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DeutschThe best Microsoft 365 license management tools
Every tool on this list reads the same Microsoft Graph data. What separates them is what they do with it: whether they join activity per person, put a cost on each wasted seat, remove the seat themselves, and what they cost to run.
Updated 6 November 2026.
How we picked
- It finds Microsoft 365 license waste itself (inactive, disabled or unassigned seats), not just license counts.
- It is sold or maintained as of November 2026.
- Its own website, documentation or repository says what it does, and cells link to that source where one applies. Where we found nothing, the table says Not stated.
We make LicenseMeter, so weigh its place on this list accordingly. Every other entry is described from its own website, with the gaps we found in LicenseMeter stated as plainly as theirs.
At a glance
Not stated means we could not find it on the vendor's own pages, not that it is missing. Not checked means we did not look into it for that product. Values link to where the claim comes from.
| Feature | LicenseMeter | Microsoft 365 admin center | CIPP | CoreView | AdminDroid | AvePoint Elements | ENow License Optimization |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Finding Microsoft 365 waste | |||||||
| Flags inactive or disabled licensed users | Yes | Partly | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Flags purchased but unassigned seats | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not stated |
| Reports unused Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not stated | Not stated | Yes |
| Puts a cost on each finding | Yes | No | Yes | Partly | Partly | Not stated | Yes |
| Uses your own contract prices | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Partly | Not stated | Yes |
| Coverage beyond Microsoft 365 | |||||||
| Reads license data from non-Microsoft SaaS | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No |
| Acting on findings | |||||||
| Removes or reassigns licenses itself | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not stated |
| Deployment and price | |||||||
| Can be self-hosted | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | Not stated |
| Free plan (not just a trial) | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | No |
| Prices published | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | Partly |
| Multi-tenant for MSPs | Yes | Partly | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not stated |
| EU hosting available | Yes | Yes | Not checked | Yes | Yes | Yes | Not stated |
1. LicenseMeter
Best for: Admins and MSPs who want the waste priced and watched every night, for free, with read-only access.
A free, MIT-licensed tool that connects read-only to Microsoft 365, finds disabled, inactive and unassigned paid seats and unused Copilot licenses, prices each finding, and cross-checks a handful of other SaaS tools against Entra ID. Built for Microsoft 365 admins and MSPs who want the waste number without buying a platform.
Its gaps: it never removes a license itself (it generates a script your admin runs), it does not suggest downgrades or bundles, and it reads 8 other SaaS tools rather than hundreds.
Pricing: Free, including continuous monitoring, with no time limit. Optional hosted plans: Pro at EUR 99 per month and MSP at EUR 299 per month for 10 client tenants. Self-hosted installs include every feature.
License: MIT
2. Microsoft 365 admin center
Best for: Small tenants and spot checks.
Microsoft's own console for every Microsoft 365 tenant: buying and assigning licenses under Billing, and usage reports per workload, including a Copilot usage report, under Reports > Usage.
The baseline every other tool reads from, and free. Joining activity per person and attaching costs is manual work.
- Included with every tenant and the source of truth for license counts.
- Where licenses are actually assigned and removed, so nothing extra needs access.
Pricing: Included with every Microsoft 365 subscription.
3. CIPP
Best for: MSPs who want a free, open-source portal that also acts on its findings.
The CyberDrain Improved Partner Portal: a free, AGPL-licensed, multi-tenant Microsoft 365 management portal built for MSPs and Microsoft partners, with a single-tenant mode. Next to user, mailbox, device, standards and security administration, it has a license report, an inactive users report, Copilot usage reports and a License Optimization tab that suggests removals, downgrades, bundles and term changes with estimated monthly savings from an editable price list.
The strongest free option for MSPs. Its optimization tab suggests removals, downgrades and term changes with savings and can remove licenses itself. Microsoft 365 only, and self-hosting needs an Azure subscription.
- Deeper Microsoft 365 license analysis: downgrade, bundle and monthly-to-yearly term suggestions based on what each person actually used, not only idle seats.
- Removes licenses from the same screen, in bulk, while LicenseMeter only generates a script for your admin to run.
- Multi-tenant by design through GDAP, with broad Microsoft 365 administration (standards and drift, security, Intune, Exchange) in the same tool.
- An active project with frequent releases and an established MSP community.
