Microsoft Teams Premium licensing

Article
11/18/2024
Applies to:

Microsoft Teams

Important

Teams Premium licenses are not a replacement for Teams licenses. Users must have both a Teams license and a Teams Premium license for Teams and Teams Premium features to work properly. For more information on Teams Premium requirements, see What are the requirements to purchase Teams Premium?.

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, webinars, and town halls.
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 provides answers to questions like:

Microsoft Teams Premium licensing

To learn how to set up and configure Teams Premium features, see Microsoft Teams Premium - Overview for administrators, which also includes links to end-user documentation.

Important

For admins to be able to manage Teams Premium features, their tenant needs at least one user with an active Teams Premium license.

How does Teams Premium compare to Teams?

Purchasing the Teams Premium add-on license provides admins and end users with extra features on top Teams along with their Microsoft 365 subscription.

The following tables compare key features between Teams and Teams Premium. Because Teams Premium is an add-on license to Teams, users need Teams and Teams Premium licenses to access all features listed in the following table. Teams Premium licenses don't replace users' standard Teams licenses.

Meetings

Feature	Teams	Teams Premium
Host and attend Teams Meetings
Experience Teams' standard look and feel
Use standard and custom meeting backgrounds at the user level
Read live captions during meetings and live events
Set up a green room for meeting presenters and organizers
View attendance reports
In-progress meeting real time telemetry with 24 hour retention
Customize meeting templates for your organization
Add organization branding to meeting lobbies
Customize meeting backgrounds for your organization
Customize Together mode scenes for your organization
Add branding to meeting invites and meeting join launch pages
Read live translated captions during meetings
Manage what attendees see
Use RTMP-In for meetings
Hide attendee names
View engagement reports
Turn on eCDN for view-only meetings*
Audio quality alerts
Video quality alerts
Screen sharing quality alerts
Automatic real time telemetry with 7 day retention
Prevent users from sharing content when attending external Teams meetings
View how many users attended meetings that used a Teams Premium feature
View the number of meetings used a Teams Premium feature
View the number of meetings each user attended that used a Teams Premium feature

* To take advantage of eCDN for all attendees, either a Teams Premium or standalone eCDN license is required. eCDN can be acquired as a standalone license, and more licenses can be purchased outside of Teams Premium, if needed. To learn about eCDN licensing, see Microsoft eCDN.

Webinars

Feature	Teams	Teams Premium
Require attendees to register
Assign a co-organizer
Limit the number of people who can register
Allow registered users to bypass the lobby
Turn on Q&A for webinars with up to 1,000 attendees
View attendance reports
Set up a green room for webinar presenters and organizers
Manage what attendees see
Send custom and reminder emails to registrants
Create a webinar wait list
Webinar organizers can view engagement reports
Manually approve registrants
View engagement reports
Limit the day and time when people can register
Use RTMP-In for webinars
View how many users attended webinars that used a Teams Premium feature
View the number of webinars used a Teams Premium feature
View the number of webinars each user attended that used a Teams Premium feature.

Town halls

Feature	Teams	Teams Premium
Broadcast town halls to 10k attendees
Host up to 15 town halls simultaneously
View attendance reports
Manage what attendees see
Provide town hall video on demand
Provide a unique join link for presenters
Set up a green room for presenters and organizers
Turn on third party or Microsoft eCDN for town halls
Use RTMP-In for town halls ¹
Town hall Q&A capacity of 10k attendees
Organizers can pre-select six languages for live translated captions
Broadcast town halls to 20k attendees
Host up to 50 town halls simultaneously
Town hall Q&A capacity of 20k attendees
Use Microsoft eCDN for Premium town halls ²
Choose an eCDN provider for town halls ²
View Microsoft Town hall insights
Town hall organizers can view engagement reports
Edit town hall emails
Town hall attendee reactions
Organizers can pre-select 10 languages for live translated captions
Real time monitoring of the attendee experience
View how many users attended town halls that used a Teams Premium feature
View the number of town halls used a Teams Premium feature
View the number of town halls each user attended that used a Teams Premium feature.
Event chat for attendees

¹ If RTMP-In is enabled for a town hall, live translated captions aren't available to the attendees even if the organizer selects the languages before the town hall starts. ² To take advantage of eCDN for all attendees, either a Teams Premium or standalone eCDN license is required. eCDN can be acquired as a standalone license, and more licenses can be purchased outside of Teams Premium, if needed. To learn about eCDN licensing, see Microsoft eCDN.*

Advanced Collaboration Tools

Feature	Teams	Teams Premium
Admin can view insights on inactive external domains*
Admin can view insights on inactive teams*
Admin can view insights on external collaboration by user*
Admin can view insights on external collaboration by team*
Admin can view insights on external collaboration by guest*
Users can block incoming chats from people in your organization

* Customers must acquire and assign Teams Premium licenses to each user in their tenant for its use of Advanced collaboration analytics.

