Microsoft Purview Pricing: Plans & Cost Calculator 2026
Purview splits into per-user licensing and metered consumption: the full stack ships in Microsoft 365 E5 at $60 per user a month, the Purview Suite adds on to E3 at $12, and everything past licensing bills pay-as-you-go, from $0.0165 per protected asset a day to $25 per insider-risk processing unit.
Microsoft Purview plans and pricing
Per-user licensing
Microsoft 365 E5
Full suitePremium Purview capabilities inside the full E5 stack: productivity apps plus advanced security, compliance, analytics, and AI readiness.
- Everything in Microsoft 365 E3
- Data security and compliance (Purview)
- Email, collaboration, and endpoint security
- Identity threat detection and response (ITDR)
- Extended detection and response (XDR)
- Power BI and Teams Phone
- Security Copilot: 400 SCUs per 1,000 paid licenses monthly, up to 10,000
Microsoft Purview Suite
E3 add-onAdds Purview data security and compliance on top of an E3 plan.
- Data loss prevention and Information protection
- Insider risk management
- Audit and eDiscovery
- Communication compliance
- Data lifecycle and records management
- Compliance manager
- Protection for Microsoft 365 Copilot data
Data Security
Microsoft Purview pricing: the quick answer
Microsoft Purview has no standalone subscription. You either license it per user, inside Microsoft 365 E5 at $60 per user a month paid yearly ($51.45 without Teams) or as the $12 Purview Suite add-on over E3, or you pay consumption meters: $0.0165 per protected or governed asset a day (about $0.50 a month), $0.6667 per eDiscovery GB a day (about $20 a month), $15 per million audit records, and $25 per insider-risk processing unit. Most real deployments end up paying both layers, so budget licensing and consumption together.
- Data Lifecycle Management$0/1K messages/day
- Audit$0.01/1K records
- At Rest Protection$0.02/mo
- Unified Catalog$0.02/mo
- Communication Compliance$0.30/1K text records
- In Transit Protection$0.50/10K requests
- eDiscovery$0.67/GB/day
- Data Security Investigations$5/compute unit/hr
- All 14 plans below
At $0/mo to start, Microsoft Purview sits 100% below the $60/mo median across 1 ai security tools we track.
| Meter | SKU | Rate | Monthly equivalent | Billed on |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| At Rest Protection | Standard | $0.0165 / asset / day | ~$0.50 / asset | Assets auto-labeled and covered by DLP or protection policies |
| In Transit Protection | Standard | $0.50 / 10K requests | usage-based | Requests matched by a Purview policy; EDM and OCR classification excluded |
| Optical Character Recognition | Standard | $0.001 / transaction | usage-based | Images scanned for classification |
| Insider Risk Management | Standard | $25 / DSPU | usage-based | One DSPU processes 10,000 user activity logs |
| Data Security Investigations, compute | Standard | $5 / compute unit / hour | usage-based | AI-powered deep content analysis |
| Data Security Investigations, storage | Standard | $0.164 / GB / day | ~$5 / GB | Investigation data retained |
| On-Demand Classification | Standard | $20 / 10K assets | usage-based | SharePoint and OneDrive files scanned on demand |
Data Compliance
| Meter | SKU | Rate | Monthly equivalent | Billed on |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Audit | Standard | $0.015 / 1K records | usage-based | Audit records ingested |
| Data Lifecycle Management | Premium | $0.0002 / 1K messages / day | ~$6 / 1M messages | Text messages stored under retention |
| eDiscovery | Premium | $0.6667 / GB / day | ~$20 / GB | Review-set data under legal hold |
| eDiscovery export | Graph API Standard | $10 / GB exported | usage-based | Data exported through the Graph API |
| Communication Compliance | Standard | $0.30 / 1K text records | usage-based | Messages evaluated by policy |
| Communication Compliance | Premium | $0.50 / 1K text records | usage-based | Messages evaluated with premium classifiers |
| Retention | Standard | $0.0082 / GB / day | ~$0.25 / GB | Data held beyond included retention |
Data Governance
| Meter | SKU | Rate | Monthly equivalent | Billed on |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unified Catalog, governed assets | Standard | $0.0165 / asset / day | ~$0.50 / asset | Data assets curated in the catalog |
| Data Governance Processing Unit | Basic | $15 / DGPU | usage-based | Catalog processing, basic tier |
| Data Governance Processing Unit | Standard | $60 / DGPU | usage-based | Catalog processing, standard tier |
| Data Governance Processing Unit | Advanced | $240 / DGPU | usage-based | Catalog processing, advanced tier |
| Advanced Resource Set | Standard | $0.21 / vCore hour | usage-based | Resource-set enrichment in the Data Map |
Azure Purview (Classic)
| Meter | Rate | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Data Map capacity unit | $0.411 / CU / hour | Always-on Data Map capacity; 1 CU = 25 ops/sec and 10 GB metadata |
| Scanning | $0.63 / vCore hour | Power BI online and SQL Server on-prem scanning currently free |
| Advanced Resource Set | $0.21 / vCore hour | Resource-set processing |
| Data Estate Insights generation | $0.82 / vCore hour | Report generation |
| Data Estate Insights consumption | $0.21 / API call | Insights report reads |
| DevOps policies | $0.0027 / policy hour | Data-asset-access policies free in preview |
Prices shown verbatim from Microsoft, verified July 17, 2026. License cards open the Microsoft Purview pricing page; pay-as-you-go rates come from the Azure pricing sheet and are cross-checked against the public Azure Retail Prices API (East US list rates, USD). Monthly figures for per-day meters assume a 30-day month, matching Microsoft's own estimates. All links go through our tracked, protected redirect.
