Microsoft Teams calling plans are the three PSTN add-ons Microsoft sells on top of Teams Phone Standard: pay as you go at $13 per user per month, Teams Phone with Calling Plan at $17 with 3,000 outbound domestic minutes, and domestic plus international at $34. Teams Phone Standard itself is $10 and includes no phone number and no minutes, so it cannot dial an ordinary phone number on its own. All four are billed yearly, and every one of them carries the same line in Microsoft's own product description: a separate license for Microsoft Teams is required. Add the cheapest qualifying base license and a working Teams phone line starts at about $21 per user per month, not $10.
All figures below were read from Microsoft's own Teams Phone and Microsoft 365 pricing pages on September 6, 2026, and from Microsoft Learn documentation dated May 29, 2026. Microsoft changes these plans regularly, so check the rate before you sign anything.
Microsoft Teams Phone pricing: the four plans
Microsoft splits Teams Phone into the phone system itself and the calling minutes that connect it to the public telephone network. That split is the reason this product confuses people. Teams Phone Standard is the PBX: extensions, call routing, auto attendants, call queues, voicemail, transfers, hold. It does not include a phone number or any minutes. To actually reach the outside world you either add a Microsoft Calling Plan, or you bring your own carrier through Operator Connect or Direct Routing.
| Plan | Per user, billed yearly | What it includes |
|---|---|---|
| Teams Phone Standard | $10.00 | The cloud phone system only. No number, no minutes. You add PSTN service through a Calling Plan, Operator Connect or Direct Routing |
| Teams Phone with pay-as-you-go calling, US | $13.00 | Teams Phone Standard plus a phone number, with outbound minutes billed by usage |
| Teams Phone with Calling Plan, US | $17.00 | Teams Phone Standard plus a phone number and 3,000 outbound domestic minutes a month |
| Teams Phone with domestic and international calling | $34.00 | Adds international outbound calling to the domestic plan |
Microsoft states that the $13, $17 and $34 prices include communication taxes and fees, which is genuinely unusual in this market and worth crediting. Almost every competitor quotes a rate and then adds telecom taxes, E911 surcharges and a federal universal service pass-through on the invoice. The 3,000 minute allowance on the $17 plan applies to the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. For the rest of the world the same plan includes 1,200 minutes.
Is Teams Phone included in Microsoft 365?
No. This is the single most common misunderstanding about the product, and you will find it stated the wrong way round in a lot of articles that rank for these searches. Teams Phone is a paid add-on license. Microsoft prints the requirement on all four Teams Phone plans in its own words: a separate license for Microsoft Teams is required. Microsoft 365 Business Standard and the rest of the suite include the Teams app for chat and meetings. They do not include the phone system, a phone number, or any calling minutes to the public network.
So the honest per-user figure is the add-on plus a qualifying base license. Microsoft publishes Teams Essentials at $4.00 per user per month, Microsoft 365 Business Basic at $7.00, and Microsoft 365 Business Standard with Copilot at $23.50, all billed yearly.
| What you are buying | Base license | Teams Phone add-on | True cost per user |
|---|---|---|---|
| A phone system with your own carrier | Teams Essentials, $4 | Standard, $10 | $14, and it still cannot call out without a carrier contract |
| A working phone line, cheapest route | Teams Essentials, $4 | Calling Plan, $17 | $21 |
| A working phone line on a normal business suite | Business Basic, $7 | Calling Plan, $17 | $24 |
| A working line with metered minutes | Business Basic, $7 | Pay as you go, $13 | $20 plus per-minute usage |
| The full office suite with a phone | Business Standard with Copilot, $23.50 | Calling Plan, $17 | $40.50 |
If you already pay for Microsoft 365 for email and documents, the base license is not a new cost and the marginal price of adding phones is the $10 to $34 column. That is the case where Teams Phone is genuinely competitive. If you are pricing Teams Phone as a way to get a business phone line and you are not already committed to the Microsoft suite, the comparison is $21 or more against standalone systems that start around $15, and the standalone products generally include more phone features at the entry tier.
