As of 6 Nov 2026, the panel rates Google Workspace 2.5/5 and Microsoft 365 Business 3/5 in Business Email & Office Suites. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 0 of the 6 judges pick Google Workspace and 6 pick Microsoft 365 Business. Google Workspace scores higher on 2 of 7 criteria (Pricing transparency and European sovereignty). Microsoft 365 Business scores higher on 5 of 7 criteria (Migration, open standards & exit, Calendar, contacts & office apps, Mail, domains & deliverability, plus 2 more). Provenance — Google Workspace: Rest of world; Microsoft 365 Business: Rest of world. Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made.
Microsoft 365 Business holds the higher mean on five of seven criteria: mail and deliverability 7.0 to 5.7, calendar and office 7.5 to 6.0, migration and portability 7.0 to 4.3, administration and identity 6.3 to 5.2, security and compliance 6.5 to 5.8, with six judges leaning its way on mail, calendar and office, and migration. Elsewhere the benches split: security three lean Microsoft 365 Business to three ties, administration four lean to two ties, sovereignty 4.7 versus 4.5 with two judges leaning Google Workspace, one leans Microsoft 365 Business, three tie. Google Workspace is ahead on pricing transparency, 6.8 to 5.8, five judges leaning its way with one tie. Its privacy policy states servers operate worldwide; Microsoft 365 Business pages state customer data continues to be transferred outside the EU Data Boundary in limited circumstances. Judge totals, where published, run 5.1–5.7 for Google Workspace and 5.9–6.6 for Microsoft 365 Business.
Choose Google Workspace if
You need euro prices published for the three business tiers before committing: pricing transparency means run 6.8 versus 5.8, with five judges leaning Google Workspace and one tie.
Your budget process requires billing options beyond annual: the Microsoft 365 Business verdict states annual billing only shown, while pricing transparency leans five judges to Google Workspace, none to Microsoft 365 Business, with one tie.
Your evaluation weights pricing transparency and sovereignty above the other criteria: those are the two means favoring Google Workspace (6.8 to 5.8 and 4.7 to 4.5), with five and two judges leaning its way respectively.
Your data-protection review screens out pages stating outbound transfers: Microsoft 365 Business pages state customer data continues to be transferred outside the EU Data Boundary in limited circumstances, and the sovereignty bench leans two judges Google Workspace, one Microsoft 365 Business, three tie.
Choose Microsoft 365 Business if
You need documented per-plan mail limits and quarantine for your team: mail and deliverability means run 7.0 versus 5.7, with six judges leaning Microsoft 365 Business.
You are moving mail from another platform and want documented entry paths: migration and portability means run 7.0 versus 4.3, six judges leaning Microsoft 365 Business; the Google Workspace verdict found no public information on what its Migrate tool carries over.
Your staff spend the day in Word, Excel and PowerPoint: calendar and office means run 7.5 versus 6.0, six judges leaning Microsoft 365 Business, with the verdict scoring calendar and office 7 to 8.
Your administrators manage identity for many users: administration and identity means run 6.3 versus 5.2, four judges leaning Microsoft 365 Business and two tied.
You must show documented retention to auditors: security and compliance means run 6.5 versus 5.8, three judges leaning Microsoft 365 Business with three ties, and the verdict records retention documented deeply.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The Data Protection Officer
Data protection officer for a group of nine medical practices in North Rhine-Westphalia, where a referral letter sent by mail is patient data under professional secrecy. Reads the subprocessor list and the transparency report before the feature page, asks who at the provider can open a mailbox and under which law, and wants encryption the practices can actually use with outside doctors, archiving that satisfies the tax office, and a data processing agreement that names every server.
