Productivity · head to head
Microsoft 365 vs Microsoft OneNote
Microsoft 365
Productivity
Subscription bundle of the Office applications with mail, storage, meetings and organisational identity
- From
- $7/month
- Rated
- -
Microsoft OneNote
Productivity
Microsoft's free-form notebook, free with a Microsoft account and synced through OneDrive
- From
- Free
- Rated
- -
The short version
- Only Microsoft OneNote has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
- Each has a real cost: Microsoft 365 business plans are capped at 300 seats, so an organisation that grows past that must move to Enterprise plans, which changes both the price per user and the feature mix at the moment it can least afford a migration project.; Microsoft OneNote notes live in a proprietary notebook format on OneDrive or SharePoint and the only exports are a OneNote file, a PDF or a Word document, produced section by section, so a large notebook is effectively unmovable to any other tool.
- They diverge on capability: Microsoft 365 covers Office applications, Microsoft OneNote covers Free-form page canvas.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 30 August 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Microsoft 365 and Microsoft OneNote actually diverge.
| Attribute | Microsoft 365 | Microsoft OneNote |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $7/month | Free |
| Pricing model | subscription | freemium |
| Free tier | No | Yes |
| Platforms | Web | Web, IOS, Android, MacOS, Windows |
| Founded | Unknown | 1975 |
Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated), category (Productivity).
What each one covers
Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.
Only in Microsoft 365
- Office applications
- Hosted services
- Teams
- Microsoft Entra ID
- OneDrive storage
- Device management and endpoint protection
- Purview compliance
- Copilot
Only in Microsoft OneNote
- Free-form page canvas
- Notebook hierarchy
- Indexed handwriting
- Audio recording
- Web clipper and Outlook capture
- Shared notebooks
- Cross-platform clients
- Tags and cross-notebook search
What people use each for
The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.
Microsoft 365
- Any organisation that wants mail, documents, meetings and identity from one supplier on one bill.not Microsoft OneNote
- A company standardising on single sign-on, where Entra ID becomes the account other services authenticate against.not Microsoft OneNote
- Regulated work that needs retention, legal hold and eDiscovery across mail and documents, provided the tier that includes them is actually bought.not Microsoft OneNote
- A household that needs installed Office applications on several machines rather than browser-only editing.not Microsoft OneNote
Microsoft OneNote
- Handwritten notes on a pen tablet that you still need to find months later by searching for a word you wrote.not Microsoft 365
- Lecture or meeting notes where a recording needs to line up with what you were typing at the time.not Microsoft 365
- A team already inside Microsoft 365 that needs a shared notebook without buying anything or seeking approval.not Microsoft 365
- Collecting mixed material such as screenshots, clippings and sketches on one page, where a document editor would force a linear structure.not Microsoft 365
Where each one falls short
Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.
Microsoft 365
- Business plans are capped at 300 seats, so an organisation that grows past that must move to Enterprise plans, which changes both the price per user and the feature mix at the moment it can least afford a migration project.
- The compliance capabilities most organisations eventually need, including retention, data loss prevention, advanced eDiscovery and insider risk, sit at the top tier or in add-ons, so the real cost surfaces after an audit or a customer questionnaire rather than at purchase.
- Annual term subscriptions commit you for the year and month-to-month terms cost measurably more per seat, so the flexibility to reduce seats during a quiet period is bought at a permanently higher rate.
- Entra ID becomes the identity for everything else the organisation uses, which is the hardest kind of lock-in to put a number on, because leaving means re-federating every connected application rather than simply replacing a word processor.
- The licensing model is complicated enough that most organisations are either over-licensed or quietly non-compliant, and reconciling it usually requires a partner or a specialist, which is a recurring cost that never appears in the advertised per-user figure.
Microsoft OneNote
- Notes live in a proprietary notebook format on OneDrive or SharePoint and the only exports are a OneNote file, a PDF or a Word document, produced section by section, so a large notebook is effectively unmovable to any other tool.
- Personal notebooks consume OneDrive quota, which is 5 GB on a free Microsoft account, so a notebook full of scans, images and recordings quietly exhausts the whole account including the space Outlook needs for mail.
- Sync happens at section level and conflicts are resolved by placing both versions on the page, so simultaneous edits to a large or media-heavy section produce duplicated content that somebody has to merge by hand.
