Google Workspace pricing vs Microsoft 365 — plans and what you get in a small business

Google Workspace pricing starts at CHF 7 per user a month for the cheapest business plan, Business Starter, but only with an annual commitment; without one, the same plan costs CHF 8.40 (Google Workspace pricing, Swiss store, read 2 October 2026). Microsoft 365 for business starts at CHF 5.67 for Business Basic with an annual commitment, and in the EEA edition without Teams from CHF 4.37 (Microsoft 365 business plan comparison, read 2 October 2026). Both suites charge per user, both sell their business plans for up to 300 people, and both publish Swiss franc prices, so the two can be compared directly.

Past the entry price the two are hard to tell apart. The differences that matter in a small business lie elsewhere: in the storage model, in which plans include desktop apps, in meeting limits, and in how much AI is actually included. In a one- to three-person business the choice usually comes down to two questions: do clients send you files in Word and Excel formats, and do you need those apps installed on a computer. Microsoft states that its prices exclude VAT; Google's pricing page doesn't say either way, so its figures below are simply the list prices shown on the page.

Google Workspace pricing in 2026: three Business plans

Google quotes Workspace per user per month, in Swiss francs on its Swiss pages. Every plan has two prices — with an annual commitment and without one:

Source: workspace.google.com, Swiss (CHF) pricing, read 2.10.2026, list price per user per month (the page doesn't state whether VAT is included).

Two things in this table are easy to miss. First, the "Annual" toggle is on by default, so the first price you see is the annual-commitment one. Second, an annual commitment doesn't mean paying up front: every plan's billing is monthly — you commit for a year, but you're invoiced every month. The flexible plan costs about a fifth more across the board (our arithmetic: CHF 8.40 ÷ CHF 7 = 1.20, CHF 16.80 ÷ CHF 14 = 1.20).

Starter, Standard and Plus "can be purchased for a maximum of 300 users"; Enterprise has "no minimum or maximum user limit". A 14-day trial is available before purchase. Above the price table sits a promotional-discount banner; the footnote limits the introductory price to new customers' first 20 users for 12 months — don't budget by it, because after that window the standard price applies.

In 2025 Google folded its Gemini AI assistant into the Workspace price instead of selling it as a separate add-on. Google illustrated the change with a dollar example: a Business Standard customer with the Gemini Business add-on used to pay $32 per user a month, and after the change, $14 — "only $2 more than they were paying for Workspace without Gemini" (Google Workspace blog, 15 January 2025). New customers got the new prices the next day; for existing customers, monthly pricing changed from 17 March 2025 or at the renewal date of an annual plan, whichever came later, and pricing for very small business customers from 7 July 2025. The blog only gives US dollar figures, so there's no official before-and-after in Swiss francs — today's price already includes Gemini.

Microsoft 365 for business: price in Swiss francs and three kinds of commitment

Microsoft's Swiss pricing pages quote Microsoft 365 for business in Swiss francs, with a note on every price: "La T.V.A. n'est pas comprise dans le prix" — VAT is not included. Microsoft has no English-language Swiss store, so the plan pages we cite are the French-language Swiss ones.

Source: Business Basic, Business Standard, Business Premium and the plan comparison, read 2.10.2026, price per user per month in CHF, excluding VAT.

If you're searching for "Office 365 for business", you'll land on the same plans: Microsoft now sells them as Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Standard and Premium.

Microsoft offers three ways to commit: a monthly commitment with monthly payment, which you can cancel at any time; an annual commitment with monthly payment; and an annual commitment paid for the whole year in one go. Paying a year upfront is therefore only one option among three. As with Google, the plan without a yearly commitment costs about a fifth more (our arithmetic: CHF 6.80 ÷ CHF 5.67 ≈ 1.20). Once a paid subscription begins, Microsoft gives a 7-day cancellation window with a prorated refund.

Microsoft also sells "EEA" editions without Teams, and the Swiss pricing pages list them too ("EEE (sans Teams)"). On the "Offres sans Teams" tab, with an annual commitment: Business Basic EEA (no Teams) CHF 4.37, Business Standard EEA (no Teams) CHF 8.73 and Business Premium EEA (no Teams) CHF 15.21; the Copilot bundles cost CHF 16.43 (Standard) and CHF 23.31 (Premium). The same tab lists "Microsoft 365 Apps for business" at CHF 10.10 per user a month with an annual commitment — desktop apps "à l'exception des chats et des appels" (excluding chat and calling): Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook plus 1 TB of cloud storage per user, but no business mailbox. We didn't read a monthly-commitment price for these plans. Comparing list prices alone, Standard EEA (no Teams) is cheaper than the Apps-only plan and still comes with a mailbox in your domain.