Why the $10 plan cannot make a phone call
Teams Phone Standard at $10 is the tier that appears in most search results and most quotes, and it is the one most likely to be bought by mistake. It is a PBX with no line attached. Microsoft is clear about this in the plan description: you add PSTN service with Teams Calling Plans, Operator Connect or Direct Routing. Operator Connect means signing with a participating telecom carrier who provisions numbers into your tenant. Direct Routing means you supply a Session Border Controller and your own SIP trunk, which is an infrastructure project, not a checkbox.
For a business with an existing carrier contract and someone in-house who understands SIP, $10 plus your carrier's rate can be the cheapest option on this page by a wide margin. For a ten-person company with no telecom vendor, it is a plan that will not ring. The practical route for most small buyers is the $17 Calling Plan tier, which is why the true entry cost is $21 rather than $14.
Microsoft Teams Phone with Calling Plan: what the $17 tier actually is
Teams Phone with Calling Plan is the single SKU that bundles the phone system and the minutes together, at $17 per user per month billed yearly. It is the only tier a small business can buy and start using the same day without a separate carrier contract. You get Teams Phone Standard, a phone number provisioned by Microsoft, and 3,000 outbound domestic minutes a month. Inbound calling is unmetered. Microsoft states that the price includes communication taxes and fees.
The distinction that trips buyers up is that "Teams Phone" and "Teams Phone with Calling Plan" are two different products with a $7 gap between them. The first is a PBX waiting for a carrier. The second is a working line. If a quote or a comparison table shows Teams Phone at $10, check which of the two it means, because only one of them can ring.
How many Microsoft Teams calling plans are there?
Three, and they differ by minutes rather than by features. Pay as you go at $13 includes a number and meters every outbound call against a prepaid balance. Calling Plan at $17 includes 3,000 outbound domestic minutes for the US, UK and Canada. Domestic and international at $34 adds 1,200 international minutes. All three require Teams Phone Standard and a separate Teams license underneath.
Can you buy a Microsoft Teams calling plan without Microsoft 365?
No. Every calling plan requires a qualifying Microsoft Teams license, and Microsoft prints that requirement on each plan. The cheapest qualifying route Microsoft publishes is Teams Essentials at $4 per user per month, which puts the floor for a working Teams line at $21. There is no configuration in which Microsoft sells you a Teams phone number as a standalone service.
Microsoft Teams calling plans pricing: what each calling plan includes
Microsoft sells three calling plans on top of Teams Phone, and the difference between them is minutes rather than features. Pay as you go at $13 per user per month includes a phone number and bills every outbound call per minute against a prepaid balance. The Calling Plan at $17 includes 3,000 outbound domestic minutes a month for the United States and Canada. Domestic and international at $34 adds 1,200 international minutes. All three are billed yearly on an auto-renewing annual subscription, and all three still require the separate Teams license underneath.
| Calling plan | Price per user per month | Included outbound minutes | Included SMS before overage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Teams Phone Standard, no calling plan | $10 | None, and no phone number | Not eligible |
| Teams Phone with pay as you go calling | $13 | None, billed per minute | 0 |
| Teams Phone with Calling Plan | $17 | 3,000 domestic, US and Canada | 200 on Domestic, 100 on Domestic 120 |
| Teams Phone with domestic and international calling | $34 | 3,000 domestic plus 1,200 international | 200 |
Read from Microsoft's own plan cards and its SMS documentation on September 8, 2026. Minutes and messages are pooled at the tenant level across users holding identical plans, so a hundred people on the Domestic plan share 20,000 messages rather than each being capped at 200. Microsoft states that the $13, $17 and $34 prices already include communication taxes and fees, which is unusual in this category and genuinely reduces invoice surprise.
One line item is missing from every plan card and it catches people out. Toll-free numbers are not included in any Teams calling plan. Microsoft funds toll-free service, extra minutes and other per-minute charges through a prepaid wallet it calls Communications Credits, which you top up separately. So if your business publishes an 800 number, that is a line on your invoice that does not appear anywhere in the $10 to $34 range, and Teams Calling Plans cannot send or receive text messages on a toll-free number at all.
