Finally!
We finally got that public statement we’ve been waiting from Microsoft for over a year for.
Today, April 23, 2025, we got an update on those Microsoft 365 developer tenants!
While we didn’t get everything we wanted, and the announcement is a bit light on detail, and there’s not much more than “here’s what’s coming”, it’s still a lot more than we had before today’s announcement… and it’s at least enough so many of us can make some decisions.
In this article, I’ll get you caught up on what you need to know, including:
- a very brief history of how we got to where we are today
- explain Microsoft’s announcement from April 23, 2025, about the developer tenants
- share my honest opinions on the announcement
- share my recommendations for developer tenants if you need one today
History of the Developer Program Issues
The Microsoft 365 Developer Program has gone through some major changes in the past year.
The Background
In the summer of 2024, What You Need to Know - Microsoft 365 Developer Program Changes in 2024, I explained the changes in the Microsoft 365 Developer Program in Q1 2024, why they were made, and when you can get a free M365 developer/sandbox tenants again. In fact, the video associated with that article has been the #1 video on my YouTube channel every day since I published it.
Understand the recent changes in the Microsoft 365 Developer Program, why they were made, and when you can get a free M365 developer/sandbox tenants again.
https://www.voitanos.io/blog/microsoft-365-developer-program-status-summer-2024/
In that article, I explained that in January 2024, Microsoft’s systems were compromised in a security incident. This led to a lock down of the developer program in late January and February.
At the time, Microsoft made a public commitment to provide updates in September 2024, but that timeline passed without any official announcement.
After missing their own deadline with absolute silence, I publish another article in early March 2025 where I shared my idea for a dev program and pleaded for Microsoft to please say something.
Microsoft halted free 365 developer tenants in January 2024, leaving devs stuck. Should they offer a paid option? Explore a proposal to bring them back securely.
https://www.voitanos.io/blog/microsoft-365-developer-program-tenants-a-paid-model-could-save-them/
Many of you commented on that article to share your stories of how the lack of the dev tenants was hurting you as well. I took your comments with me to the annual MVP Summit Global summit at Microsoft in late March 2025 where I raised these concerns directly with Microsoft.
So, where are we?
Before I go there, let’s define two terms. Today, we have developer tenants that developers can obtain as part of the Microsoft 365 dev program prior to the lock down, or they could get a dev tenant if they were in one of the existing dev program if you were in one of the supported groups, such as:
- Visual Studio Subscribers
- In one of the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Programs, such as
- ISV Success Program
- Solutions Partner Program
- Specialization Experts
- Managed Partners
- Premier or Unified Support Plan members
To keep track of the two different tenants, I’m going to call those tenants legacy dev tenants and the new offering alluded to in today’s announcement as future dev tenants.
Today’s Microsoft 365 Developer Program News
Today, on April 23,2025, Microsoft finally released a public statement about the future of the Microsoft 365 Developer Program. While it doesn’t have all the details we wanted, it’s an important first step.
Microsoft is excited to share a preview of upcoming updates to the Microsoft 365 Developer Program.
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/microsoft365dev/exciting-updates-coming-to-the-microsoft-365-developer-program/
The key updates include:
- The existing dev program is not dead – it’s just changing.
- Something new is coming to the dev program, which appears to be more closely tied to commercial tenants.
- The future dev tenants will likely require some sort of payment.
They didn’t say this in their post, but this means a group within Microsoft no longer has to bear the internal costs of the program. That’s significant when Wall Street wants to see a return on investment in their Microsoft’s bottom line in their quarterly reports based on the hundreds of billions of dollars they’ve invested in data centers, copilot, investments in OpenAI, other AI companies, and their own services.
- Because these will be paid, commercial tenants, you’ll be able to add other Microsoft 365 licenses to them. This includes Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses, the $30/user/month with an annual commitment, something we couldn’t do with the legacy dev tenants.
- Existing legacy dev tenants from the current program won’t transfer to these new developer tenants. If you want to move content from your legacy dev tenant to one of these new future dev tenants, it sounds like it’s going to be like any other migration project… better call Orchestry or ShareGate, or another partners with a good reputation!
