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LicenseMeter vs the Microsoft 365 admin center
The admin center is included, and for what it claims to do it is authoritative: Billing > Licenses is the source of truth for assignment counts, and Reports > Usage answers most spot-check questions. This page is about the questions it stops answering when the job is finding waste, pricing it and watching it month after month.
Side by side, dimension by dimension
| Dimension | M365 admin center | LicenseMeter |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Included with every tenant. The only spend is the admin time it takes to walk the reports. | Flat monthly price per tenant, sized by seat count. The first scan is free. |
| Assignment counts | Authoritative. Billing > Licenses is the source of truth for assigned and unassigned seats per product. | Read nightly from the same Graph data. Unassigned paid seats do not just appear in a count: they become priced shelfware findings. |
| Activity per user | Reports > Usage shows last-activity dates per workload, one report at a time. Microsoft documents that you cannot generate a report for a single account listing which services it uses. | One nightly sync joins directory status, license assignments, sign-in activity and Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams usage into a single per-user picture. |
| User names in reports | Concealed by default since September 2021. A Global Administrator can re-enable identifiable names tenant-wide under Org Settings > Reports. | Reads the same reports, so the same setting applies. With names concealed, usage findings degrade to aggregate counts while directory-based findings stay per user, and the settings page explains the switch. |
| Euro figures | License counts and usage counts, with no cost attached to either. There is no Microsoft API that exposes your negotiated seat prices. | Every finding carries a monthly euro figure from an editable per-tenant price book, prefilled with list-price estimates. |
| Cadence and alerts | The reports are there when you go and look. Nothing emails you when a new idle seat starts billing. | Nightly sync, a weekly digest with the waste number and the largest open findings, and a monthly board-ready PDF report. |
| Offboarding leaks | You can filter sign-in-blocked users on the Active users page and check their licenses one by one. Nothing surfaces the pattern for you. | Disabled accounts still holding paid seats surface automatically as priced findings, including the connected-app seats the same people still hold. |
| Finance handoff | Each usage report exports its own CSV, per workload, anonymous by default and without cost columns. | One CSV of all findings with owner, rule and monthly euro cost, written for the finance side of the renewal conversation. |
| Remediation | Point and click, seat by seat, or scripts you write and maintain yourself. | Generates the PowerShell remediation script for the seats you choose. Your IT reviews and runs it; LicenseMeter itself never writes to the tenant. |
| Beyond Microsoft 365 | Stops at the Microsoft bill. Adobe, Zoom, Atlassian, Salesforce and the AI consoles each have their own admin pages. | Connectors cross-check Adobe, Zoom, Atlassian, Salesforce, OpenAI, Anthropic, ChatGPT and Claude seats against Entra ID in the same pass. |
When the admin center is enough
Honestly: for a lot of the daily work. Buying and assigning seats, checking counts before a true-up, a quick look at whether Teams adoption moved, a tenant small enough to eyeball - the admin center does all of that, included and authoritative. Every number LicenseMeter shows starts life in the same Graph data the admin center reads. The difference is not the data; it is the join, the euro figure and the watching.
What the admin center does not do
The per-user join
The usage reports are organized by workload, not by person, and Microsoft’s own documentation says you cannot generate a report where you enter one account and get everything it uses. Answering “which licensed people have been inactive everywhere for 90 days?” means exporting several CSVs and joining them by hand. That join is exactly what LicenseMeter maintains for you, nightly.
A euro figure per wasted seat
Usage reports carry counts, not costs, and no Microsoft API exposes the prices your tenant actually pays. LicenseMeter closes that gap with an editable per-tenant price book, prefilled with list-price estimates and adjustable to your negotiated rates, so every finding arrives as euros per month rather than a row count.
Watching, not just looking
The admin center answers when asked; it never volunteers. New leavers keeping seats and new idle licenses bill quietly between visits. LicenseMeter syncs nightly, keeps findings across runs with an acknowledge and reopen workflow, emails a weekly digest and delivers a monthly PDF report, so the audit becomes a process instead of an errand.
Concealed names, on both sides
Since September 2021 Microsoft conceals user names in usage reports by default, in the admin center and in the Graph API alike. LicenseMeter is subject to the same setting - no vendor can read around it - but it degrades rule by rule: usage-based findings become aggregate counts while directory-based findings such as disabled accounts, shelfware and guests keep working per user, and the settings page explains how a Global Administrator re-enables identifiable names for both tools at once.
Keep the admin center. Add the joined, priced view.
Connect read-only and the free scan turns the reports you already have into per-seat findings with a monthly euro figure attached. The security overview lists every permission up front.
After the free scan, 14 days of full monitoring, free. No credit card, read-only access.