Google Workspace
Microsoft 365 Business
This judge's pick
Criterion by criterion
Mail, domains & deliverability
Google Workspace
The mailbox sits on a custom domain with IMAP sign-in via OAuth 2, server-side filters acting on sender, subject and size, send-as aliases, delegation within the organisation, and spam and phishing protection claimed at more than 99.9 percent of attacks blocked; storage per plan is stated at 30 GB, 2 TB and 5 TB. I found no public information on DNS set-up for domains, SPF, DKIM or DMARC signing, distribution lists, catch-all, out-of-office replies or Outlook protocols on the pages I read, which keeps this below the mid anchor.
Microsoft 365 Business
The service description and limits pages document shared mailboxes reached by delegation, a quarantine with administrator and end-user management, server-side transport and inbox rules, journal rules up to 300, per-plan mailbox storage from 2 GB to 100 GB, and message sizes from a 35 MB default up to 150 MB in Outlook, behind multi-engine anti-spam and anti-malware scanning. For sending referral letters I still found no public information on custom-domain DNS set-up, DKIM or DMARC signing, catch-all, or the delivery reputation of the outbound infrastructure.
Calendar, contacts & office apps
Google Workspace
Every plan bundles Calendar, Meet, Chat, Drive, Docs, Sheets and Slides, with meetings up to 24 hours and up to 1,000 participants on Enterprise, shared drives, interoperability with Office files, eSignature from the Standard plan and appointment booking — that is well past office documents alone. Free/busy lookup, shared calendars, CalDAV or CardDAV sync, room and resource booking, delegated calendar access and apps per platform are not described on the captured pages, so the top of the range is out of reach on this evidence.
Microsoft 365 Business
The business plans bundle Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook for desktop, web and mobile with Teams calling and 1 TB of OneDrive storage per user, and Exchange brings resource and conference-room mailboxes, calendar sharing and federated sharing, plus an add-in platform across Windows, Mac, Android, iOS and the web. We found no public information on browser co-editing or an interface stated against an accessibility standard.
Security, encryption & compliance archiving
Google Workspace
Encryption in transit, two-step verification and spam protection are stated, S/MIME arrives only with the Enterprise plan — the encryption our referral letters to outside doctors would need — and Vault for retention, archiving and search plus eDiscovery start at the Plus plan, with data loss prevention and access transparency higher up. The privacy policy itself records that servers are operated worldwide, that data may be processed outside the user's country, and that the domain administrator and reseller can access the account; I found no public information on encryption at rest, GoBD-compliant archiving, legal hold, restore periods for deleted mail, certifications, or a transparency report on authority requests — for patient correspondence that weighs heavily.
Microsoft 365 Business
Retention labels and policies across Exchange, SharePoint and Teams, holds up to 50 per mailbox, record declaration with proof of disposition for up to seven years, single-item recovery, S/MIME through the Graph API, Purview message encryption and multi-engine malware scanning are documented — archiving a tax auditor can work with. But the captured pages say nothing about enforced TLS, encryption at rest, enforced two-factor sign-in, a transparency report on authority requests, or any certification with its scope, and nowhere is stated who at Microsoft may open a mailbox and under which law.
Administration, identity & partner management
Google Workspace
Administrators manage data regions from the Google Admin console with status reports, endpoint management scales from Fundamental to Enterprise, and Secure LDAP, context-aware access, the security center and data loss prevention sit at the Enterprise tier, with reseller access to accounts confirmed in the privacy policy and support named as Standard, Enhanced and Premium. I found no public information on single sign-on, directory synchronisation, SCIM provisioning, remote wipe, exportable audit logs, delegated administration or support response times, and the documented API addresses mailboxes rather than provisioning.
Microsoft 365 Business
Administration runs through the Microsoft admin center, the Exchange admin center, remote PowerShell and the Graph REST API with SDKs, integrated with Entra ID for conditional access, identity protection and group policies, alongside ActiveSync device policies with a documented device-deletion limit, usage reports and a message centre. We found no public information on single sign-on protocols such as SAML or OpenID Connect, directory synchronisation, SCIM provisioning, exportable audit logs, or reseller accounts managing several customers.
