Graph API Licenses model

Question

I’m planning to use Microsoft Graph API to manage around 10,000 users.

The key activities on Entra ID include:

• Sending emails to their managers

• Adding/removing users from groups

• Enabling/disabling user accounts

I wanted to check if there are any licensing requirements for these actions—specifically for sending emails or enabling/disabling users. If licenses are required, would each of the 10,000 users need a license, or would only the administrator executing the operations/calling APIs need to be licensed?

Appreciate your guidance on this.

Answer 1

Yea you wont need to worry about licensing for sending, the mailboxes are already licensed.

What you may need to consider is throttling and the Exchange Limits

10,000 could run into issues depending on how you send them:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/throttling

Exo:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/servicedescriptions/exchange-online-service-description/exchange-online-limits?redirectedfrom=MSDN#receiving-limits

Answer 2

Hello @Khedkar, Vidisha,

Sending Emails to Managers (via Microsoft Graph API) requires license either the user must be assigned with Microsoft 365 or Office 365 license Or Microsoft 365 F1.

If no license is assigned to the user, then the user will get error like below:

• The account sending the email must have an Exchange Online license (this can be part of Office 365 or Microsoft 365).
• The recipients (managers) who receive the email do not need a license to receive the email. As long as they have a licensed mailbox (Exchange Online or part of Microsoft 365), they can receive the email.

If the mailboxes are already licensed (i.e., the user mailboxes, whether for the sender or the recipients, have Exchange Online or Microsoft 365 licenses), then you do not need to worry about additional licensing for sending emails using Microsoft Graph API.

>> Note: Microsoft 365 F1 license users can send mail and in your case as you have assigned 4k users have F1 licenses and remaining 6K have E3 and E5 licenses there is no need to assign any other license to send mail using Microsoft Graph API.

Adding/removing users from groups

• No additional license is required just for adding/removing users from security groups.
• However, if you're using dynamic groups, Group-based licensing, or Microsoft 365 groups, some features require Microsoft Entra ID Premium P1 or P2.

Enabling/Disabling User Accounts such as disabling an account does not require a special license for the user being modified.

Hope this clarifies things!

---

If this answer was helpful, please click "Accept the answer" and mark Yes, as this can help other community members.