Microsoft Purview cost calculator
$0.0165 per asset per day, roughly $0.50 per asset a month
Unified Catalog bills the same $0.0165 per asset per day
$0.6667 per GB per day, roughly $20 per GB a month
$0.015 per 1K records: $15 per million
$25 per unit; one DSPU processes 10,000 activity logs
USD list rates, East US, verified against the Azure Retail Prices API. Per-day meters assume a 30-day month, matching Microsoft's own estimates. Enterprise agreements usually land below list.
Microsoft Purview Hidden Costs & Pitfalls
Purview has no flat fee; every capability is its own meter. The traps are the meters that spike with data volume and the provisioned resources that ride along with scanning.
Microsoft Purview pricing, read against its live plans and category
Positioning
Microsoft Purview's pricing model is highly fragmented and expensive compared to the category median of $60/mo/mo. While basic Data Lifecycle Management is priced at $6/1M text messages/mo, specialized AI security and governance features scale rapidly, such as Audit Standard at $15/1M records/mo and Unified Catalog at $0.5/governed asset/mo. For organizations outside the Microsoft E5 ecosystem, paying separately for these metered plans is rarely worth it. The platform only delivers true value if you are already heavily committed to Azure and Microsoft 365.
Cost drivers
- 1Metered overages on Audit Standard ($15/1M records/mo) and Data Lifecycle Management ($6/1M text messages/mo) when data volume spikes.
- 2Data storage meter charges for Data Security Investigations and processing fees for Insider Risk Management.
- 3High indirect costs of upgrading to Microsoft 365 E5 licenses to make the DLP tools financially viable.
Watch-outs
The platform's pricing structure is notoriously complex, with multiple metered variables that make monthly billing highly unpredictable. Users frequently complain about the financial trap of trying to use Purview as a standalone tool without a full Microsoft stack.
Strengths
The Unified Catalog - Governed Assets plan at $0.5/governed asset/mo offers natively protects data used by Microsoft 365 Copilot and other GenAI.
- Natively protects data used by Microsoft 365 Copilot and other GenAI.
- Deepest integration with M365, Teams, SharePoint, and Azure services.
- Unified data classification, labeling, and protection across the ecosystem.
What users say
“Purview DLP isn”
“Unless you”
Editor’s take
Enterprise teams already paying for Microsoft E5 licenses should stick to the included Purview features to avoid extra costs. However, organizations looking for dedicated AI security and governance without the Microsoft tax should look elsewhere. Consider Lasso Security as a sharper, more focused alternative for securing non-Microsoft AI applications.
Oleh KemFounder & Lead AnalystMicrosoft Purview price history
Frequently asked questions
Sources & verification
| Source | What was checked | Last checked |
|---|---|---|
| Official Pricing Page | Source of verified tiers | July 17, 2026 |
| Official Website | Official vendor website | — |
| G2 | G2 verified user reviews · 4.4/5 · 32 reviews | — |
| Capterra | Capterra verified user reviews · 4.3/5 | — |
| TrustRadius | TrustRadius verified reviews | — |
| PeerSpot | PeerSpot enterprise peer reviews | — |
Every fact on this Microsoft Purview pricing page is tied to a named source and a verification date. Freshness-sensitive figures trace to the sources above; verify against the vendor before relying on them.
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