Microsoft Office: Buy It Once, Own It Permanently

Yes — Microsoft Office is still available as a one-time purchase. You pay once, it activates on your machine, and it keeps working indefinitely. No subscription. No renewal reminders. Here are your options.

What you can actually buy

Microsoft offers two routes for Office in 2026: a perpetual licence (buy once, own it) or a Microsoft 365 subscription (pay monthly or annually, forever). The perpetual options are grouped under the Office 2024 banner and come in three versions.

The pricing you’ll want to pay attention to

Office Pro Plus 2024 includes every major Office application — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, and Access — and costs less than Office Home & Business 2024, which includes fewer apps. That’s not a typo.

The reason is channel and licence type. Home & Business is Microsoft’s retail perpetual product, marketed direct to consumers and priced accordingly. Pro Plus is a volume-channel product available through authorised resellers. Same 2024 application versions, same activation through your Microsoft account, different price points.

For most PC users, Office Pro Plus 2024 is the correct purchase. The only reason to choose Home & Business over it is if you specifically need the retail packaging or have a particular licence policy requirement — neither of which applies to the vast majority of home and small business buyers.

One-time purchase vs Microsoft 365 — the honest comparison

Microsoft would prefer you to subscribe. The 365 marketing leans heavily on “always up to date” and AI features. Worth being clear about what that actually means in practice before deciding.

Microsoft 365 Personal costs around £79 per year. Over five years that’s £395 — against a one-time Pro Plus 2024 purchase. The break-even point is year one. Every year after that, perpetual is cheaper.

365 does give you things a perpetual licence doesn’t: 1TB OneDrive storage, mobile app access, and the rolling feature updates that include Copilot AI integration. If you work across multiple devices — PC, phone, tablet — or genuinely need the cloud storage, 365 Personal is a reasonable proposition. If you work at a desk, on one machine, doing standard document work, it’s hundreds of pounds of surplus over five years that you don’t need.

The “always up to date” argument is also less compelling than it sounds. Office 2024 receives security updates until October 2029. The application itself won’t meaningfully degrade before then, and the gap in feature set between 2024 and the rolling 365 version is, for most users, invisible in daily work.

For a detailed breakdown, the Office 2024 vs Microsoft 365 comparison covers this thoroughly.

Mac options

Mac buyers have one perpetual suite option: Office Home & Business 2024 for Mac. It runs natively on Apple Silicon (M1 through M4) and activates through your Microsoft account in the same way as the PC version.

There’s no Mac equivalent of Pro Plus — that’s a Windows-only channel product. Home & Business Mac is your route if you want Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote on macOS without a subscription. Access isn’t available on Mac regardless of which version you buy.

If you only need Word on Mac, the standalone Word for Mac licence (—) is available. The full Mac without subscription guide covers the options in detail.

What a perpetual licence doesn’t include

A few things worth knowing before you buy, because the marketing won’t always tell you clearly:

No upgrade to the next version. When Office 2026 or whatever follows arrives, your 2024 licence stays on 2024. You’d buy again. Given that Office perpetual versions appear roughly every three years, that’s still cheaper than 365 — but worth understanding upfront.

Security updates, not feature updates. Microsoft patches perpetual Office for security vulnerabilities until the end-of-support date (October 2029 for Office 2024). New Copilot features and interface changes that roll out to 365 users don’t come to perpetual. For most users this doesn’t matter. For anyone specifically buying Office to access AI tools, it’s relevant.

One device. A perpetual licence activates on one PC or Mac. If you need Office on multiple machines, you’ll either buy multiple licences or Microsoft 365 Family starts to look more rational.

No 1TB OneDrive. You get the basic free OneDrive allowance (5GB). The 1TB is a 365 benefit.

Buy a perpetual Office licence

Not certain which version fits your setup? The Office Licence Advisor asks four questions and routes you to the right product.

Questions people actually ask