Microsoft Teams Phone Standard pricing: what the $10 license does and does not include
Teams Phone Standard is $10 per user per month, paid yearly, and it is the figure almost every comparison quotes as Microsoft's price. It buys the calling software native to Teams: the dial pad, call handling, auto attendants and call queues, voicemail, and the administration for all of it. What it does not buy is a phone number or a single minute of calling on the public network.
That makes the $10 tier a real product with a narrow job. It is the right license when your public network connection comes from somewhere other than Microsoft, which in practice means Operator Connect or Direct Routing through a carrier you contract separately. Large organizations with existing carrier agreements buy Teams Phone Standard precisely so they can keep those contracts. What it is not is a $10 phone line, and a small business comparing it against a $16 or $20 standalone product is comparing two different things.
There is a further consequence on that route that is easy to miss until after you have bought. Microsoft requires a Microsoft Teams Calling Plan license for SMS, so a tenant on Teams Phone Standard with a third-party carrier cannot text customers from Teams at any price. If texting matters, the $10 tier is off the table regardless of what your carrier charges for minutes.
Teams Phone SMS: what texting actually costs and requires
Texting is where Teams Phone diverges most sharply from a standalone business phone system, and almost nothing written about Teams Phone pricing covers it. Microsoft's own documentation sets out three requirements. Your users need Teams, Teams Phone and a Microsoft Teams Calling Plan license, so SMS is not available on the $10 Standard tier with a third-party carrier. They need a Calling Plan number assigned and to be voice enabled. And before any number in your tenant can be enabled for SMS at all, Microsoft must register your company Brand and Campaign with The Campaign Registry.
That registration is not optional and not limited to marketing. Microsoft's documentation states the Brand and Campaign approval requirement applies to businesses that do mass texting or marketing, as well as businesses that send individual messages, even if it is not for marketing purposes. Brand approval asks for your business ID, legal address, stock symbol and website. Campaign approval asks for your use cases, opt-in and opt-out message flows, an SMS privacy statement and terms and conditions. Microsoft also notes that approval times are currently running longer than usual.
| Teams Calling Plan | Included SMS before overage |
|---|---|
| Pay-as-you-go | 0 |
| Domestic 120 | 100 |
| Domestic | 200 |
| Domestic and International | 200 |
| Teams Phone and Calling Plan bundle | 200 with the Domestic bundle, 0 with the pay-as-you-go bundle |
Those allowances are pooled across every SMS-enabled user in the tenant, and they count inbound and outbound together. Overage in the United States and Puerto Rico is $0.0075 per message segment each way, plus carrier surcharges, and a segment is 160 standard characters, so a 240 character message bills as two. There are also limits worth knowing before you plan around Teams texting: SMS works in one-to-one chat only, MMS and attachments are not supported, Teams Calling Plans do not support SMS on toll-free numbers, one brand and one campaign are allowed per tenant, and a campaign supports 49 SMS-enabled numbers by default. Teams SMS covers the United States, Puerto Rico and Canada only.
For a business whose customers text, that list matters more than the license price. A standalone system that treats texting as a core feature will give you a shared team inbox, MMS, and texting on a toll-free number, none of which Teams does today. Our guide to business text messaging services covers what that looks like and what the A2P 10DLC registration involves wherever you buy it, because the Campaign Registry step applies to every US provider, not just Microsoft.
When Teams Phone is the right buy
It is the right buy more often than a competitor would admit. If your company already runs on Microsoft 365, if your staff live in Teams all day, and if calls are mostly internal or to a known set of business contacts, putting the phone in the same app removes a second login and a second admin console. The 99.999 percent uptime SLA is real, the call quality is good, and the auto attendants and call queues are capable. At $10 on top of licenses you already own, it is hard to beat on price.
It is the wrong buy in three fairly specific situations. First, if you are not already on Microsoft 365, because you would be adopting a productivity suite to get a phone line. Second, if texting customers is part of how you work, for the reasons above. Third, if you need a toll-free number as your main published line with a reasonable minute allowance, since Teams Calling Plans do not support SMS on toll-free numbers and toll-free calling is handled through Communications Credits rather than a simple included bundle. That third case is common in service businesses, and it is worth pricing against providers that include one. Ooma includes a toll-free number with 500 inbound minutes on every plan from $19.95, while Nextiva sells it as an add-on on its $15 entry plan, a difference we work through in the Ooma vs Nextiva comparison.
