Most people choose between Office 2024 and Microsoft 365 on the price they see first. The monthly subscription looks painless; the one-time licence looks like a lot of money for "just Word and Excel". Neither view is the whole picture, so here is how we think about it when a customer asks.
What you are really buying
Office 2024 is a perpetual licence. You pay once, install it on one computer, and it keeps working for as long as that computer does. Microsoft supports Office 2024 with security updates until October 9, 2029. You do not get new features along the way; you get the apps as they were released, kept secure.
Microsoft 365 is a subscription. For a yearly fee you get the always-current versions of the apps, 1 TB of OneDrive storage per person, and the ability to install on several devices. Stop paying and the apps fall into read-only mode within a few weeks.
The five-year sum
Take the common case: one person, one computer, who needs Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook.
- Office Home & Business 2024 bought once from us: about $229.
- Microsoft 365 Personal at the current US list price of $99.99 a year: about $500 over five years, and that assumes Microsoft never raises the price again (it did in 2025).
If you only need Word, Excel and PowerPoint, Office Home 2024 at $126.99 against five years of subscription is an even wider gap.
When the subscription is the right call
We sell perpetual licences, so take this with the obvious caveat — but we tell customers to stay on Microsoft 365 when:
- They genuinely use the 1 TB of OneDrive storage, or their photos already live there.
- They need Office on a laptop, a desktop and a tablet at the same time.
- They rely on features that only exist in the subscription apps, such as Copilot or the newest Excel data types.
- Their business turns software into a monthly operating expense on purpose.
When the one-time licence wins
- You keep computers for four or more years. The longer you keep the machine, the better perpetual looks.
- You install Office on one device and do not want to manage sign-ins and renewals.
- You are buying for a parent, a student or a small office where "it just works and nobody has to remember a renewal" is the main requirement.
- You want a predictable cost you can put through the books once.
The middle ground people forget
A perpetual licence still gets 5 GB of free OneDrive with a Microsoft account, and the Office apps still open and save to OneDrive. You lose the big storage allowance, not the cloud itself.
Our rule of thumb: if you would keep the subscription for more than two and a half years on the same computer, buy the licence instead.
If you are still unsure, send us the way you use Office and we will tell you honestly which one fits — including when the answer is "stay on the subscription".
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