Microsoft's prices change. The comparison page points to an FAQ on packaging and pricing updates from 1 July 2026, covering Business Basic, Business Standard and Apps for Business; Business Premium isn't on that list. Existing customers see the new prices "at their next renewal after July 1, 2026." The prices in the table above are what the Swiss pricing pages showed on 2 October 2026.

Entry plans side by side

The two most common comparisons are Workspace Business Starter against Microsoft 365 Business Basic, and Workspace Business Standard against Microsoft 365 Business Standard.

Sources: Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 pricing pages (linked above) and Microsoft Learn, Teams limits; read 2.10.2026. Price per user per month in CHF; Microsoft's prices exclude VAT, Google's page doesn't say.

For a three-person team paying the annual-commitment price, the yearly bill (our own arithmetic on the table above) comes to CHF 252 for Workspace Starter versus CHF 204.12 for M365 Basic, and CHF 504 for Workspace Standard versus CHF 408.24 for M365 Standard. The gap is real, but at this price level the office suite is one of the smaller technology costs — what matters more is whether the plan fits how you actually work.

Storage and mail

Google and Microsoft split storage differently, and the difference matters once a team works unevenly. Google describes its model as "flexible pooled storage per user that is shared across the organisation". In Business Starter, each user contributes 30 GB to the pool; in Business Standard, 2 TB; in Business Plus, 5 TB. For three accounts on Starter, that's a 90 GB shared pool (our arithmetic) — if one person keeps a lot of files and two keep almost none, the pool absorbs the difference.

Microsoft allocates storage per person and keeps files separate from mail. Every business plan gives 1 TB in OneDrive per user. The mailbox has its own limit: the plan comparison gives 100 GB of primary mailbox storage plus 50 GB of archive per user for Basic and Standard, and 100 GB plus a 1.5 TB archive for Premium.

The second question is desktop office apps. Business Standard and Premium let you install the classic Microsoft 365 apps on up to 5 PCs or Macs, 5 tablets and 5 mobile devices per user. Business Basic is, per the plan table, web and mobile apps only — Word and Excel in the browser and on a phone, with nothing to install on a computer. Google's pricing page doesn't list installable desktop office apps at all; the only "desktop" item in its comparison table is "Drive for desktop", included in every plan, alongside "Interoperability with Office files", also in every plan.

If you need classic Excel on a laptop, the cheapest Microsoft plan with a mailbox in your own domain that includes it is Business Standard — CHF 11.34 with Teams, or CHF 8.73 in the EEA edition without Teams. Basic doesn't give you that. Where a mailbox can live, and what it costs on its own, is in business email. Both suites assume an address on your own domain; our own rate for registering and renewing one is in web hosting cost.

Video meetings: Meet and Teams

Meeting limits in both suites are generous for a small business. The difference that matters at the entry level is recording.

In Google Meet, the maximum number of participants depends on the plan: 100 on Business Starter, 150 on Business Standard, 500 on Business Plus and 1,000 on Enterprise. The maximum meeting length is "24 hours" on every plan. Recordings saved to Google Drive are available from Business Standard up; Starter has neither recording nor noise cancellation.

Microsoft Teams on Business Basic, Standard and Premium supports meetings and calls "for up to 300 people", with a separate 30-hour limit for meetings and events such as webinars and town halls (Microsoft Learn, updated 16 July 2026, read 2.10.2026). The same page notes that "Teams live events retired on June 30, 2026" — any guide you find about running a Teams live event is describing a feature that no longer exists.

If you pick an EEA edition without Teams, you don't get Teams, and meetings run in another tool. If video calls with clients are central to how you work, check that before choosing the cheaper CHF 4.37 variant.

AI in the plan: Gemini and Copilot

In Workspace, AI is part of the plan price. In Microsoft 365, the assistant that actually works on your files is a paid add-on.

