Microsoft 365 E7 is the first new top-tier enterprise licence since E5 arrived in 2015, and it is the one I get asked about most at the moment. In short, E7 keeps everything administrators already rely on in E5 and adds the productivity side that E5 never had: Microsoft 365 Copilot, plus the tooling to govern the AI agents that come with it.
Now if you've not got E5 but always wanted it, then this may be the SKU for you even though on the face of it its a massive cost increase.
Microsoft announced E7, branded "The Frontier Suite", on 9 March 2026, and it became generally available on 1 May 2026 (Microsoft). Six months on, some customers are hitting renewals and asking whether it is worth the jump.
This post covers what is actually in the box, why it deserves a proper look from IT managers, and why the headline price should not be the end of the conversation.
What is in E7
E7 is E5 with Copilot, the Entra Suite and Agent 365 bolted on, sold as one SKU. Nothing is taken away from E5, so every admin capability you already rely on comes with you.
Component | What it gives you | Standalone UK list price (£/user/month, ex VAT) |
|---|---|---|
Microsoft 365 E5 | The full security, compliance and management stack | £51.60 |
Microsoft 365 Copilot | AI across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams and Chat | £23.10 |
Microsoft Entra Suite | ID Governance, Internet Access and Private Access | £9.20 |
Agent 365 | Inventory, identity, governance and security for AI agents | £11.50 |
Bought separately | £95.40 | |
Microsoft 365 E7 | £81.60 |
Prices are Microsoft UK list prices, annual commitment paid yearly, excluding VAT (Microsoft UK pricing). E7 is also sold without Teams at £75.00, against £45.00 for E5 without Teams. What you actually pay depends on your agreement and partner.
The admin wins carried over from E5
This is the part that often gets lost in the Copilot marketing. E7 users keep the full E5 toolset:
- Defender XDR: Defender for Endpoint P2, Office 365 P2, Identity and Cloud Apps, all correlated in one incident queue.
- Entra ID P2: risk-based Conditional Access, Identity Protection and PIM.
- Purview: sensitivity labels, DLP, Insider Risk, eDiscovery Premium and Audit Premium.
- Intune: E5 now includes Intune Plan 2, Remote Help, Endpoint Privilege Management, Enterprise App Management and Cloud PKI.
- Security Copilot: E5 customers get an allocation of 400 Security Compute Units per month per 1,000 users.
What E7 adds on top
- Copilot brings the productivity benefit E5 never had. Users get Copilot in the apps they live in, plus Copilot Chat grounded in their own Graph data.
- The Entra Suite adds Entra ID Governance (lifecycle workflows, access reviews, entitlement management) and Global Secure Access for Zero Trust network access. That is a VPN replacement and a secure web gateway in the same licence.
- Agent 365 gives you a registry of every agent in the tenant, an Entra Agent ID per agent, and Purview and Defender coverage of what those agents do. Think of Copilot as the AI doing the work and Agent 365 as the guardrails around it.
Why IT managers should look at it
E7 matters because it puts the AI conversation and the security conversation on the same licence, and that is where they belong. Four reasons stand out from the tenants I work in.
Copilot is landing either way. Users are already asking for it, and business leaders are being pitched it directly. If IT is not shaping the rollout, it ends up governing something it never designed. E7 gives you Copilot with the E5 controls it depends on: sensitivity labels, DLP, Conditional Access and audit.
Agents are the next shadow IT. (They're Access databases on steroids...) Every Copilot Studio agent, SharePoint agent and third-party agent is a new identity touching your data. Without Agent 365 you have no single inventory of them, no lifecycle and limited visibility of what they access. With it, each agent gets an Entra identity you can put under Conditional Access and access reviews, just like a user.
The Entra Suite closes gaps people are paying for elsewhere. Lifecycle workflows replace joiner-mover-leaver scripts. Access reviews give you evidence for auditors. Global Secure Access can retire a legacy VPN. Many organisations are paying for these through separate tools today.
One licence is easier to run. Fewer SKUs means fewer group-based licensing edge cases, fewer "why doesn't this user have X" tickets, and one clear baseline to build policy against. Anyone who has untangled a tenant with E5, standalone Copilot, Entra ID Governance and a third-party VPN client will appreciate that.
Don't be put off by the price
£81.60 per user per month looks steep next to E5 at £51.60, E3 at £33.50 or Business Premium. But comparing the base licences misses the point. What matters is what you already pay, or are about to pay, to get the same outcomes: Copilot, the security stack, identity governance and agent control. Measured that way, the gap is smaller than the sticker price suggests, and for many E5 customers it disappears.
Where you are today | Monthly cost now (£/user, ex VAT) | With E7 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
Business Premium + Copilot Business | £24.60 | £81.60 | +£57.00, which moves you from SMB security to the full E5 stack, Entra Suite and Agent 365 (Business Premium is capped at 300 users) |
E3 + Copilot | £56.60 | £81.60 | +£25.00, which adds the full E5 security and compliance stack, Entra Suite and Agent 365 |
E5 + Copilot | £74.70 | £81.60 | +£6.90, which buys £20.70 of Entra Suite and Agent 365 |
E5 + Copilot + Entra Suite | £83.90 | £81.60 | £2.30 cheaper |
E5 + Copilot + Entra Suite + Agent 365 | £95.40 | £81.60 | £13.80 cheaper (about 14%) |
For the full feature list, use M365 Maps
For the full breakdown, go to m365maps.com.
M365 Maps lays out every Microsoft 365 plan as a visual diagram, down to individual features. I use it constantly in pre-sales and scoping work, and it is usually the first link I send a customer who asks "what do we actually get with this licence?"
A big thank you to Aaron Dinnage, the developer behind the site. Microsoft licensing changes constantly, and keeping a resource this detailed accurate and up to date is a serious amount of work. In my view it is one of the best Microsoft 365 resources on the internet, and the community is better for it. He needs a Patreon or that buy me a coffee thing.
Final thoughts
E7 is not "E5 plus an expensive chatbot". It is the E5 security and management stack you already trust, with Copilot, identity governance, Zero Trust network access and agent governance built in. For organisations already committed to Copilot, the maths is close to neutral and the extras are significant.
My advice: don't dismiss E7 on the sticker price. Profile your users, compare against what you actually pay today including the tools you could retire, and ask about the current promotions. Then decide which users genuinely need it.
If you've got E3 or business premium and E5 was a stretch, don't discount this as its less of a stretch than you think.
Sources
- Introducing the First Frontier Suite built on Intelligence + Trust, Official Microsoft Blog
- Microsoft 365 Enterprise plans and pricing (UK), Microsoft
- Microsoft Security enterprise plans pricing (UK), Microsoft
- Understanding Microsoft 365 E7 Licensing, SAMexpert
- M365 Maps, Aaron Dinnage