Pricing: Free to self-host in your own Azure subscription. Hosted CIPP from CyberDrain costs EUR 99 per month.
License: AGPL-3.0 · Last activity: v11.3.0, 2 November 2026
4. CoreView
Best for: Enterprises that want administration, automation and configuration resilience in one platform.
A hosted platform for administering, securing and governing Microsoft 365 at scale: configuration backup and drift detection, delegated administration, workflows and bulk actions, and license optimization with chargeback. Built for enterprise and public-sector IT teams and sold through MSP and reseller partners.
License optimization with license pools and chargeback is one part of a much broader Microsoft 365 platform. Quote-based.
- Acts on the tenant: onboarding and offboarding workflows assign and remove licenses, and bulk actions fix what the reports find.
- License pools and virtual tenants delegate license administration to regions or business units, with cost reporting per department for chargeback.
- Copilot policies for licensed users without Copilot activity or with low use over 30, 60 or 90 days.
- Covers far more than licensing: backup and restore of thousands of tenant settings, CIS and Essential 8 baselines, access reviews and SIEM export.
Pricing: Quote-based, by number of Microsoft 365 licensed identities. Every plan says Request pricing; there is no free plan.
5. AdminDroid
Best for: Admins who want broad Microsoft 365 reporting on their own Windows server.
A Microsoft 365 and Active Directory reporting, auditing and management application that you install on your own Windows server. It has a free edition and paid editions with 1,500+ reports, alerts, delegation and automation, including license and subscription reports.
A generous free edition and 1,500+ reports. Cost estimates come from a separate free PowerShell script rather than the product.
- A free edition with no expiry and no tenant size limit, including 140+ Entra ID reports on users, licenses and groups.
- Reporting and auditing far beyond licensing: 1,500+ reports across the major Microsoft 365 workloads, compliance packages and alerting.
- Can make changes from the same portal, with automation templates and approval workflows in paid editions.
- Runs entirely in your environment; collected data stays on the machine it is installed on.
Pricing: Free edition with no expiry. Paid editions are yearly and priced by licensed users: for 150 users, Standard $198, Pro $298 and Pro Plus $347 per year. Multi-tenant support is an add-on.
6. AvePoint Elements
Best for: MSPs standardizing client tenants on the Elements platform.
A multi-tenant SaaS platform for MSPs that run Microsoft 365 and Azure services for their clients. License Optimization is one of its modules: it finds unused, oversized and unassigned licenses across client tenants and supports cleanup and reallocation. It comes at no extra cost with the Baseline, Workspace or User and Device Management modules.
License optimization across client tenants, at no extra cost with other Elements modules, and EU data centers including Germany.
- Built for MSPs: dashboards across every client tenant, partner and reseller management, and distributor marketplace integration for purchasing and billing.
- Acts on findings: unassigns and downgrades licenses, with automated cleanup and reallocation.
- Sits inside a wider managed-service platform for security baselines, devices and workspace governance.
- A wide choice of EU data centers, including Germany West Central.
Pricing: Quote-based for partners (Request Pricing). License Optimization is included at no extra cost with Baseline, Workspace or User and Device Management.
7. ENow License Optimization
Best for: Enterprises preparing a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement renewal.
License optimization inside ENow's 365 Governance Accelerator, a hosted platform. It recommends licenses to reclaim or downgrade from inactive, overlapping, duplicate and underused licenses and shows potential annual savings from your own agreement prices. ENow pitches it for Microsoft Enterprise Agreement renewals, with an optional negotiation consulting service.
Looks for overlapping and duplicate licenses and downgrade candidates, priced with your agreement, with optional negotiation consulting.
- Finds overlapping, duplicate and downgrade-candidate licenses, not only unused ones, with a plain-language reason for each recommendation.
- A consulting service for Enterprise Agreement renewal negotiations.
Pricing: 365 Governance Accelerator Standard Edition is listed at $3,500 a year up to 1,000 users, $6,500 up to 5,000 and $9,500 above. Which edition includes License Optimization is not published.
Spot something wrong or out of date? Every claim on this page renders from one public file, src/lib/compare/roundups/best-microsoft-365-license-management-tools.ts. Open a pull request or email support@ugurlabs.com and we will fix it. Vendors are welcome to correct what we say about them.
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