How much does Teams Phone cost?

Teams Phone costs break into three separate layers, and quotes vary mostly because people combine them differently. The first layer is the phone-system license itself, which Microsoft prices from $10 per user per month for Teams Phone Standard.[1] That license turns Teams into a private branch exchange (PBX): it handles internal calls, voicemail, call hold and transfer, and routing through auto attendants and call queues, but on its own it cannot reach a regular phone number outside your organization.[1][4]

The second layer is PSTN connectivity, meaning the actual link to the public telephone network that lets a user dial an external number. Microsoft sells this as a Calling Plan, or you can bring a third-party carrier through Operator Connect or Direct Routing, and the cost sits with whichever provider you pick.[3] The third layer is usage, which is the minutes people actually talk. Those minutes are either bundled into a monthly allotment or metered per minute depending on the plan.[2]

Teams Phone is often already inside your Microsoft 365 plan

Microsoft 365 E5 and Office 365 E5 include the phone-system license at no extra charge, so an E5 customer skips the $10 Standard add-on and pays only for the calling connection.[4][9] Every other common plan, including Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Business Standard, Business Premium, E3, and Office 365 E1 and E3, treats Teams Phone as a paid add-on that sits on top of that base subscription.[4][9] A base Teams or Microsoft 365 license is always required underneath, because Teams Phone is an add-on rather than a standalone product.[1][9]

Teams Phone Standard costs $10 per user per month on an annual commitment and is the cloud phone-system license by itself.[1] It gives a user enterprise calling features inside Teams, including a direct-dial number, voicemail, call hold and transfer, and the ability to be routed through auto attendants and call queues.[1] What it does not include is any way to call a normal phone number outside your tenant, because PSTN access is sold separately.[4] Standard fits the case where you already have a carrier you want to keep and plan to connect it through Operator Connect or Direct Routing, since you pay Microsoft only for the phone-system license and pay the carrier for the calling.[3] For a user on Microsoft 365 E5, this license is redundant, because E5 already carries the phone-system entitlement and buying Standard on top would mean paying twice for the same capability.[4]

Teams Phone with pay-as-you-go calling is $13 per user per month in the US (Zone 1) and adds a phone number plus metered outbound minutes on top of the Standard features.[1] Nothing is bundled here: every outbound minute is charged at a per-minute rate that depends on the destination country, while incoming minutes are unlimited.[2] Funding works one of two ways. Customers on a Microsoft Customer Agreement can be billed after the fact for the minutes they used the prior month, and customers on the older Microsoft Online Subscription Agreement pre-pay through a Communication Credits balance that calls draw down.[2] This plan tends to suit low-volume users, such as staff who mostly take internal calls and place only occasional outside ones, because you avoid paying for a full minute bundle that would sit unused.[2] The per-minute rates are the thing to watch, since independent analysis notes Microsoft has no destinations priced under roughly a penny a minute, so heavy callers usually cost less on a bundled plan than on metered billing.[7]

Teams Phone with Calling Plan is $17 per user per month in the US (Zone 1) and bundles the phone-system license with 3,000 domestic outbound minutes.[1] The 3,000-minute allowance applies to users billed in the US, UK, and Canada, and it pools across everyone on the same plan in the same country.[2] A team of 50 US users, for example, shares a combined pool of 150,000 minutes rather than a strict 3,000-minute cap each, so light callers effectively subsidize heavier ones.[2] Incoming minutes are unlimited, and any outbound minutes beyond the shared pool are billed per minute.[2] With this plan Microsoft is your carrier, which means one bill, Microsoft-managed phone numbers, and Microsoft-handled emergency calling, at the cost of less flexibility than bringing your own operator.[3] Independent 2026 guides list the same $17 figure.[6]

