Comparison of Microsoft 365 Family, Personal, and Free

Comparison of Microsoft 365 Family, Personal, and Free

Back in March, Microsoft announced the Microsoft 365 Family and Microsoft 365 Personal plans for consumers. Microsoft 365 used to be an enterprise bundle that brought together the best of Office 365, Windows 10, and Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS), but with new packages for consumers now the new Family and Personal plans include plenty of Microsoft services for regular users including Office 365, Teams, Skype calls Microsoft Editor and more.

However, both the subscriptions are made for different people and there are minor differences in the features you will be getting with each subscription. Here are some of the key differences between the Family and Personal plans:

Microsoft 365 Family and Microsoft 365 Personal differ primarily in the number of people allowed on each subscription. Microsoft 365 Personal is an application for a single user. A single user can install it on one machine and use it.

  • On the other hand, Microsoft 365 Family allows up to six installations. It's perfect for families who don't want to pay extra for separate licenses as they can share the licenses across multiple devices.
  • OneDrive Storage- Every subscription comes with OneDrive storage. Nevertheless, Personal users will only be able to access 1TB of storage as part of their subscription. However, family users will receive 6 TB of storage that can be divided among 6 users each receiving 1 TB of storage.

Personal and Family plans differ in these two major ways. All paying customers will be able to use the following features and services regardless of their plan.

  • Both subscriptions include all Office apps, plus premium features such as Outlook, OneDrive, Skype, Teams consumer edition, and the new Family Safety app.
  • Microsoft's AI Editor - Microsoft recently announced its own AI Editor which is free.
  • OneDrive is included in both plans, but the Personal plan offers 1 TB, while the Family plan offers 6 TB (shared by six people).
  • Microsoft provides free Skype calling for 60 minutes per month as part of the subscription.

A subscription service for making the most of your time, connecting, and protecting the ones you care about

With so many of us now working and learning remotely, we are acutely aware of all the ways life can interrupt our work and work can interrupt our lives. Staying connected and on top of what matters has never been more important. In recent weeks, we've told you how Microsoft is supporting organizations, employees, parents, teachers, and students in these difficult times. In addition, we launched a new website to help families discover Microsoft tools and resources to connect, learn, and play at home. In line with our mission of empowering every individual and organization on the planet to reach their full potential, we want to support you and your family at home, at school, and in your career.

You can connect, share, and collaborate on the web, on macOS, iOS, and Android devices with our wide range of powerful free applications and services. Office, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Skype, Outlook, OneNote, and OneDrive apps are used by more than a half billion people for coauthoring, video chatting, organizing, and collaborating. Every day, we work on improving these experiences and innovating them.

Furthermore, over 38 million people subscribe to Office 365, which includes the most recent version of the Office desktop app, 1 TB of OneDrive cloud storage, 60 Skype minutes per month for calling mobile phones and landlines, advanced malware and phishing protection, and ongoing technical support.

Microsoft 365 will become Office 365 on April 21st, giving you the ability to make the most of your time, connect with those you love, and protect them, as well as develop and grow. Microsoft 365 is an evolution of Office 365 that brings artificial intelligence (AI), rich content and templates, and cloud-powered experiences to empower you to be a better writer, presenter, designer, manager of your finances, and a better communicator. More than 38 million Office 365 subscribers will be able to access these experiences over the coming months.

We also announced today two new Microsoft 365 experiences that will be available in preview within the coming months, including a new Microsoft Family Safety app designed to keep your family safe in the virtual and physical worlds, and new ways to connect and collaborate with your friends and family.

As a final addition, the new Edge browser from Microsoft includes additional features such as Password Monitor which helps protect your online identity, and Collections, which simplifies research for researchers. For more information, click here.

Many of us find writing difficult. Our research reveals that about half of us want to improve as writers. In recognition of that, today we announced a major enhancement to Microsoft Editor, an AI-powered service available in more than 20 languages, now available across Word and Outlook.com, and as a standalone extension for Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome. Editor makes it easy to put your best foot forward when you write, whether you're writing a paper for school or updating your LinkedIn profile.

Word, Outlook.com, and the web all offer the essential Editor functions like spelling and basic grammar. Customers of Microsoft 365 Personal and Family can refine their writing style and grammar to make their writing more concise and clear. The following are some extra features that are exclusive to Microsoft 365 subscribers:


  • Highlight a sentence and right-click Rewrite Suggestions when you know what you want to say but can't think of the "right" way to say it. Rewrite Suggestions in Word can help you rephrase sentences for greater impact or clarity while staying true to your original meaning.
  • Now, Editor's similarity checker leverages plagiarism-checking capabilities to support writers in creating original content and, if necessary, insert relevant citations directly into their document. Using this tool allows writers to focus more on the content and less on the mechanics. It is great that the similarity checker helps students learn how to properly cite content.
  • With additional style critiques like clarity, conciseness, formality, and inclusivity, Microsoft 365 subscribers can write with more confidence across documents, email, and the web. For example, the inclusive language critique can suggest refinements to help a writer avoid unintentional bias by suggesting that they use a term such as "police officer" instead of "policeman."

