Microsoft 365 developer program's E5 subscription requires me to enter an US address

Question

Hello, I was trying to set up a Microsoft 365 E5 sandbox within the Microsoft 365 developer program. To set up the sandbox I am required to create and select a billing account. Unfortunately, if I am following the Link to create such an account, United States is preselected as a country and cannot be changed. Since I am not a US citizen, I cannot progress from here.

I can open a new window, copy the URI and change the URI parameter country to de. Then I can enter my credit card information and address and the credit card check runs also through. But after that the window is just idling. I guess it needs to send information back to the origin window and is not designed to be opened in a new browser window manually.

So what can I do to get that E5 subscription? Any ideas?

Answer 1

I wasn't able to resolve the error, but I found a workaround.

At the beginning of the process, you're asked to choose between setting up an Instant Sandbox or a Configurable Sandbox. Until now, I had always selected the Instant Sandbox, which then prompted me to provide payment information with the restrictions mentioned above.

After selecting the Configurable Sandbox instead, I was no longer asked for payment information and was finally able to continue working.

Answer 2

Hi @Stephan

Please note that we're not Microsoft support, this is a user-to-user support forum. Moderators here don’t have backend access to Microsoft systems, so we can only provide technical guidance based on the public resources.  

Microsoft has an official article that describes the expected setup flow: Set up a Microsoft 365 developer sandbox subscription | Microsoft Learn.

Based on that documentation, there are two important points that help clarify your situation:

1.Region being fixed to United States / North America

The article notes:

So even if the setup shows United States or does not allow changing the country, this does not prevent you from creating or using the sandbox, and it is not tied to citizenship.

2.No payment card is required for the sandbox

The same article also states that “Commercial transactions, including purchasing paid services, are not currently supported,” which further supports that this is a developer subscription setup rather than a paid purchase flow.

Because of this, being prompted to create a billing account is not part of the normal developer sandbox provisioning flow. This indicates that:

• the process has redirected to a standard Microsoft 365 trial/commercial signup flow, or
• the session is inconsistent and is triggering the billing onboarding path incorrectly

To align with the documented flow:

• Start from the Developer Program dashboard directly
• Use a clean browser session (InPrivate/Incognito)
• Select Instant sandbox

If the billing step still appears, the recommended next step is to contact Microsoft Developer Support for further assistance, as forum contributors do not have access to backend provisioning or billing systems.

Please note that this is a paid support ticket, which means it requires an active support plan or a one-time support purchase. However, the benefit of using this channel is that your inquiry will be routed directly to the Microsoft Product Group responsible for the specific service or feature in question. This team includes engineers and developers who work on the product itself, so they are best positioned to provide accurate, in-depth, and authoritative answers especially for complex or edge-case scenarios that go beyond publicly available documentation or community knowledge.

Thank you for your understanding.

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