Microsoft Teams Premium licensing
Note
Teams Premium is currently available as a preview release, allowing organizations to experience and plan for the generally available release of Teams Premium. Not all Teams Premium features are available in this preview release, but more features will be released throughout the preview period. To experience Teams Premium preview features, see Can I experience Teams Premium before buying licenses?
Microsoft Teams Premium is a Teams add-on license that allows organizations with Microsoft 365 subscriptions to enhance their Teams experience with benefits like:
- More personalized and intelligent meetings and webinars.
- Enhanced protection for meetings.
- Advanced management and reporting capabilities for IT.
- Advanced Virtual Appointments.
This article is for IT admins who wish to understand Teams Premium licensing and purchase Teams Premium licenses for their users. This article will provide answers to questions like:
- How does Teams Premium compare to Teams?
- Are there current Teams features that will move to Teams Premium?
- What are the requirements to purchase Teams Premium?
- How does Teams enforce access to Teams Premium features?
- How does Teams Premium differ from Teams Rooms Pro?
- Can I experience Teams Premium before buying licenses?
- How do I purchase Teams Premium licenses?
To learn how to set up and configure Teams Premium features, see Microsoft Teams Premium - Overview for administrators, which will also include links to end-user documentation as it becomes available.
How does Teams Premium compare to Teams?
Customers who purchase a Microsoft 365 subscription also receive Teams licenses for their users. Purchasing the Teams Premium add-on license provides admins and end users with extra features on top Teams with their Microsoft 365 subscription.
The following table compares key features between Teams and Teams Premium.
Meetings
| Feature | Teams | Teams Premium |
|---|---|---|
| Host and attend Teams Meetings | x | x |
| Experience Teams’ standard look and feel | x | x |
| Use standard Teams Meetings backgrounds | x | x |
| Read live captions during meetings | x | x |
| Customize meeting templates for your organization | x | |
| Add organization branding to meeting lobbies | x | |
| Customize meeting backgrounds for your organization | x | |
| Customize Together mode scenes for your organization | x | |
| Read live translated captions during meetings | x | |
| Translate post-meeting transcriptions (coming soon) | x | |
| Turn on real-time data storage | x | |
| Turn on eCDN for Live Events | x |
Webinars
| Feature | Teams | Teams Premium |
|---|---|---|
| Require attendees to register | x | x |
| Assign a co-organizer | x | x |
| Limit the number of people who can register | x | x |
| Turn on Q&A for webinars with up to 1000 attendees | x | x |
| View attendance reports | x | x |
| Integrate with Dynamics 365 | x | x |
| Set up a green room for webinar presenters | x | |
| Manage attendees’ view | x | |
| Send reminder emails to registrants | x | |
| Create a webinar wait list | x | |
| Manually approve registrants | x | |
| Limit the day and time when people can register | x | |
| Allow registered users to bypass the lobby | x | |
| Use RTMP-In for Webinars (coming soon) | x |
Meetings protection
| Feature | Teams | Teams Premium |
|---|---|---|
| Manage meeting lobbies | x | x |
| End-to-end encryption for one-to-one calls | x | x |
| Moderate meeting chats | x | x |
| Control who can present | x | x |
| Add watermarks to meetings | x | |
| End-to-end encryption for meetings with up to 50 attendees | x | |
| Control who can record | x | |
| Prevent copy/paste in meeting chats | x | |
| Assign Microsoft Purview Information Protection sensitivity labels for meetings* | x | |
| Custom user policy packages | x | |
| Turn on advanced meeting monitoring and alerting | x |
* This feature is only available to Teams Premium users with a Microsoft 365 E5 subscription. For more information on licensing requirements, see What are the requirements to purchase Teams Premium?
Meetings reporting
| Feature | Teams | Teams Premium |
|---|---|---|
| View recordings of meetings | x | x |
| View meeting transcripts | x | x |
| View and use files added to meetings | x | x |
| View and use apps added to meetings | x | x |
| Navigate meeting recordings with autogenerated chapters (coming soon) | x | |
| View time markers in meeting recordings when you joined or left a meeting (coming soon) | x | |
| Search meeting transcripts with speaker suggestions (coming soon) | x | |
| View and act on autogenerated tasks from meetings (coming soon) | x | |
| View when you were @mentioned | x |
Virtual Appointments
| Feature | Teams | Teams Premium |
|---|---|---|
| Access Virtual Appointments with the Bookings app for scheduling, appointment management, and email notifications | x | x |
| Integrate Virtual Appointments using APIs | x | x |
| Join appointments from a browser | x | x |
| Join appointments in Teams | x | x |
| Allow users to join a virtual lobby waiting room | x | x |
| Integrate with Microsoft Forms | x | x |
| Customize the lobby waiting room with themes and logos | x | |
| Send SMS notifications | x | |
| Chat back and forth with attendees in the lobby waiting room (coming soon) | x | |
| Organizational and departmental analytics | x | |
| View and manage scheduled appointments in the queue | x | |
| View and manage on-demand appointments in the queue | x | |
| Send post-appointment follow-ups (coming soon) | x |
Are there current Teams features that will move to Teams Premium?
With the general release of Teams Premium, some Teams features will move from Teams licenses to Teams Premium licenses. To allow your users to keep using these features, you'll need to purchase and assign Teams Premium licenses.
The features that are moving to Teams Premium are:
- Live translated captions.
- Timeline markers in Teams meeting recordings for when a user left or joined meetings.
- Custom organization Together mode scenes.
- Virtual Appointments: SMS notifications.
- Virtual Appointments: Organizational analytics in the Teams admin center.