Meetings protection

Feature	Teams	Teams Premium
Manage meeting lobbies
End-to-end encryption for one-to-one calls
Moderate meeting chats
Control who can present
Add watermarks to meetings
End-to-end encryption for meetings
Control who can record
Prevent copy/paste in meeting chats
Assign Microsoft Purview Information Protection sensitivity labels for meetings*
Custom user policy packages
Prevent users from sharing content in external Teams meetings

* This feature is only available to Teams Premium users with a Microsoft 365 E5, E5 Compliance, F5 Compliance, or F5 Security + Compliance subscription. For more information on licensing requirements, see What are the requirements to purchase Teams Premium?

Intelligent recap

Intelligent meeting recap

In the meeting recap, your users can find the most important parts of a meeting, captured and organized in one place. With a Teams Premium license, your users can get a more personalized rundown of their meetings with intelligent meeting recap. To learn more about intelligent meeting recap, see Meeting recap in Microsoft Teams.

Feature	Teams	Teams Premium
View recordings of meetings
View meeting transcripts
View and use files added to meetings
View and use apps added to meetings
Navigate meeting recordings with autogenerated chapters (coming soon)
View when a screen was shared in the meeting transcript
View time markers in meeting recordings when you joined or left a meeting
Jump to different speakers with speaker timeline markers
View AI-generated notes and tasks from meetings
View when you were mentioned in a meeting*

* Mentions of a user's name is pulled from the meeting transcript, not from an @mention tag in the meeting chat.

Note

Intelligent recap features will be available as a part of the Copilot for Microsoft 365 license.

Virtual Appointments

Feature	Teams	Teams Premium
Access Virtual Appointments with the Bookings app for scheduling, appointment management, and email notifications
Integrate Virtual Appointments using APIs
Join appointments from a browser
Join appointments in Teams
Allow users to join a virtual lobby waiting room
Integrate with Microsoft Forms
Customize the lobby waiting room with themes and logos
Send SMS notifications*
Organizational and departmental analytics
View and manage scheduled appointments in the queue
View and manage on-demand appointments in the queue
Send post-appointment follow-ups (coming soon)

* SMS notifications for Virtual Appointments are currently available in the US, Canada, and UK.

Meet app

The Meet app in Teams allows users to view important details of their meetings including upcoming meetings, meeting recaps, meeting recordings, and meeting @mentions. To learn how to use the Meet app, see Stay on top of meetings with Meet in Microsoft Teams.

Feature	Teams	Teams Premium
View and prepare upcoming meetings
Join ongoing meetings
View and recap meetings you attended
Filter meetings by All, with Content, and Recorded
View and recap meetings that you missed
View and recap meetings that mention you*
View when you were mentioned in a meeting*
View AI-generated tasks from meetings

* Mentions of a user's name is pulled from the meeting transcript, not from an @mention tag in the meeting chat.

Places workplace collaboration

Note

This feature is currently in Public Preview.

Microsoft Places allows you and your organization to build a smart workplace. With a Teams Premium license, your users can experience upgraded features that support advanced booking and space analytics. As an admin, you have access to advanced management capabilities. To learn more about Places, see Microsoft Places overview.

Feature	Teams	Teams Premium
In-person events
Hybrid RSVP
Places card
Work plans
Workplace presence
Individual desk booking
Intelligent suggestions
Places explorer
Places finder
Quick book
Room check-in and auto release
Space analytics
Team guidance

Queues app

The Queues app is a Teams-native solution designed to empower organizations to manage customer engagements efficiently, unlocking a set of advanced call functionalities for Teams Phone Call queues and Auto attendants. To learn more about the Queues app, see Use the Queues app for Microsoft Teams and Manage the Queues app.

Feature	Teams	Teams Premium
Call queue and Auto attendant management directly within Teams
Real-time metrics for Call queues and Auto attendants within Queues app
Historical reporting for Call queues and Auto attendants within Queues app

For a complete list of features available in the Queues app, see Manage voice applications policies.