Most people fear public speaking worldwide. PowerPoint's Presenter Coach will help. As you rehearse, Presenter Coach uses artificial intelligence to detect if you're talking too fast, saying "umm" too much, or simply reading the text on your slides.

Our new AI-powered features—monotone pitch and speech refinement—start today exclusively for subscribers to Microsoft 365. As you speak, Presenter Coach will listen to how you are sounding and give you real-time feedback in order to suggest how to vary your pitch. The Presenter Coach offers grammar suggestions to improve your speech as part of speech refinement. All Microsoft 365 subscribers will have access to a free preview of the new Presenter Coach features.

We all want to make our presentations and documents more creative to convey our messages better, but it often takes more time than we want to spend. PowerPoint Designer helps you to express yourself creatively and save time. With just one click, you can turn text into a beautiful timeline. Adding a picture to a slide will automatically generate several slide layouts. With Microsoft 365, you'll have access to more than 8,000 beautiful images and 175 looping videos from Getty Images, plus 300 new fonts and 2,800 new icons to create visually stunning documents. The new content can also be used in Word and Excel.

You also get access to 200+ new premium templates that help you get started on your school, work, or family project and save time. We have great templates ranging from resumes and wedding invitations to newsletters and birth announcements. To keep kids engaged at home, coloring books and reward charts can even be printed.

Managing money is one of the top stressors among people and families. People typically track their spending across a variety of apps and spreadsheets. Today, we announced Money in Excel, a new solution for Microsoft 365 subscribers that makes it easy to manage, track, and analyze your money and spending all in one place—Excel.

A secure and simple process powered by Plaid allows you to connect your bank and credit card accounts to Money in Excel, so you can import transactions and account balances automatically and create a personalized workbook leveraging the rich features of Excel. Money in Excel can help you improve your spending habits by providing personalized insights on your monthly spending and proactive alerts about price changes for recurring payments, bank fees, overdraft warnings, and more. Money in Excel gives you the tools to help you achieve your financial goals. Money in Excel will start to become available in the coming months in the U.S. first

Excel is frequently used to track and analyze data to make decisions by creating everything from simple lists to complex models. It is time consuming and challenging to collect, organize, and refresh this data. You can now interact with your data in a whole new way. Over 100 data types offer deeper meaning to your data when Excel provides new data types. Over 100 data types offer deeper meaning to your data when Excel provides new data types. There are over 100 unique data types provided by Excel, including food, movies, places, chemistry, and even Pokémon. Convert text and numbers into a data type, and Excel will present both rich visuals and interactive data cards that provide a better representation of your data.

What does it do? Say you want to keep better track of your nutrition. Excel will help you access nutritional information on a food by converting it to a Food data type. Or maybe your family is planning to adopt a pup. Animal type gives you information about different types of dogs, including images, facts, and their temperaments, so you can easily compare them. You always have access to the latest and most relevant information with data types. In Excel for the web, the Stocks and Geography data types are accessible to everyone. Wolfram Alpha provides more than 100 new data types exclusively to Microsoft 365 subscribers. As a Microsoft 365 subscriber, you will have access to data types that:

  • Find, copy, and refresh your data without the hassle of finding, gathering, and organizing the information you need.
  • You can do more with new smart templates with data types. You can use them to prepare to move to a new city, track your nutrition, or teach your kids chemistry.

Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers in English will be able to use the new data types and smart templates this spring.

Keeping track of both your work and personal calendars can be challenging, especially if they aren't linked. Outlook on the web has been updated with new features that help you manage work and non-work commitments in one place. Your work account can now show your real availability by linking your personal calendar with your work calendar, while still maintaining your privacy about details of business and personal meetings.

Cortana reads your emails for you intelligently if you have Play My Emails on Android. If you're on your commute or getting ready in the morning, Play My Emails can help you catch up on what's new in your inbox so that when you get home you are fully present. You can now use Microsoft Search on iOS and Android that recognizes natural language for more hands-free activities. By speaking or typing daily phrases, you can filter and narrow your search results faster and easier. In the coming months, Play My Emails and the search functionality will be available on Android.

