Business Central costs £61.50 per user per month on the Essentials plan and £84.60 on Premium, according to Microsoft’s Business Central pricing page, checked on 20 October 2026. A lighter Team Members licence costs £6.20. These prices are for a yearly commitment and exclude VAT. Microsoft notes that the prices on its site are for information only, and your actual price is confirmed when you buy.
Other Dynamics 365 applications each have their own price. This post sets them out, explains which staff need which licence, and lists what else to budget for before you commit.
How Business Central licensing works
Business Central is licensed per user. Each licence is assigned to one named person, not shared. You choose between two plans. Essentials covers finance, sales, purchasing, stock, warehousing and projects. Premium includes everything in Essentials and adds manufacturing and service management.
One rule matters for budgets. Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide allows Essentials and Premium in the same tenant only in separate environments. A tenant is your organisation’s Microsoft cloud account. An environment is a separate copy of Business Central with its own companies and data. Users can only reach the environment their licence entitles them to. So if the business needs manufacturing or service management, plan on Premium for every full user who works in that environment.
You buy Business Central licences through a Microsoft partner. Microsoft sells them only through its Cloud Solution Provider programme, the scheme partners use to resell Microsoft’s cloud services (Microsoft Learn’s page on Business Central licensing).
Which staff need a full licence
Full users, on Essentials or Premium, are the people who do the work in the system. That usually means finance staff who post invoices and run the month end, order processors, buyers and warehouse staff.
Many others need much less. The Team Members licence lets a person read data and update existing records and entries. They can also approve or reject the workflow tasks assigned to them, create and edit sales and purchase quotes, and edit time sheets (Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide). That suits a manager who approves purchase orders and checks reports, or a salesperson who prepares quotes.
Some people need no Business Central licence at all. The licensing guide says staff with qualifying Microsoft 365 plans can view Business Central data inside Microsoft Teams at no additional cost, once your organisation has Business Central licences.
Two more licences are worth knowing about. Essentials and Premium let you add up to three External Accountant licences, so your outside accountant can work in the system. For a shared machine, such as a warehouse scanner or a shop-floor terminal, there is a device licence. Neither price is on Microsoft’s UK pricing page, so ask your partner.
What Dynamics 365 costs per user
Dynamics 365 is a family of applications, and each has its own per-user price. These are Microsoft’s UK prices from its Dynamics 365 Sales, Customer Service and Finance pricing pages, checked on the same date. All are per user per month, paid yearly and excluding VAT:
- Sales: Professional £50.00, Enterprise £80.70, Premium £115.30.
- Customer Service: Professional £38.40, Enterprise £80.70, Premium £149.90.
- Finance: Finance £161.50, Finance Premium £230.70.
Microsoft describes Finance as built for medium-sized organisations and enterprises, and some Dynamics 365 applications have a minimum number of licences you must buy (Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide). For most small and mid-size firms, Business Central is the finance application to price first.
If one person needs two Dynamics 365 applications, the first licence must be the highest priced, called the base licence. The others can be added at a lower attach price. A user with Business Central Premium as their base licence can add Sales Enterprise, Customer Service Enterprise or Field Service at the attach price (Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide). Microsoft’s UK pages do not show attach prices, so ask your partner for the current figure.
What else to budget for
Licences are only part of the cost. Plan for these as well.
Implementation comes first. A partner configures Business Central, moves your data across and trains your staff. The cost depends on the scope of the work, so agree the scope in writing before work starts.
Add-on apps come next. Partners publish apps for Business Central on Microsoft Marketplace, Microsoft’s catalogue of business software, and each publisher sets its own price.
Storage and environments come with a set allowance. According to the licensing guide, your subscription includes 80 GB of database storage, plus 3 GB for each Essentials user and 5 GB for each Premium user. It also includes one production environment for live work and three for testing. More of either can be bought.
AI agents cost extra. Copilot is included. Business Central’s agents, such as the Sales Order Agent and the Payables Agent, also need Copilot Credits, the units Microsoft charges for agent use, which are sold separately (Microsoft’s Business Central pricing page).
Finally, check the billing terms. The prices above are for a yearly commitment, so ask your partner what monthly billing would cost, and add VAT to every figure.
To build a rough budget, sort your people into three groups: full users, Team Members, and those who only need to view data in Teams. Multiply the first two groups by their prices, add VAT, then add the partner’s quote and any apps.
Where our products fit
Once the licences are in place, three of our own Business Central apps are worth knowing about. Nudge for Business Central follows up overdue invoices and quotes about to expire, through the customer’s salesperson. Signpost for Business Central sends each approval to the right approver, chosen by a dimension value such as department. Folio for Business Central archives your documents to SharePoint, in folders built to your own structure.