Teams Phone with domestic and international calling is $34 per user per month and adds outbound international minutes to the domestic bundle.[1] The allowance is 3,000 domestic minutes or 600 international minutes per user, drawn from a shared pool, with international dialing reaching numbers in 196 countries.[1][2] This tier is aimed at users who regularly call other countries, because paying $34 for a pooled international allotment can work out cheaper and more predictable than metered per-minute international rates on a lighter plan.[2] For a workforce where only a handful of people call abroad, a common pattern is to give most users the $17 domestic plan and assign the $34 plan only to the international callers, since Microsoft lets you mix plans per user within the same tenant.[2] Incoming calls stay unlimited regardless of tier.[2]

The calling connection you pick can matter more to the bill than the license tier, because it decides who charges you for minutes and how.[3] Microsoft supports four ways to reach the public phone network, and a single tenant can use more than one at once for different groups of users.[3]

Microsoft Calling Plans

Microsoft acts as your carrier and folds calling into the per-user prices above, either bundled at $17 or $34 or metered at $13.[1][3] It is the simplest to set up and bill, since numbers, minutes, and emergency calling all come from Microsoft under one agreement.[3]

Operator Connect

A certified third-party carrier provides the numbers and minutes, and you enable them inside the Teams admin center without managing any hardware.[3] Microsoft charges only for the phone-system license, meaning the $10 Standard tier or nothing extra on E5, while the carrier bills separately for calling.[3][4] Many of these carriers price calling as a flat per-user rate that includes unlimited domestic calling, which can be steadier to budget than metered minutes.[3][10]

Teams Phone Mobile

A certified mobile operator ties a user's SIM mobile number to their Teams identity so one number rings in both places.[3] As with Operator Connect, Microsoft charges for the license and the mobile operator bills for the service.[3]

Direct Routing

You connect your own carrier through a Session Border Controller (SBC) that you or a provider procures and manages.[3] It works in any country and lets you keep an existing carrier contract, though the SBC and its upkeep, including certificate management and monitoring, are a real cost that sits with whoever runs it.[3] At scale it often has the lowest per-minute economics, which is why larger organizations weigh it against the simplicity of Calling Plans.[3]

A phone-system license is not a calling plan

The most common budgeting mistake is treating the $10 or $17 license as the whole cost. The license only entitles a user to the phone-system application and access to a PSTN solution; the PSTN solution that actually carries the calls is a separate purchase whenever you use Operator Connect, Teams Phone Mobile, or Direct Routing.[4] Microsoft 365 E5 shows the split cleanly, because it includes the phone-system license but still requires you to add a Calling Plan or a third-party carrier before anyone can dial out.[4]

The advertised $10 to $17 rarely equals what an organization actually spends per user, because several required pieces sit outside the headline license.[8] Independent 2026 analysis of live deployments puts the typical all-in figure at roughly $25 to $35 per user per month once everything is counted.[8]

The base Microsoft 365 or Teams license underneath

Teams Phone is an add-on, so every user needs a qualifying base subscription first, and that base often costs more than the phone add-on itself.[9] Microsoft 365 E3 lists at $39 per user per month and E5 at $60, with E5 already including the phone-system license.[5] The practical decision is whether upgrading users to E5 for the bundled phone system beats keeping E3 and buying the $10 add-on, and the math tips toward E5 mainly when you also want its security and analytics features.[5]

Resource accounts and shared numbers

Auto attendants and call queues run on resource accounts, which need their own licenses; independent guides estimate roughly $5 per auto attendant per month, and a mid-size deployment can have several of them.[8] Shared Calling can pull cost the other way, because it lets multiple users place outbound calls through one licensed resource account and number, so not every user needs a dedicated calling plan.[4]

Number porting, overage, and administration

Moving existing numbers into Teams is usually billed per number, with independent estimates around $35 to $50 each as a one-time charge.[8] Beyond that, outbound minutes over a bundle are billed per minute at destination-based rates, and ongoing administration and support carry their own cost that per-user list pricing never shows.[2][8] None of these are hidden in a dishonest sense; they are simply the layers a headline price leaves out, so a realistic Teams Phone budget accounts for all of them from the start.[8]