Migration, open standards & exit
Google Workspace
A Google Workspace Migrate tool is documented from the Standard plan, the Gmail API lists account migration and read-only extraction and backup as use cases, and a user can export a copy of their Google account contents and delete the entire account. IMAP access is documented; export of calendars and contacts in standard formats, CalDAV or CardDAV, coexistence during a move and what happens to the data when the contract ends are not described on the pages I read, so the way in and out is sketched but not proven for a whole organisation.
Microsoft 365 Business
Migration is documented in depth — cutover for up to 2,000 mailboxes, staged and hybrid moves that keep on-premises and online mailboxes alongside each other, IMAP and Gmail migration, cross-tenant moves, PST import by network upload or drive shipping, FastTrack and partner migration — with the IMAP path carrying mail folders only and Exchange Web Services retiring in 2027 in favour of Graph. Deletion of all associated data on cancellation is stated; we found no public information on whole-organisation export in standard formats or a data-return period after cancellation.
European sovereignty
Google Workspace
For users in the European Economic Area the privacy policy names Google Ireland Limited in Dublin as controller, the Cloud Data Processing Addendum is published and incorporated into the agreement, and administrators can pin covered data to a European Union region. The same pages say servers run worldwide with processing outside the user's country possible, the parent in Mountain View serves UK users as controller, and the region policy has documented edges — only listed editions are covered, AppSheet residency is managed separately, and direct messages between regions are stored in both. Subprocessors are not listed and I found no public information on certifications for the chain, so as a data protection officer I cannot verify who else touches the mail.
Microsoft 365 Business
The EU Data Boundary pages commit to storing and processing customer data in named Microsoft datacenters across fifteen EU and EFTA countries for tenants with an EU or EFTA sign-up location, while stating that customer data continues to be transferred outside the boundary in limited circumstances and that Multi-Geo customers are out of scope entirely. Beyond a data protection addendum named in passing, we found no public information on a subprocessor list with locations, an EU contracting entity, or certification scope — so for practices under professional secrecy the chain is only partly evidenced.
Pricing transparency
Google Workspace
All three business plans carry a per-user monthly euro price with both the introductory price for the first 20 users over 12 months and the regular price afterwards stated — €3.40 then €6.80, €6.80 then €13.60, €10.55 then €21.10 — alongside storage of 30 GB, 2 TB and 5 TB, a 300-user cap on business plans, no minimum for Enterprise, and a 16 percent saving stated for annual commitment against monthly billing. I found no public information on VAT treatment, the price of the Enhanced and Premium support upgrades, or Enterprise pricing, which is what keeps the annual cost largely but not fully computable.
Microsoft 365 Business
Three business tiers are publicly priced — 6,07 €, 20,36 € and 27,73 € per user per month with annual billing and automatic renewal, stated excluding VAT — with a one-month trial requiring a credit card, a seven-day withdrawal right, cancellation through the admin centre, and shared mailboxes and conference rooms requiring no subscription. We found no public information on a monthly-versus-annual billing comparison, prices for archiving, extra storage or single sign-on, or minimum user counts, and the two higher prices are quoted for plans bundled with Copilot.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
Google Workspace
Microsoft 365 Business
Legal entity
Not determined
Not determined
Hosting location
Not determined
Not determined
Hosting options
Not determined
Not determined
Open source
Not determined
Not determined
Data processing agreement
Not determined
Not determined
Transfer impact assessment
Not determined
Not determined
Questions about Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 Business
Which is better, Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 Business?
As of 6 Nov 2026, the panel rates Microsoft 365 Business higher: 3/5 against 2.5/5. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 0 of the 6 judges pick Google Workspace and 6 pick Microsoft 365 Business. Which one fits depends on the criteria that matter to you; the table on this page shows both side by side, and each judge’s reading has its own page. Both were scored by the same AI bench under the same rubric, from public evidence only, as the methodology describes.
Is Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 Business European?
Google Workspace is not European by provenance (Rest of world). Microsoft 365 Business is not European by provenance (Rest of world). Provenance is read from each company’s own legal pages: who builds it and who owns it.