- Search behaves differently across clients, so what the Windows desktop app finds inside handwriting, images and attachments is not necessarily what the browser or mobile version finds, and the same query gives different answers on different devices.
- There is no relational structure, no database and no properties, so anything that needs a table of records with fields has to be maintained by hand or moved elsewhere, and OneNote's own tables cannot be queried or filtered.
Pricing, plan by plan
Microsoft 365
$7/month- Microsoft 365 Business Basic$7/month
- Email and calendar with 50 GB mailbox
- Web and mobile versions of Office apps
- Microsoft Teams included
- Microsoft 365 Business Standard$14/month
- Desktop versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook
- Email and Teams
- 1 TB cloud storage per user
- Microsoft 365 E5$60/month
- Comprehensive security and compliance
- All productivity apps
- Advanced analytics
Microsoft OneNote
FreeNo published plan breakdown. See the Microsoft OneNote review.
Which should you pick?
Choose Microsoft 365 if
- You need office applications.
- You also want hosted services.
Choose Microsoft OneNote if
- You need free-form page canvas.
- You want to start without paying.
- You work on Web, IOS, Android, MacOS, Windows.
- You also want notebook hierarchy.
Questions people ask
- Is Microsoft 365 or Microsoft OneNote better?
- Neither clearly leads. Microsoft 365 starts at $7/month and Microsoft OneNote at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
- Which is cheaper, Microsoft 365 or Microsoft OneNote?
- Microsoft OneNote has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at $7/month for Microsoft 365 and Free for Microsoft OneNote.
- Does Microsoft 365 or Microsoft OneNote run on more platforms?
- Microsoft 365 runs on Web. Microsoft OneNote runs on Web, IOS, Android, MacOS, Windows.
- Can I use Microsoft OneNote for free?
- Yes. Microsoft OneNote has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Microsoft 365 starts at $7/month.
- What is Microsoft 365 best used for?
- Microsoft 365 is most often used for any organisation that wants mail, documents, meetings and identity from one supplier on one bill., a company standardising on single sign-on, where entra id becomes the account other services authenticate against., regulated work that needs retention, legal hold and ediscovery across mail and documents, provided the tier that includes them is actually bought., a household that needs installed office applications on several machines rather than browser-only editing.. Of those, any organisation that wants mail, documents, meetings and identity from one supplier on one bill. and a company standardising on single sign-on, where entra id becomes the account other services authenticate against. are not what Microsoft OneNote is typically brought in for.
- What can Microsoft 365 do that Microsoft OneNote cannot?
- Microsoft 365 covers Office applications, Hosted services, Teams, Microsoft Entra ID. Microsoft OneNote covers Free-form page canvas, Notebook hierarchy, Indexed handwriting, Audio recording.
Answered from the vendors’ own pages
Microsoft 365: What is the difference between Microsoft 365 and Office?
Office was a one-off licence for a specific version. Microsoft 365 is a subscription covering the applications and the hosted services together, and when payment stops the applications drop to a reduced state rather than continuing as they were.
Microsoft OneNote: Is OneNote really free?
Yes. The application is free with a Microsoft account, with no time limit and no feature gate. What you may end up paying for is the OneDrive storage the notebooks consume.
Microsoft 365: Is Teams included?
Not automatically for newer customers. Microsoft unbundled Teams and now sells it alongside the suite, so check what a given quotation actually covers.
Microsoft OneNote: Can I keep notebooks off Microsoft's cloud?
The Windows desktop app can keep local notebooks, but they will not sync to other devices and any shared access requires OneDrive or SharePoint.
Microsoft 365: What happens to our files if we stop paying?
The documents remain yours and can be downloaded, but access to hosted mailboxes and sites ends after a retention window, so leaving requires a planned export rather than a cancellation.
Microsoft OneNote: How do I get my notes out?
Section by section as a OneNote file, a PDF or a Word document. A OneNote package preserves a whole notebook but only for another copy of OneNote. Third-party converters exist and the page layout usually does not survive them.
Microsoft 365: Is Copilot part of the subscription?
No. It is a per-user add-on on top of the base licence, generally with its own term commitment, and it is priced per seat regardless of how much any individual uses it.
Microsoft OneNote: Which version should I install?
Microsoft consolidated onto a single OneNote application on Windows after retiring the Store version, so install the one distributed with Microsoft 365 rather than looking for an alternative.
Related pages
More on Microsoft 365
More on Microsoft OneNote
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