Microsoft Teams vs Zoom

Microsoft Teams

Three hundred participants and thirty-hour meetings are published for every plan, and meetings can carry apps before, during and after — the scale is real for a whole school. But we found no public information on breakout rooms, screen sharing, host moderation or what happens on a weak connection, so it cannot reach the middle band for my classroom.

Zoom

Breakout rooms are documented in real depth — five distinct roles, pre-assignment, broadcast into rooms, help requests, timed close — and capacity is published per plan, from 100 participants up to a 5,000-participant add-on, with webinars at 500 and RTMP live streaming and live transcription in the browser. What holds it back for a class where half the room is on a phone: I found no public information on adaptive quality or behaviour on a weak connection, and none on per-participant moderation, layout control, or diagnostics after a bad call.

Microsoft Teams

The comparison page states encryption for meetings, chats, calls and files and every plan includes Entra ID for identity, but that is a claim with no mechanism documented behind it. We found no public information on key handling, waiting rooms or per-meeting admission, and no end-to-end option appears in the captures.

Zoom

Transport security is concrete — TLS 1.2 with 256-bit AES-GCM — and admission is thought through: passcode, waiting room and authenticated-only joining, with the waiting room auto-enabled when no other security option is set and the requirement locked for smaller account types. The captured browser pages show end-to-end encryption as not supported in any listed browser, and I found no public information on encryption at rest, key handling, or a plain statement of what the vendor can see in meeting media.

Microsoft Teams

A global dial-in number as a free add-on, live captions in over thirty languages (English only on Essentials) and translation up to forty-one languages with Premium, plus web and mobile apps — that gets half a class of phones into the room. But we found no public information on joining as a guest without an account, browser parity, keyboard or screen-reader testing, or behaviour on a poor mobile connection.

Zoom

The no-install story is the strong half: browser joining carries the same features as the web client, Chromebooks and Windows tablets behave like desktops, mobile browsers follow the supported OS versions, and live transcription and translation are ticked for every browser — nobody misses a caption. For the people on a phone in a dead spot, though, I found no public information on dial-in, on behaviour at low bandwidth, on guests joining without an account, or on any accessibility statement or screen-reader testing.

Microsoft Teams

The only governance facts I can stand on are that all data is deleted when a subscription is cancelled and that video calling is managed from an admin center. We found no public information on who may record, whether participants are told, storage region or retention rules, and the privacy statement says data may be used to train AI models — exactly what a works council will ask about.

Zoom

Recording is host-controlled, a notification is promised when it starts, sessions can be set to delete automatically after a specified number of days, and Bring Your Own Storage can keep the files in your own bucket instead of the vendor's — the first two things a works council asks about are at least present. We found no public information on where vendor-stored recordings are kept, on encryption at rest for them, on who accessed them, or on a separate retention rule for transcripts.

Microsoft Teams

The developer pages show a genuine platform: Graph REST APIs with SDKs, bots, change notifications, PowerShell automation and a browser playground, and certified room hardware from Yealink, Crestron, Lenovo, Polycom and AudioCodes is listed. Identity rides on Entra ID in every plan, but we found no public information on SCIM provisioning or a self-hosted and private-cloud option.

Zoom

The developer surface is real and well documented: meeting scheduling APIs, calendar APIs with an OpenAPI download and Postman collection, recording and transcript webhooks, and embeddable SDKs for web and mobile, with SSO and managed domains arriving on the Business plan. We found no public information on SCIM provisioning, hardware room-system support, or any self-hosted or private-cloud deployment, and the recording webhooks are noted as limited to universal credit accounts.

Microsoft Teams

I weigh this heavily and it is thin: the privacy statement says personal data may be stored and processed in your region, in the United States and in any jurisdiction where Microsoft or its affiliates and service providers operate facilities, with data shared with Microsoft-controlled affiliates and vendors. The contracting entity is not confirmed on the vendor's own captured pages, we found no public information on subprocessors, and Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited appears only as a contact; the EU-US Data Privacy Framework commitments are the one safeguard stated.

Zoom

The contracting entity is Zoom Communications, Inc. of San Jose, California, with the Federal Trade Commission named as the enforcer of its Data Privacy Framework commitments; nothing in the captured pages confirms EU residency for media or storage, and we found no public information naming the third-party service providers that carry the traffic. Standard contractual clauses, DPF certifications and an EU representative in Cork paper the transfers, but an EU representative is not EU hosting, and for a buyer who weighs this heavily that decides it.

Microsoft Teams

A school office could almost compute the year: Teams Essentials at 3,50 € per user per month on annual billing with prices excluding VAT stated, a 300-participant capacity, thirty-hour meetings, 10 GB or 1 TB of storage per plan, a free dial-in add-on with dial-out to USA/CAN stated as free, and calling minutes itemised per country. It stops short of the top because a prepaid Communications Credits wallet covers pay-per-minute charges without published rates, and we found no public information on webinar capacity or recording storage pricing.

Zoom

Per-host prices are public with billing period and VAT treatment stated — "€13.33 /user per month · billed annually‡· excludes VAT" on Pro, €17.49 on Business — alongside capacity limits and 10 GB cloud storage per user, and a large-meeting add-on "From €46.50 for 500 participants per month". I still could not compute a full annual invoice: dial-in rates, the cloud-recording storage plan and the separate charges for AI summaries and extra recording file options are not quantified on the captured pages.