user; apps available for Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, and web. Microsoft Copilot Pro is available as an add-on.

* Access and Publisher are available as Windows apps only; support for Publisher ends in 2026.

For small businesses

Office Home & Business 2024: $250, one-time purchase for use on one computer; includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and Outlook.

Microsoft 365 Apps for business: $99/user/year or $10/user/month (up to 300 users, 5 devices per user); includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneDrive with 1TB cloud storage per user. Microsoft 365 Copilot is available as an add-on.

Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Standard, and Premium: plans range from $72/user/year to $264/user/year (up to 300 users); tools included depend on the level of your subscription. Desktop versions of Word, Excel, and other Office apps (installable on 5 devices per user) require a Standard plan or higher; the Basic plan offers only web and mobile versions. All plans include Exchange email hosting, Teams, SharePoint, and OneDrive with 1TB cloud storage per user. The Premium plan adds advanced security and management features. Microsoft 365 Copilot is available as an add-on.

For enterprises

Office LTSC Standard 2024 and Professional Plus 2024: available only through volume licensing; contact Microsoft for pricing. LTSC stands for Long Term Servicing Channel; according to Microsoft, it’s designed for regulated devices that can’t accept updates for security reasons and for systems that don’t connect to the internet. (Note, however, that it’s the only nonsubscription version of Office available for large organizations.) The Standard edition includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote for Windows or macOS (1 device per user); Professional Plus adds Access.* Teams is not included but is available as a separate download.

Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise: $144/user/year (5 devices per user); includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access*, Publisher*, and OneDrive with 1TB cloud storage per user. Teams and Microsoft 365 Copilot are available as add-ons.

Office 365 E1, E3, and E5: plans range from $93/user/year to $429/user/year; apps included depend on the level of your subscription. Desktop versions of Word, Excel, and other Office apps require an E3 plan or higher; the E1 plan offers only web and mobile versions. All plans include Exchange email hosting, SharePoint, and OneDrive with 1TB cloud storage per user. The E3 plan offers up to 5TB of storage per user, and the E5 plan adds advanced security and management features. Teams and Microsoft 365 Copilot are available as add-ons.

Microsoft 365 E3 and E5: plans range from $405/user/year to $657/user/year; these plans offer most of the same features as the Office 365 E3 and E5 plans, and also include Windows and additional Microsoft apps such as Visio, Loop, and Clipchamp. Teams and Microsoft 365 Copilot are available as add-ons.

Other plans: Microsoft offers additional Microsoft 365 plans for education, government, and nonprofit organizations and for frontline workers.

* Access and Publisher are available as Windows apps only; support for Publisher ends in 2026.

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Office 2024 vs. Microsoft 365: Payment and licensing

One big difference between the Office 2024 and Microsoft 365 options is how you pay for them. If you are buying a “perpetual license” (such as with Office Home & Business 2024 or Office LTSC 2024), you pay a larger sum up front than with the subscription’s offerings under the Microsoft 365 brand, but you do so only once. When you subscribe to any of the Microsoft 365 plans, you pay annually or monthly for as long as you use the product.

Office 2024: A perpetual license

Whether you buy a single copy of Office 2024 or download hundreds of seats via volume licensing, Microsoft calls this is a “one-time purchase” because you pay only once, not every month. Labels like “perpetual” technically note the type of license rather than payment methodology, but in this case, the kind of license is tied to whether it was bought outright or simply “rented.”

Microsoft defines the term as when  “…you pay a single, up-front cost to get Office applications for one computer.” Up-front is the key adjective there. You have to ante up the entire purchase price before you get the software.

That purchase of a license to legally run the software gives you the right to use that version of Office 2024 in perpetuity. In other words, the license has no expiration date, and you may run the suite for as long as you want. Pay for Office 2024 this year and use it for as long as you’d like.

The gotcha is that if you want new features that come out with the next update, you will have to pay full price again when the next version comes out. There are no upgrade options on the perpetual license packages.

Microsoft 365: Office as a service

Microsoft 365 is a subscription service, the purchase method Microsoft would prefer you choose, where you pay the software giant monthly or annually. There is a discount, sometimes a tempting one, for going with the annual payment plan over the monthly one. (All enterprise plans require an annual commitment.) And the company is always sweetening this pot by offering more apps than you get with the perpetual license products and with a continuous supply of new features.

[ Related: Google Workspace vs. Microsoft 365: What’s the best office suite for business? ]

Like any subscription, Microsoft 365 provides a service — in this case, the right to run the suite’s applications and access the associated services — only as long as you continue to pay. Stop paying, and rights to run the apps expire. This happens in a progressive way, giving you time to download your data or update your payment plan, whichever you choose.

For 30 days after nonpayment, your plan will be “Expired.” You will still have access to all your apps and files. If you don’t activate it again while it’s in the Expired stage, it moves to “Disabled,” where it will stay for 90 days. You won’t be able to access your apps or data until you pay up. If you still don’t pay for your plan, it will be “Deleted.” At that point, it’s gone.

A Microsoft 365 license, then, is contingent on sustained payments. Halt the latter, and the license is revoked. Restart the payments — but don’t wait too long — to restore the license.

Office 2024 vs. Microsoft 365: Servicing

Although payments define one difference between Office 2024 and Microsoft 365, Microsoft’s development and release pace is ultimately more important to users — and the IT professionals who support them.