Immersive Mesh Experiences

With Immersive spaces in Teams, your users can join a 3D immersive meeting experience for up-to 16 people right from any Teams meeting.
With a Teams Premium license, your distributed workforce can connect in 3D immersive experiences using the Mesh application with up-to 200 attendees. To learn more about Mesh, see Microsoft Mesh overview.

Feature	Teams	Teams Premium
Avatars in Teams
3D immersive meetings in Teams
Custom immersive spaces in Microsoft Mesh
Larger capacity immersive meetings

Are there previous Teams features that moved to Teams Premium?

With the general release of Teams Premium on February 1, 2023, the following Teams features moved from Teams to Teams Premium.

Live translation of meeting captions.
PPT live chapters.
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.

What are the requirements to purchase Teams Premium?

Teams Premium is available to purchase worldwide through all Microsoft purchasing channels, including EA, EAS, CSP, Web Direct, NCE - Customer led, and NCE - Partner led.

Before you can purchase Teams Premium licenses for your users, ensure your tenant and users meet the requirements.

The tenant requirement is:

Must be a commercial, worldwide public sector, EDU, GCC, GCC High, DoD, or non-profit tenant.
- Currently, Microsoft doesn't offer an EDU-specific license or EDU discounts for Teams Premium.

The user requirement is:

An Office 365 or Microsoft 365 subscription and a Teams license.
- For new customers, Teams licenses must be purchased separately from Office 365/Microsoft 365 licenses, but both licenses are still required for Teams Premium.

Can I acquire Teams Premium features without the Teams Premium license?

Teams Premium bundles a large set of advanced Teams features under a single license. There are instances where a single Teams Premium feature could be acquired through other licensing scenarios. However, the Teams Premium license is designed to be the most holistic and simplest avenue to enhance your organization's and users' Teams experiences.

Which users should be assigned Teams Premium licenses?

Teams Premium is licensed on a per-user subscription basis and is subject to the Universal Terms for Online Services. You should plan to assign a Teams Premium user subscription license to every user you want to provide Teams Premium features for.

Which features are applied to organizers, attendees/users, or admins?

A user's Teams experience depends on their Teams license and their event role. Teams checks a user’s license and role feature by feature to deliver the appropriate experience.

For example, in a Teams meeting, Teams checks each users’ type of Teams license and whether they're a meeting organizer or attendee. These factors determine a user’s experience and potentially other attendees’ experience during the meeting.

Organizer-based features: Some Teams Premium features are applied at the organizer level. If an event organizer has a Teams Premium license, the organizer-based features are shared and made accessible to the attendees only during the event.

Note

If an organizer with a Teams Premium license appoints a delegate to create their meetings, the delegate doesn't need a Teams Premium license for organizer-based features to work.
Attendee-based features: Some Teams Premium features are applied at the attendee/user level. These Teams Premium features aren't shared or made accessible to other attendees during the event and only benefit the Teams Premium licensed users.
Admin-based features: Some Teams Premium features primarily benefit an organization's IT admins. These features are only accessible to Teams admins with a Teams Premium license.

The following table shows which Teams Premium features provide primary value to organizers, attendees, or IT admins.

Premium Value	Features Applied at Organizer Level	Features Applied at Attendee/User Level	Features Applied at the IT Admin Level
More intelligence	Live translation for captions (40 languages)	AI-generated chapters for intelligent meeting recap recordings Personalized timeline markers in meeting recordings Speaker timeline markers Intelligent speaker search in the transcript AI-generated notes and tasks	Advanced collaboration analytics
More personalized	Meeting templates (configured by IT admin) Custom meeting branding Custom immersive spaces in Microsoft Mesh	Custom organization backgrounds Organization together mode scenes Custom user policy packages View aggregated usage of Teams Premium features by users in your org
More protected	Watermarking Who can record End-to-end encryption for online meetings (up to 200) Hide attendees' names E5 customers: Microsoft Purview Information Protection sensitivity labels for Meetings	Block incoming chats from people in the organization Prevent users from sharing content in external Teams meetings Audio quality alerts Video quality alerts Screen sharing quality alerts Automatic real time telemetry with 7 day retention Prevent users from sharing content when attending external Teams meetings
Advanced Virtual Appointments	Custom lobby room with branding, logos, and more SMS notifications	On-demand and scheduled appointment functionality and queue views Analytics at departmental and organizational level SMS notifications At the user level, these features apply to any user in the tenant who wants access to pre and post-appointment actions and data, like a meeting scheduler, supervisor, or admin.
Advanced Webinars	Manage attendee view Reminder emails Wait lists and manual approval Limit registration date and time RTMP-In
Advanced Town halls	Scale up to 20,000 attendees Concurrency limit of 50 meetings Email customization Microsoft eCDN support Real-time organizer analytics Pre-select 10 languages for attendee captions Town hall attendee reactions Event chat		Real time monitoring of the attendee experience
Microsoft eCDN		Works with Teams view-only meetings, live events, and town halls Microsoft eCDN included as a part of the Teams Premium bundle