Google Workspace Business Starter includes "Gemini AI assistant in Gmail" and a Gemini app chat. In the comparison table, "Gemini in Workspace apps" is marked "Limited" for Starter: Gemini in Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive, Meet and Google Chat is only available from Business Standard up.

In Microsoft 365, the starting point is Copilot Chat. A footnote on the comparison page says it is available at no additional cost to Microsoft Entra ID users with an eligible Microsoft 365 subscription; using agents requires a separate Azure subscription, billed by usage. Microsoft's FAQ is explicit about the limit: Copilot Chat doesn't integrate with Microsoft 365 apps or with your organisation's files, emails or chats. The assistant that works on your own documents and mail is Microsoft 365 Copilot — new customers buy it bundled in a plan with Copilot; existing customers on a qualifying plan can add it on.

The "Microsoft 365 Copilot Business" add-on is listed at CHF 17.00 per user a month with an annual commitment, currently discounted to CHF 14.57. The offer runs from 1 July to 31 December 2026, only for existing Microsoft 365 customers with an eligible Business plan, and requires an annual commitment; the promotional price applies to the first year only.

The bundle is also cheaper than add-on pricing on its own: Business Standard with Copilot costs CHF 19.03, while Business Standard plus the add-on at full price comes to CHF 11.34 + CHF 17.00 = CHF 28.34 (our arithmetic, annual commitment). If you already know at launch that you want Copilot working on your files, buying the bundled plan directly is the only option anyway — new customers can't buy the add-on separately.

Security and administration

Security and admin features in both suites scale up with price. A small business usually doesn't need the top plan, but it should know where the lines sit.

In Google Workspace, Business Plus adds "Vault to retain, archive and search data", "Secure LDAP", "Advanced endpoint management" and "Enhanced security and management controls." Only Enterprise adds "Data loss prevention (DLP)", "Context-aware access", "Enterprise data regions" and S/MIME encryption.

In Microsoft 365, every business plan includes automatic spam and malware filtering (Exchange Online Protection). Business Premium also includes Microsoft Defender for Business, which Microsoft's FAQ describes as ransomware protection with automatic threat disruption, advanced antivirus capabilities and tools for managing vulnerabilities. Microsoft also sells Defender for Business as a standalone add-on; a figure was seen on the Swiss page but we couldn't identify which plan it applies to, so we're not quoting it.

Neither Google's nor Microsoft's pricing page makes a data-protection compliance claim, and for a Swiss business the reference point is the revised Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP) in any case. With a cloud suite, what you check is the data-processing agreement and the data-storage location — how to do that is in cloud data security. Whichever suite you choose, turn on two-factor authentication on the admin account and plan who takes over access when someone leaves the company — those rules are gathered in protecting company data.

How to choose: five questions

In a small business, the choice comes down to how you work, not a feature list. Answer these five questions before buying a plan for the first person.

1. What format do client files arrive in? If you're editing documents and spreadsheets clients send you in Word and Excel formats, and sending them back with changes, test that workflow during the trial period in each suite.
2. Do you need office apps installed on a computer? If so, among the plans with a mailbox in your own domain, only Microsoft 365 Business Standard and Premium include them. Business Basic and Workspace's price list don't. If you only need the apps and your mail already lives elsewhere, there's a "Microsoft 365 Apps for business" plan at CHF 10.10 — though Business Standard EEA (no Teams) costs less (CHF 8.73) and comes with a mailbox.
3. How is storage used across the team? Workspace's shared pool evens out uneven usage between people. Microsoft's per-person allocation gives everyone plenty of file storage (1 TB) with a separate mailbox limit.
4. Do you record meetings, and how many people join them? In Workspace, recording starts at Business Standard. In Teams, the limit is 300 people across all three business plans that include Teams, but the EEA edition without Teams doesn't give you Teams meetings at all.
5. How much AI do you want included, and bundled or added on? Gemini in Docs and Meet is in Workspace's price from Business Standard. In Microsoft 365, the assistant that works on your files is a separate cost — either bundled into a Copilot plan from day one, or added later if your existing plan qualifies.

If you change your mind later, moving isn't necessarily manual work: Business Standard in Workspace includes a "Google Workspace Migrate tool for data migration." If all you need to start is an address on your domain, and the office suite can wait, start with business email. What a business spends in its first year beyond technology is covered in how much it costs to start a business.