Now, more than ever, staying connected with our loved ones is crucial. Keeping in touch with friends and family is easy through tools like Skype. Recently, Skype usage has increased significantly. We've seen an increase in Skype usage, with 40 million people using it daily, up 70% month over month. We've also seen a 220 percent increase in Skype-to-Skype call minutes. Recently, we introduced a new feature in Skype called Meet Now to help people get connected even faster. With Meet Now, you can host video meetings in just three clicks for free, without signing up or downloading anything.

Microsoft Teams is used every day by more than 44 million people at work. Teams is the only hub that lets you do all of your teamwork from one place, such as chat, video conference calls, and collaborating. We struggle to balance work and life even though Teams is great for work. The tools we use to manage it all include multiple apps, emails, messaging, and documents.

In order to make it easier to manage work and life and enhance your relationship with those who matter most, we previewed new features coming to Microsoft Teams for your personal life today.

Connecting with our loved ones has never been more important than it is right now. By offering tools like Skype, we make it easier for people to stay in touch with family and friends. Recently, Skype usage has risen significantly. In the last month, Skype usage has increased by 70 percent, and we are seeing a 220 percent increase in Skype-to-Skype calling minutes. To help people get connected even faster, we recently introduced a new feature in Skype called Meet Now. Meet Now lets you easily create video meetings in as little as three clicks for free, no signups or downloads required.

At work, every day more than 44 million people use Microsoft Teams. People love Teams because it’s the only hub for teamwork that lets you chat, do video conferencing, make calls, and collaborate all in one place. And while Teams is great for work, we’re all struggling to manage responsibilities across work and life. We use multiple apps and disconnected tools such as calendars, email, messaging, and documents to manage it all.

To provide one app to help manage work and life and deepen your connection with those who matter most, today we previewed new features coming to Microsoft Teams for your personal life.

Now, you can collaborate with family and friends, stay organized, and connect through Teams. Join your friends in planning trips, organizing a neighborhood get-together, or organizing your next book club meeting. In one place, connect in a group chat, make video calls, share to-do lists and assign tasks to specific people, coordinate schedules, and share photos and videos. With Teams, you can share grocery lists, manage family calendars, store important information like Wi-Fi passwords and account info, and see location updates when loved ones arrive home or at work or school.
Within the next few months, the Microsoft Teams mobile app will receive these new features as a preview. While you wait, we encourage you to chat and video call your family and friends using Skype.
To help ensure their children are safe in the physical and digital worlds, many parents use a variety of screen-time apps and location-based services. A new Microsoft Family Safety mobile experience is now available for Microsoft 365 subscribers on iOS and Android devices.
By providing families with the tools and insights to start a conversation promoting healthy habits online and in real life, Microsoft Family Safety helps protect the loved ones in their lives. You can manage screen time on Windows PCs, Android devices, and Xbox One through Microsoft Family Safety, as well as keep an eye on your children even when they're not at home.
The Microsoft Family Safety app lets you keep track of your family members' whereabouts, including arrival and departure notifications, so you can stay confident that they are where they should be. You can use driving reports for inexperienced drivers in your household in order to help them build better driving habits with the peace of mind that your information won't be shared with third parties such as insurance companies.
Your children will also be protected while they enjoy online and mobile games. You can set limits to help promote healthy digital habits with the Microsoft Family Safety app for Xbox, Windows 10 PCs, and Android phones. As they browse the web, you can steer them away from inappropriate content as well.
In the coming months, we'll be releasing a limited preview of the iOS and Android app.

Get access to popular wellbeing, creativity, and enrichment apps

In order to be your best self, wellbeing, creativity, and enrichment are key. Additionally, we announced that subscribers to Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions would receive limited-time access to popular apps and premium services including Adobe, Bark, Blinkist, Creative Live, Experian, Headspace, and TeamSnap. A pair of these costs around $500 in the United States. For more information about the Microsoft 365 Personal and Family partner benefits program, please visit this page.
On April 21, Microsoft 365 may be purchased as a Personal or Family subscription-much better value, same price
Customers of Office 365 will begin receiving the new features as of today. Microsoft 365 subscriptions will become available globally on April 21st. Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions include all the features and benefits of Office 365, including premium desktop Office apps, 1TB of OneDrive cloud storage, 60 Skype minutes for sending and receiving calls, advanced security features to protect against malware and phishing attacks, and ongoing technical support. Six dollars and ninety-nine cents a month is the cost of Microsoft 365 Personal. Microsoft 365 Family for $9.99 USD a month is the best value for a family of up to six people.
Visit this page for more information about Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions, as well as the markets and languages where the new features will be available. Visit this page to learn more about the changes coming to Microsoft 365 Business and Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise.