Is a subscription to Azure required for MS365

Question

Someone in my office, who is no longer employed here, signed us up for an Azure account. No one in my office uses it to my knowledge. Can I cancel it or is it needed for MS365?

Answer 1

Hi @Stephen Simpson,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A Platform. Thank you for reaching out & hope you are doing well.

No worries, you can cancel your Azure subscription if your office isn't using it.

If you're using Microsoft Entra (formerly Azure Active Directory) that comes as part of your Microsoft 365 subscription, you do need this for managing user identities. However, this does not mean you need a separate Azure subscription for Azure services.

To cancel the Azure subscription associated with your account, just sign in to the Azure portal, navigate to the Subscriptions page, select the specific subscription, and click on "Cancel subscription.

Note: One more option if you do not want to deactivate the subscription just disable the user that also will do your job

Refer: -

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cost-management-billing/manage/cancel-azure-subscription

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/enterprise/azure-integration?view=o365-worldwide

Feel free to reach out if you have any further questions or need additional information—I’m happy to assist!

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Answer 2

Hello Stephen Simpson,

Thanks for your question

No, a subscription to Azure is not required for Microsoft 365. M365 and Azure are separate services, and while they can be integrated, one is not dependent on the other.

So yes you can cancel after you do the following to verify your usage:

• Log in to the Azure portal (portal.azure.com) using the credentials for the Azure account.
• Navigate to Cost Management + Billing to review any active subscriptions, resources, and associated costs.
• Look for any active resources (e.g., virtual machines, storage accounts, databases) that might be in use.

To cancel and delete the subscription, see:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cost-management-billing/manage/cancel-azure-subscription

You can mark it 'Accept Answer' and 'Upvote' if this helped you

Regards,

Abiola