Office without a subscription: the true cost over five years
Perpetual License or Microsoft 365? A five-year cost analysis with current Firstsoft prices – including scenarios where the subscription is actually the better choice.
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Short answer: Over five years, a Microsoft 365 individual subscription costs around €350 to €500, while a perpetual Office 2024 license costs a one-time fee of €236.99 to €327.99. Depending on the edition and subscription plan, the break-even point is between the third and fifth year. After that, the perpetual license continues free of charge, but the subscription does not.
The Starting Point
Microsoft offers Office in two models: as a perpetual license with a one-time payment and as a subscription with ongoing costs. The decision is usually made based on the purchase price – but it makes more sense to look at the total cost over the actual period of use.
We assume a period of use of five years here. This corresponds approximately to the cycle in which many businesses renew their workstations.
The Five-Year Calculation
Microsoft 365 subscriptions cost around €70 to €100 per year for individual users, depending on the plan. Over five years, this amounts to approximately €350 to €500 – per person.
In contrast, our Office 2024 perpetual licenses are a one-time payment:
- Office 2024 Home & Business – €236.99, equivalent to around €47 per year over five years
- Office 2024 Standard – €286.99, equivalent to around €57 per year
- Office 2024 Professional Plus – €327.99, equivalent to around €66 per year
Even the most expensive edition is thus below the annual subscription costs at the upper end of the price range. The break-even point for Home & Business is reached after about three years, and for Professional Plus after about four.
Anyone who only needs a temporary solution can get Office 2021 for as little as €168.99 – but support for that ends in October 2026.
What the Subscription Offers in Return
The calculation alone isn't the only factor. Microsoft 365 provides value that a perpetual license does not:
- Continuously new features instead of a fixed feature set
- 1 TB OneDrive storage per user
- Installation on multiple devices with one license
- Security updates without an end date, as long as the subscription is active
The last point is the most important argument against the perpetual license: Office 2024 will also only receive security updates until October 2029. In the five-year calculation from 2026, this means about three years of full security and then two years without patches.
When Which Model Wins
A perpetual license is cheaper if: you mainly use Word, Excel, and PowerPoint at a fixed workstation, don't need large cloud storage, and plan for longer than three years.
A subscription is worthwhile if: you work in a team on shared documents, need a lot of OneDrive storage, or regularly switch between multiple devices.
"After five years of subscription, I would have paid almost double for the same basic equipment - I wasn't aware of that before." A freelancer describes how she only realized the strong benefits of a perpetual license over several years when calculating the total costs.
Conclusion
For the classic individual workstation without intensive cloud usage, the perpetual license is clearly the cheaper option over five years. Those who also buy used further reduce the initial costs.
All Office 2024 editions at a glance or the entire Office selection. The comparison calculator determines which edition suits your usage profile; the Office guide explains the background to license types and support periods.
