M365 backup pricing

Hi Diana, to answer your follow-up directly: yes, permanently deleting the backup data is what stops the charges. Removing items from the policy only stops them from growing.

What happens at each step:

1. Removed from policy (where you are now). Each OneDrive, site or mailbox is billed at its size at the moment you removed it. That “proxy size” keeps being charged until its restore points expire, which can be up to a year under the default recovery window. The bill stops growing but doesn’t drop.
2. Delete Backup on the Removed Items tab. This permanently deletes the backed-up data for those items. Once offboarding completes, they no longer count toward your bill. It can’t be undone, so you lose every restore point for them.
3. Re-adding them later. Adding an item to a policy again starts a fresh backup at its current live size. You don’t get the old restore points back, and billing starts again from that size.

Why the bill jumped in the first place: the meter counts more than the usage reports show. It includes online archives, the second-stage recycle bin, and deleted or versioned mail held for recovery. A tenant that looks like 400 GB in the admin center can bill noticeably higher.

Before you re-add anything:

• Only protect what you actually need to restore, such as key SharePoint sites and leadership or finance mailboxes, not every user.
• If you’re reading about Full Workload Backup, it automatically adds every new site, OneDrive and mailbox every 24 hours, so scope can grow without anyone deciding it should.
• Set a budget alert on the Azure billing policy so the next spike shows up within days, not at invoice time.
• Lowering restore point frequency won’t save money. Microsoft states it doesn’t materially affect cost.

If it helps, I built a free calculator that models what a scoped policy would have cost compared with protecting everything. It includes archives and recycle bins, and there’s no signup: https://backupgap.com/microsoft-365-backup-cost-calculator

Disclosure: I made that tool. It doesn’t sell backup, and Microsoft’s own pricing spreadsheet will give you the same arithmetic if you’d rather use that.

Reference: Pricing model for Microsoft 365 BackupHi Diana, to answer your follow-up directly: yes, permanently deleting the backup data is what stops the charges. Removing items from the policy only stops them from growing.

What happens at each step:

1. Removed from policy (where you are now). Each OneDrive, site or mailbox is billed at its size at the moment you removed it. That “proxy size” keeps being charged until its restore points expire, which can be up to a year under the default recovery window. The bill stops growing but doesn’t drop.
2. Delete Backup on the Removed Items tab. This permanently deletes the backed-up data for those items. Once offboarding completes, they no longer count toward your bill. It can’t be undone, so you lose every restore point for them.
3. Re-adding them later. Adding an item to a policy again starts a fresh backup at its current live size. You don’t get the old restore points back, and billing starts again from that size.

Why the bill jumped in the first place: the meter counts more than the usage reports show. It includes online archives, the second-stage recycle bin, and deleted or versioned mail held for recovery. A tenant that looks like 400 GB in the admin center can bill noticeably higher.

Before you re-add anything:

• Only protect what you actually need to restore, such as key SharePoint sites and leadership or finance mailboxes, not every user.
• If you’re reading about Full Workload Backup, it automatically adds every new site, OneDrive and mailbox every 24 hours, so scope can grow without anyone deciding it should.
• Set a budget alert on the Azure billing policy so the next spike shows up within days, not at invoice time.
• Lowering restore point frequency won’t save money. Microsoft states it doesn’t materially affect cost.

If it helps, I built a free calculator that models what a scoped policy would have cost compared with protecting everything. It includes archives and recycle bins, and there’s no signup: https://backupgap.com/microsoft-365-backup-cost-calculator

Disclosure: I made that tool. It doesn’t sell backup, and Microsoft’s own pricing spreadsheet will give you the same arithmetic if you’d rather use that.

Reference: Pricing model for Microsoft 365 Backup

Hello @Diana Piloya , I hope you are doing well,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A.

Yes, deleting the Microsoft 365 Backup policy does not necessarily stop the charges immediately.

Microsoft 365 Backup is billed based on the amount of content retained in backup at for example $0.15/GB/month. When a site, OneDrive account, or mailbox is removed from a backup policy, existing backup data can remain available for the configured retention period and continue contributing to the backup consumption. (learn.microsoft.com)

Deleted and versioned content is also included in the billable backup storage until those restore points expire. For example, deleted content can remain in the backup for up to the retention period (such as 365 days), after which it is no longer counted toward billing. (learn.microsoft.com)

If your goal is to completely stop Microsoft 365 Backup charges, you should also complete the Microsoft 365 Backup offboarding process. Microsoft documents offboarding as pausing/deleting active policies and deleting the backed-up data. (learn.microsoft.com)

I recommend checking the Microsoft 365 admin center's Backup → Usage information after removing the policy to confirm whether backup data is still being retained and billed.

References:

Microsoft 365 Backup pricing

• Offboarding in Microsoft 365 Backup

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