My Thoughts on the Announcement
I’m pleased with Microsoft’s public statement today.
No, it’s not everything we wanted and it’s light on details, but it’s an acknowledgment of how big an issue this is.
I appreciate that Microsoft has made a public commitment with a timeline for when they’ll share more information.
I am a bit disappointed it took over a year past their original announcement and 8 months past their promised date of providing more information by september 2024, but I know the people at Microsoft who are involved in this personally, I trust them, and believe they’ll follow through.
The commercial aspect makes sense from a business perspective. If the cost ends up being around $100-200 per year as I suggested in my article Microsoft 365 Dev Tenants: A Paid Model Could Save Them from early March 2025, that’s reasonable for professional development work. Think about what your monthly spend is on your internet service or your mobile phone – it’s just another cost of doing business.
Key Benefits of the New Approach
Let’s talk about the key benefits of this approach
The new paid future dev tenants solves several problems:
- It addresses the cost issue for Microsoft internally.
- It allows Microsoft to better connect tenant identities to real people - a very big issue from the original midnight blizzard hack in january 2024.
- It enables developers to add Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses and other add-on licenses, which wasn’t possible with the legacy dev tenants.
- Developers can eventually upgrade these future dev tenants for production use, like adding an E5 license, which removes the risk of using dev tenants for non-development purposes. That’s a huge benefit!
Current Options for Developers
If you need a developer tenant right now, you have a few options available to you. Which one you pick will depend on what type of work you plan to do.
Attempt to Acquire a Free Dev Tenant
Try to get a free developer tenant, the legacy dev tenant, if you qualify through existing programs (Visual Studio Subscriber, MVP, Regional Director, or any of the qualifications I referenced previously).
However, many developers report difficulties with this process and lack of support. I’ve talked to countless developers who’ve tried this approach and probably 4 out of 5 say it doesn’t work. When they contact the Visual Studio subscription support team, they don’t have the clue what they’re talking about and send them to the Microsoft Developer Program support team… and those calls just ring forever.
So, assuming you don’t succeed with that path, here’s what I recommend. Just keep in mind this could change in the future as Microsoft may share more updates in the next few months, but assuming we don’t hear anything until September 2025 when they promised more details, here’s what I’d suggest.
Purchase a Microsoft 365 tenant
I recommend starting with the Business Essentials license. There are two options you can choose from:
- $7.20/month with a monthly commitment
- $6/month with a one-year commitment ($72 total)
If you’re planning to do Copilot development, you can add the $30/user/month Microsoft 365 Copilot license. But that’s an annual commitment, so if you’re going that route, it’s going to run you $360 over 12 months. So, if you this route, you as well also do the annual commitment on the Business Essentials license.
Copilot Consumption (metered) Billing
While there is an option for consumption based pricing for Microsoft 365 Copilot, there’s a big limitation.
If you’re building custom agents and you only have the consumption model and a single Business Essentials license, you won’t get the semantic index, which means you don’t get the grounding from Microsoft Graph or custom knowledge from Microsoft Graph Connectors. Why? Microsoft doesn’t “light up” the semantic index in a tenant until there is at least a single Microsoft 365 Copilot License - yup, the $30/user/month.
So, if you plan to develop custom agents, like Declarative Agents, and you want more than just custom instructions and actions that call REST APIs, the consumption model won’t be enough.
Conclusion
I’m looking forward to getting more details about this new program. While we don’t know the exact pricing or limitations yet, today’s announcement is a positive step.
I’m curious - What questions do you have about these changes?
Drop a comment below! I’ll do my best to answer every question, and if I don’t know the answer, I’ll reach out to Microsoft to find out.
Overall, I believe this is good news and a step in the right direction for the Microsoft 365 developer community.
Microsoft MVP, Full-Stack Developer & Chief Course Artisan - Voitanos LLC.
Andrew Connell is a full stack developer who focuses on Microsoft Azure & Microsoft 365. He’s a 20+ year recipient of Microsoft’s MVP award and has helped thousands of developers through the various courses he’s authored & taught. Whether it’s an introduction to the entire ecosystem, or a deep dive into a specific software, his resources, tools, and support help web developers become experts in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, so they can become irreplaceable in their organization.