Think of Office 2024 as traditional software — a bundle of tools that typically don’t change much until the next major version. That holds for servicing, too. Microsoft does release monthly security and quality updates for the perpetual license versions of Office. (You can check from within any Office app if there are updates available. From, say, a Word document, go to File > Account and look for Product Information. Then choose Update Options > Update Now.)

But Office 2024 doesn’t get the continually upgraded features and functionality that Microsoft 365 does. Feature-wise, what you get when you buy the suite is it. If you want the updates, at some point in the future, you will have to buy whatever version Microsoft is selling as a perpetual license then.

Microsoft regularly releases feature and security updates for Microsoft 365 apps, though. And it releases them as they happen. As new features and functionality accrete, and the applications in Microsoft 365 evolve, Microsoft will decide it’s time for a new version of Office. It will then package some of those features into an upgraded suite for customers who continue to make one-time, up-front purchases. How long they keep doing this likely depends on how long there is a demand for these locked-in-time versions.

[ Related: Microsoft 365: A guide to the updates ]

One other important note: Office 2024 and Office LTSC 2024 will be supported with security updates only through October 9, 2029. That’s just five years of support, down from seven years in Office 2019 and 10 years in prior releases. In contrast, with Microsoft 365 subscriptions, support never runs out — as long as you keep paying, of course.

Office 2024 vs. Microsoft 365: Do you want Microsoft to be your copilot?

Microsoft also recently released Microsoft 365 Copilot, which Microsoft 365 business and enterprise subscribers can add for an additional $30 per user per month. The AI-powered productivity assistant is designed to enhance Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel, Teams, and other Microsoft 365 applications, using large language models (LLMs) to understand your prompts, generate content, and assist with tasks. There’s also Copilot Pro, which brings many of the same features to Microsoft 365 consumer accounts for an extra $20 per month.

Key features include the following:

Natural-language prompts: You can communicate with Copilot in plain language.

Content generation and task automation: Copilot can help you create content, such as emails, documents, presentations, and code, as well as automate repetitive tasks.

Data analysis: Copilot can analyze data and provide insights to help you make informed decisions.

Neither Microsoft 365 Copilot nor Copilot Pro is available without a Microsoft 365 subscription, though — so if you want Copilot integration with your Office apps, Office 2024 won’t get you there.

Office 2024 vs. Microsoft 365: Why your internet connection matters

One reason to choose Office 2024 over Microsoft 365 is internet access, or lack of it. If you don’t have reliable access to the cloud, can’t be connected to the internet for security reasons, or — for whatever reason — your computer is often offline, this is the type of software you need.

In fact, internet access is one of the main reasons Microsoft can’t force everyone to subscribe to Microsoft 365. Microsoft 365 runs in apps that are downloaded to your computer, phone, or tablet, but those apps require near-constant internet access, especially if you use OneDrive and store your files in the cloud.

In standard use, Microsoft 365 may stop working if it can’t connect to the internet, depending on the features you’re using and the availability of offline capabilities within those applications. For some use cases, this is a deal breaker. However, Microsoft is looking to address that concern. Extended offline access allows devices with Microsoft 365 Apps for enterprise to remain active for up to six months without internet connectivity.

Office 2024, on the other hand, does not rely as heavily on an internet connection to operate, save files, and self-update. You can connect it when you have access and work offline when you don’t. This, as much as cost and a desire to stick to old-school software distribution models, is, perhaps, the most compelling reason to insist on one of the perpetual license products.

Office 2024 vs. Microsoft 365: Key questions to ask

If you aren’t sure which version and pricing model is for you and your company, here are a few questions to ask yourself and your team:

Budget and pricing: How much are you willing to spend up front? What is a more attractive pricing model: a one-time expense or a recurring monthly or annual fee? What cost-saving options, such as volume licensing, are available?

Features and functionality: What specific features and applications do you need, and do you require specialized tools or integrations?

Deployment and management: Do you prefer cloud-based for its agility or on-premises deployment, perhaps for compliance reasons? Do you have IT resources to manage on-premises installations?

Collaboration and teamwork: How important is real-time collaboration? Do you need features like shared workspaces, online meetings, and file sharing?

Security and compliance: What are your organization’s security and compliance requirements? Does the delivery option you’re considering provide the necessary security features and certifications?

Updates and support: How often do you want to receive updates and new features, and do you need ongoing technical support?

Future-proofing: How do you envision your organization’s technology needs evolving? Does a subscription-based model provide the flexibility you need, or are you more concerned with ensuring stability in the coming months and years? Do you want to get a jump on generative AI features embedded in your productivity apps?

Whichever license you ultimately choose, you will get many of the same tools. And the reasons for making one choice over another may have less to do with price and features than with how you or your users work, support and security needs, reliability of internet access, online storage and collaboration needs, and how excited (or annoyed) you or your users are likely to be by new features that turn up, like a gift, in the software.

Choosing between a Microsoft 365 subscription and Office LTSC 2024 depends on your organization’s specific needs. For those seeking a dynamic, cloud-powered workspace with real-time collaboration and advanced features, Microsoft 365 offers a compelling solution. However, if on-premises stability and a single purchase model are paramount, Office LTSC may be the better fit. Consider your organization’s future-proofing needs and collaboration requirements when making this critical decision.

This article was originally published in July 2017 and most recently updated in October 2024.