- Virtual Appointments: Scheduled queue view.
Is there a grace period to switch to Team Premium before my users lose functionality?
When Teams Premium becomes generally available to purchase, there will be a 30-day grace period for admins to purchase Teams Premium.
After the 30-day grace period, users will lose access to features previously available in Teams without the Teams Premium add-on, unless the admin purchases and assigns Teams Premium licenses for their users.
Some tenants may have Teams Premium trial licenses. Once the trial licenses expire, users will immediately lose Teams Premium features. Assets associated with Teams Premium features like custom templates and meeting backgrounds will remain in the tenant but will be grayed out and unusable.
What are the requirements to purchase Teams Premium?
At release, Teams Premium will be available to purchase worldwide through all Microsoft purchasing channels, including EA, EAS, EES, CSP, Web Direct, NCE – Customer led, and NCE – Partner led.
Before you can purchase Teams Premium licenses for your users, ensure that your tenant and users meet the requirements.
The tenant requirement is:
- Must be a commercial, worldwide public sector, EDU, GCC, or non-profit tenant.
- At general release, Microsoft won’t offer an EDU-specific license or EDU discounts for Teams Premium.
- GCC High and DoD tenants won’t be able to purchase Teams Premium licenses at general release.
The user requirement is:
- An Office 365 or Microsoft 365 subscription with Teams.
How does Teams enforce access to Teams Premium features?
Which Teams experience a user has depends on their Teams license and their Teams role. Teams checks a user’s license and role feature by feature to deliver the appropriate experience.
For example, in a Teams meeting, Teams will check each users’ Teams license and whether they're a meeting organizer or attendee. These factors determine a user’s experience and potentially other participants’ experience in the meeting.
- Organizer-based: Some features check licensing at the organizer level. If a meeting organizer has the right license for a feature, that feature will also be shared and made accessible to the meeting attendees during that meeting.
- Attendee-based: Some features check licensing at the attendee level. Their Teams experience won’t be shared and made accessible to other attendees during the meeting.
The following table shows the license checks for each Teams Premium feature.
| Organizer-based license check | Attendee-based license check | |
|---|---|---|
| Meetings | ✔ Use custom meeting templates ✔ Use custom themed meetings ✔ Use Microsoft eCDN for Live Events |
✔ Use custom Together mode scenes ✔ Use custom backgrounds and lobbies |
| Webinars | ✔ Set up Webinar green rooms ✔ Manage Webinar mode ✔ Use RTMP-In ✔ Manually approve Webinar registrations ✔ Create a registration wait list ✔ Limit registration date and time |
|
| Meetings protection | ✔ Use end-to-end encryption for meetings up to 50 participants ✔ Add watermarks to meetings ✔ Apply sensitivity labels to meetings ✔ Prevent copy/paste in meeting chats ✔ Control who can record a meeting ✔ Custom user policy packages |
|
| Intelligent Meetings | ✔ Read translated captions live ✔ Navigate meetings with auto-generated chapters |
✔ Translate post-meeting transcriptions Meeting recap AI features: ✔ See timestamps for when you joined and left a meeting ✔ Receive suggested tasks after a meeting ✔ Search with suggested speaker ✔ View @mentions to you |
| Virtual Appointments | ✔ Set up SMS notifications ✔ Access Premium Virtual Appointments app ✔ Use custom backgrounds for appointments and lobbies |
✔ Set up SMS notifications ✔ Access Premium Virtual Appointments app ✔ View and manage scheduled and on-demand appointment queue ✔ View Advanced Virtual Appointments analytics ✔ Send post-appointment follow ups |
How does Teams Premium differ from Teams Rooms Pro?
Teams Premium licenses are assigned to your organization’s users, and Teams Rooms Pro licenses should only be assigned to Microsoft Teams Rooms devices. These two licenses aren’t dependent on one another, don’t overlap features, and won’t cause license enforcement conflicts.
Before the release of Teams Rooms Pro, Microsoft offered a Teams Rooms license called Teams Rooms Premium. Teams Rooms Premium has been retired and isn’t related to Teams Premium.
Can I experience Teams Premium before buying licenses?
Starting in December 2022, organizations can try Teams Premium by purchasing the zero-cost Teams Premium 30-day trial license available in the Microsoft 365 admin center.
Organizations with a Teams Premium trial license will have 25 licenses to assign to users. Those 25 users can experience and test Teams Premium features as they become available. Also, the admin can manage Teams Premium features for the 25 licensed users.
Most organization segments can purchase and use the Teams Premium trial license, excluding GCC High and DoD tenants.
What will happen if my users’ trial licenses expire?
After the 30-day trial licenses expire, the 25 licensed users will lose all Teams Premium functionality. There’s currently no grace period between the expiration of the trial license and the loss of functionality.
For this reason, we recommend organizations plan their Teams Premium trial period, ensuring all necessary test scenarios are thoroughly vetted before the trial period expires.
When the trial licenses expire, the tenant's uploaded Teams Premium assets like custom templates and meeting backgrounds will remain in the tenant but will be grayed out and unusable.
If your organization wishes to keep Teams Premium features after the trial period, you'll need to purchase Teams Premium licenses when they become available and reassign the licenses to your users.
How do I purchase Teams Premium licenses?
If your tenant and users meet the requirements for Teams Premium, you can purchase Teams Premium add-on licenses through your preferred purchasing channel once Teams Premium becomes generally available.
After you purchase your Teams Premium licenses, you’ll assign the licenses to your users in the Microsoft 365 admin center.
For instructions on assigning licenses in the Microsoft 365 admin center, see Assign Microsoft 365 licenses to users.