How Teams Phone compares to standalone business phone systems
Priced honestly against the market, Teams Phone sits in the middle rather than at the bottom. The $21 true entry cost lands above Dialpad Connect Standard and Nextiva Core at $15 billed yearly, above Phone.com Basic at $15, and above Ooma Office Essentials at $19.95 with no contract at all. It lands below RingCentral Advanced at $25 and Quo Business at $23. What you get for that is a phone system that is genuinely native to the software your team already has open, which is worth a real premium to some buyers and nothing at all to others.
The comparison that decides it is usually not price but billing shape. Every Teams Phone rate quoted here is an annual subscription that auto-renews. If you want to keep the option of leaving, compare it to the month-to-month column rather than the annual one at each competitor, which is where the ranking reorders. We price thirteen providers both ways, with the fees included, in our business phone system cost breakdown, and the IVR system guide covers what an auto attendant involves whichever platform you land on. For the single closest head-to-head, our Zoom Phone vs Teams Phone comparison prices both stacks including the license underneath each.
One practical note for anyone doing this math across a whole tenant. Because Calling Plan minutes and SMS allowances are pooled at the tenant level but licensed per seat, it is easy to over-provision: you buy 40 Calling Plan licenses, pool 120,000 minutes, and use a fraction of them. Microsoft's admin center will show you the usage, but the license spend sits in a different report from the usage report, and most finance teams only see the invoice total. If you are already trying to get a straight answer about what every per-seat subscription in the business actually costs and who is using it, that is a software spend tracking problem worth solving once rather than a reason to pick a different phone vendor.
Frequently asked questions about Teams Phone pricing
How much does Microsoft Teams Phone cost per user?
Teams Phone Standard is $10 per user per month billed yearly, Teams Phone with pay-as-you-go calling is $13, Teams Phone with a domestic Calling Plan is $17, and the domestic and international plan is $34. Every tier also requires a separate Microsoft Teams license, which starts at $4 per user for Teams Essentials or $7 for Microsoft 365 Business Basic. A working phone line therefore starts near $21 per user.
Do I need a Microsoft 365 license to use Teams Phone?
Yes. Microsoft states on every Teams Phone plan that a separate license for Microsoft Teams is required. Teams Phone is an add-on and is never sold as a standalone phone service. The cheapest qualifying options Microsoft publishes are Teams Essentials at $4 per user per month and Microsoft 365 Business Basic at $7, both billed yearly.
How many minutes does Teams Phone include?
The $17 Teams Phone with Calling Plan tier includes 3,000 outbound domestic minutes per user per month in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, and 1,200 minutes in other markets. The $13 pay-as-you-go tier includes a number but bills outbound minutes by usage. Teams Phone Standard at $10 includes no minutes and no number at all.
Can Teams Phone send text messages?
Yes, in the United States, Puerto Rico and Canada, but only on Microsoft Calling Plan numbers and only after Microsoft registers your Brand and Campaign with The Campaign Registry. Included messages run from 0 on pay-as-you-go to 200 on the Domestic plan, pooled across the tenant, with overage at $0.0075 per segment. SMS is one-to-one chat only, and MMS, attachments and toll-free texting are not supported.
Is Teams Phone cheaper than RingCentral or Nextiva?
It depends whether you already pay for Microsoft 365. If you do, adding Teams Phone at $10 to $17 per user is cheaper than RingCentral Core at $20 or Nextiva Engage at $25 billed yearly. If you do not, the true cost of about $21 per user sits above Nextiva Core and Dialpad Standard at $15 and above Ooma Office at $19.95, and those plans include phone features such as an auto attendant and, at Ooma, a toll-free number.
What is the difference between Teams Phone Standard and a Calling Plan?
Teams Phone Standard is the phone system: extensions, routing, auto attendants, queues and voicemail inside Teams. A Calling Plan is the connection to the public telephone network, meaning a phone number and outbound minutes bought from Microsoft. You need both to make and receive ordinary phone calls, unless you supply the second part yourself through Operator Connect or Direct Routing with your own carrier.
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