Microsoft 365 Family & Personal subscriptions which includes popular apps such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook plus 1TB OneDrive online storage now costs $159 per year in Australia for a personal subscription, up from $109 per year.
The price increase for Microsoft 365 Family & Personal is largely due to the inclusion of Ai Copilot features, whether you want them or not.
The Microsoft 365 Family subscription has increased from $159 to $179 which is a smaller increase.
What doesn’t make sense with this increase is that the personal subscription has increased by $50 (45%) and is only one user licence, but the family subscription has increased by only $20 (12%) and includes five user licences, no logic! However, Copilot Ai features are only for one user, the subscription owner.
What will Copilot do for me? Do I need it?
With Microsoft 365 you have no option whether you want to use Copilot has it is embedded in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote, the integration of Copilot into Microsoft 365 cannot be removed and you are not obliged to use the features that can be limited via your privacy settings in the app.
Microsoft Copilot is your assistant that you can ask it questions, and it helps to raise your productivity.
Microsoft Publisher to be Phased Out
Another change is that Microsoft Publisher is being phased out and won’t be supported from October 2026, this is not included in the new, more expensive subscription and will be replaced with the AI-powered Designer.
It has been reported that the Australian consumer watchdog (ACCC) is looking into this, but legal experts say price gouging in itself isn’t illegal but if a company raises prices aggressively and makes false or misleading claims about its prices, this would be illegal.
Next Century is committed to passing on the bare minimum price increase to clients and the new prices for Microsoft 365 Family & Personal are:
