You can cancel your Microsoft 365 subscription through your Microsoft account page in just a few clicks. The process differs slightly depending on whether you have a personal/family plan or a business plan, and whether you want to stop immediately or simply prevent the next charge. Here’s how to handle both.
Cancel a Personal or Family Subscription
Go to account.microsoft.com/services/microsoft365 and sign in with the Microsoft account you used to purchase the subscription. Select “Cancel subscription” (the button may say “Upgrade or Cancel” instead). You’ll see a review section at the top of the cancellation page summarizing what you’ll lose. Scroll through the additional information, then select “I don’t want my subscription” at the bottom to confirm.
That’s it. Microsoft will send a confirmation email, and your subscription will run until its current expiration date before access ends.
Turn Off Auto-Renewal Instead
If you want to keep using Microsoft 365 through the end of the period you already paid for but avoid being charged again, turning off recurring billing is the better option. When you turn off recurring billing, you (and anyone sharing a Family plan) continue using the subscription as normal until the expiration date. You simply won’t be billed again after that.
You’ll find this toggle on the same services page at account.microsoft.com. Look for “Recurring billing” under your subscription details and switch it to off. This is not the same as an immediate cancellation, so your apps, OneDrive storage, and Outlook mailbox all keep working until the paid period ends.
Cancel a Business Subscription
Business plans are managed through the Microsoft 365 admin center, not the personal account page, and only users with billing administrator privileges (or higher) can cancel.
Sign in to the admin center. If you’re using the Simplified view, select “Subscriptions.” In the Dashboard view, go to Billing, then “Your products.” Select the subscription you want to cancel, then choose “Cancel subscription” from the subscription details page. You’ll be asked to pick a reason and confirm.
Depending on your billing agreement type and how far into your billing cycle you are, you may see the option to cancel immediately or to cancel before the next renewal date. If you’re outside the grace period for immediate cancellation, the admin center will direct you to turn off recurring billing instead.
One important detail: if your subscription has more than 25 licenses, you need to reduce the license count to 25 or fewer before the admin center will let you cancel online. And if you added a custom domain name to your subscription, you must remove it before canceling.
Refund Eligibility
Whether you get money back depends on timing and where you live. Refund eligibility is determined automatically during the cancellation process, so you don’t need to submit a separate request.
For most countries, prorated refunds on Microsoft 365 Personal, Family, and Basic plans are not available. You simply keep access until the end of the period you’ve already paid for. A handful of countries (including Canada, France, Israel, Korea, and Turkey) do allow prorated refunds when you cancel at any time.
For Microsoft Copilot Pro and Microsoft 365 Premium plans, most countries outside that same group offer a prorated refund only if you cancel within 14 days of your initial purchase.
If you bought your subscription through the Apple App Store, Google Play, or a retail partner, Microsoft can’t process the refund. You’ll need to request it through whichever store or retailer sold you the plan.
What Happens to Your Files and Email
After cancellation, your subscription doesn’t vanish overnight. If you cancel within Microsoft’s cancellation policy window, the subscription moves directly into a “Disabled” status that lasts 90 days. During that window, regular users lose access to Microsoft 365 apps and services, but business admins can still sign in and back up data.
For personal subscriptions, your OneDrive files and Outlook.com email remain accessible in a limited way, but your storage drops back to the free tier (5 GB for OneDrive). If you’re over that limit, you’ll need to download or delete files to get back under the cap.
Any data you leave behind may be deleted after 90 days and will be deleted no later than 180 days after cancellation. If you explicitly delete the subscription rather than simply canceling it, SharePoint and OneDrive content is removed immediately with no grace period. Before you cancel, download anything you want to keep.
Subscriptions Bought Through Third Parties
If you subscribed through the App Store on your iPhone or iPad, open Settings, tap your name, then Subscriptions, and cancel from there. For Google Play, open the Play Store app, go to Payments & subscriptions, then Subscriptions, and cancel Microsoft 365. In both cases, the cancellation and any refund are handled entirely by Apple or Google, not Microsoft. The same applies to subscriptions purchased through retail stores or other resellers.