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 don'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 gone away and isn't related to Teams Premium.

Can I experience Teams Premium before buying licenses?

Organizations can try Teams Premium by admins purchasing the zero-cost Teams Premium 30-day trial license available in the Microsoft 365 admin center. Users can also acquire a Teams Premium self-service trial license that lasts for 60 days.

When admins purchase a Teams Premium trial license, they have 25 licenses to assign to users. Those 25 users can experience and test Teams Premium features as they become available.

Admins can manage Teams Premium features for their licensed users, whether they were acquired by the admin or users.

How does the Teams Premium self-service trial license work?

Microsoft offers users the ability to acquire their own Teams Premium trial licenses, also referred to as self-service trial licenses.

Individuals can sign up for Teams Premium self-service trials on their organization’s existing Microsoft 365 tenants with their business sign-ins. They can try out the full functionality of the product for 60 days before requesting their admins purchase paid licenses. Individuals can start the trial directly from Microsoft Teams (Desktop and Web).

There's no requirement to input payment information when signing up for a trial. Admins maintain full control of paying for subscriptions. Admins can't sign up for self-service trials and should refer to the guidance for admins trials discussed in the following section.

These self-service trials are available worldwide. They aren't available for Government or EDU customers.

Can I manage my users' self-service trial licenses?

The self-service trials for Teams Premium don't compromise IT oversight or control. If you're an admin, you can use subscription management capabilities to oversee and manage trial licenses on the Licenses page in the Microsoft 365 admin center.

For more information on enabling or disabling self-service trials for your users, see Manage self-service purchases and trials.

What are the terms and conditions of the Teams Premium self-service trial?

By participating in this free trial (“Trial”) of the Microsoft 365 services, you agree to be bound by our Product Terms and the following terms (“Trial Terms”), provided that in the event of a conflict the Trial Terms shall govern. The Trial period is for thirty (30) or sixty (60) days from the date you activate the Trial depending on the trial you start. Unless you purchase a subscription to the Microsoft 365 services before the expiration or termination of your Trial period, you no longer have access to (i) any data related to the features of the Trial that you entered into your account, and (ii) configurations or customizations made by you or for you using the features of the Trial. Microsoft reserves the right to terminate or modify the Trial and/or these Trial Terms at any time without prior notice and without liability. Trial offer isn't available for customers in all regions and countries.

What happens if my users' trial licenses expire?

After the trial licenses expire, the licensed users lose all Teams Premium functionality. There's 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 remain in the tenant but are grayed out and unusable.

If your organization wishes to keep Teams Premium features after the trial period, you need to purchase Teams Premium licenses 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.

After you purchase your Teams Premium licenses, assign the licenses to your users in the Microsoft 365 admin center. It can take up to 24 hours before the assignment takes effect.

For instructions on assigning licenses in the Microsoft 365 admin center, see Assign Microsoft 365 licenses to users.

Is admin configuration required after assigning users licenses?

Many Teams Premium features require an IT admin to configure the feature before users can access the feature.

The following list indicates Teams Premium features that require admin configuration in the Teams admin center before users can access the feature:

Using end-to-end encryption on meetings up to 200 participants.
Adding watermarks to meetings.
Adding sensitivity labels.
Preventing copy and paste in meeting chats.
Using organization customized backgrounds.
Using organization customized Together mode scenes.
- Admin must create the custom Together mode scene.
Being assigned a custom policy package.
Using organization customized meeting templates.
Seeing organization customized branding.
Using eCDN for town halls, view-only meetings, and live events.
Using RTMP-In.
Customizing Virtual Appointment lobby rooms with branding.
Hiding attendees names from meetings and webinars.
Using Priority account chat controls.

For links to instructions, see Microsoft Teams Premium - Overview for administrators.

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