Every UK student with an active university email address qualifies for 30% off every licence we sell — Office, Windows, Visual Studio, all of it. Here’s what you actually get for free through your university, where that access stops, and why the smartest time to use the discount is before you graduate, not after.
Office Professional Plus 2024
Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access and Teams. One payment, yours permanently — it doesn’t expire when your course does. Enter STUDENT30 at checkout with your student email.
£79 £55.30 with code STUDENT30
What UK students actually get for free
Your university gives you Microsoft 365 access while you’re enrolled. The web versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint are guaranteed; whether you get the full desktop apps depends on which licence tier your institution pays for. Plenty of students go three years without ever finding out which tier that is, because the web apps cover essay writing well enough.
The catch is in the tense: while you’re enrolled. That access belongs to your university, not to you. When you leave, the account gets deactivated, the apps drop into read-only mode, and everything you left in that OneDrive goes with it. Nobody mentions this at freshers’ week.
So the honest answer to “is Office free for students?” is: rented, not free. Fine for the duration of the course. Useless the day after.
The student discount: 30% off everything
Our student discount is 30% off any software licence on the site — not a cut-down student edition, the same perpetual licences everyone else buys. It applies to the price shown on the site, sale price included, and you qualify with an active student email ending @ac.uk, @edu or @edu.uk.
- Add your software to the cart and head to checkout.
- Enter STUDENT30 in the coupon code box.
- Complete the order using your student email address.
- Pay however you like — Stripe, Google Pay, Apple Pay.
- Your activation key arrives by email and is saved to your account.
That last step matters more than it looks. The key lives in your account, covered by a lifetime warranty — so if you ever need to reinstall in five years, it’s there waiting.
What that does to real prices
The discount covers the whole catalogue, which makes it useful well beyond Office. A few of the combinations students actually buy:
Office Professional Plus 2024
The full PC suite — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access, Teams. No Microsoft account needed to run it.
Site price £79
With STUDENT30: £55.30
Word 2024 standalone
Just Word, as a one-off purchase. The right call if the web apps cover everything else you do.
Site price £49
With STUDENT30: £34.30
Excel 2024 standalone
Full desktop Excel for statistics, finance and science courses — the web version runs out of road fast once coursework gets serious.
Site price £49
With STUDENT30: £34.30
Office Home & Business 2024 for Mac
Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and OneNote — the only perpetual Office suite on macOS. Activates with a Microsoft account.
Site price £149
With STUDENT30: £104.30
Windows 11 Home
The discount isn’t Office-only. Building a PC for uni or reviving a second-hand laptop? The licence key is covered too.
Site price £34
With STUDENT30: £23.80
Visual Studio 2026 Professional
The full IDE as a perpetual licence — one that’s still yours when you start your first job, unlike your university toolchain.
Site price £238
With STUDENT30: £166.60
Engineering and business students get the same 30% on Visio Professional 2024 and Project Professional 2024 — the two applications most likely to be demanded by a course and least likely to be included in the university’s licence tier.
Which one should you actually buy?
For most students on a Windows machine, it’s Office Professional Plus 2024 and it isn’t close. The full suite costs a few pounds more than a single standalone app once the discount is applied, and it installs via the Office Deployment Tool with no Microsoft account required to run it — your copy of Office stops caring whether any institution recognises you. We’ve covered the edition trade-offs properly in the cheapest legitimate Office guide and the Pro Plus 2024 buyer’s guide.
Buy standalone Word only if you’re certain your workflow really is one app. Most people who think that discover a spreadsheet requirement in second year.
On a Mac there’s no decision to make: Home & Business 2024 is the only perpetual suite available, and it’s a good one. Still unsure? The Office licence advisor gets you to a recommendation in four questions.
Graduating this year? This is the window
Here’s the part that catches people out. Your eligibility for the discount rests on your student email being active — and university email accounts don’t last forever after graduation. Some close within weeks of results day, others run for a few months. Your Microsoft 365 access through the university ends around the same time.
Which means final-year students are sitting on a discount that’s about to expire, right at the moment they’re about to lose their free Office. The move is obvious: buy the perpetual licence now, at 30% off, while the email still works. The licence doesn’t know or care that you’ve graduated — it’s yours permanently, warranty included.
And don’t worry about the email itself going dark later. Your keys and order history live in your Software Supplies account, and you can update the account’s email address after you leave — contact [email protected] and we’ll switch it to your personal address, past purchases intact.
Before your university account closes, move your files out of the institution’s OneDrive too. Read-only mode is a bad place to discover your dissertation lives somewhere you no longer control.
Frequently asked questions
Students at UK universities get Microsoft 365 access through their institution while enrolled. The web versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint are always included; the desktop apps depend on the licence tier the university pays for. That access is tied to the university account and ends after you leave — documents become read-only and the associated OneDrive storage is withdrawn. It’s free to use during the course, but it is not yours to keep.
Anyone with an active student email address ending @ac.uk, @edu or @edu.uk. Enter code STUDENT30 in the coupon box at cart or checkout and complete the order using that email address. There’s no separate verification service to sign up to, no proof-of-enrolment upload, and no limit to one product — the 30% applies to everything in the order.
Yes. The code applies to the current price shown on the site, which is usually already well below RRP. The prices on this page marked “with STUDENT30” show exactly what you’d pay at checkout today.
Nothing happens to the licence — it’s perpetual and doesn’t depend on the email you bought it with. Your activation key is also saved in your Software Supplies account, and if the student email that account was created with later closes, contact support and we’ll update the account to your personal email address so you keep access to your keys and full order history.
Yes, as long as your student email is still active when you order. Final year is arguably the best time to use it: your free university Microsoft access is about to end, and a perpetual licence bought at 30% off carries straight into work or postgraduate life with no subscription to pick up afterwards.
The discount covers all software on the site — Windows 10 and 11, every Office edition, standalone apps like Word and Excel, Visual Studio, Project and Visio. If it’s a licence key, STUDENT30 takes 30% off it.
Office Professional Plus 2024 for anyone on Windows: it has the most complete app set, runs without a Microsoft account after installation, and is supported until October 2029 — comfortably beyond any degree. Mac users should buy Office Home & Business 2024 for Mac, the only perpetual suite available on macOS. Standalone Word or Excel only makes sense if you’re certain a single app covers your entire course.
Gary Walsh is the Head of Tech Support at Software Supplies, with more than 20 years in the IT industry. Fully Microsoft-certified and experienced across the full business software stack — from Windows and Office to cloud infrastructure and device management — Gary delivers practical, no-nonsense advice that helps users and businesses get the most from their technology.
