Google Workspace vs Microsoft 365: a comparison for businesses in 2026

Both suites are billed per user per month, and the price depends on the plan and on whether you pay annually or monthly. Both have raised prices recently: Google added Gemini AI features to its business plans, and Microsoft raised prices on most business plans from July 2026, with Copilot Chat included. Prices you find in older articles are often out of date, so check the current ones on the official sites.

For a small team, the yearly difference between the base plans is small. What makes a bigger difference is what you need on top: desktop Office apps (not included in every Microsoft plan), more storage, stronger device management or archiving. Sometimes a cheaper plan plus one add-on costs more than the next plan up.

My advice: start from a list of real needs, not from the price table. If three of your five people only need Excel to view spreadsheets, the browser version may be enough.

The Google Workspace APIs (Gmail, Calendar, Sheets, Drive) are among the most used in n8n and Make scenarios, so there are plenty of ready modules and examples. Connecting usually takes a few minutes. Google Sheets often becomes a simple database that workflows read from and write to.

Microsoft 365 has its own tool, Power Automate, which some business plans already include with standard connectors. If your whole company works in the Microsoft environment, that is a strong argument. Connecting from outside (n8n, Make) requires registering an app in Microsoft Entra ID and granting permissions through Microsoft Graph. That is entirely doable, but it takes more setup at first and often an admin’s approval.

So “Google is easier” holds true for external tools. If Power Automate covers what you need, the Microsoft environment is not a drawback.

Both suites now include AI assistants, Gemini and Copilot. They help write emails and summarize meetings or documents, but on their own they do not take over processes that span different systems. For that you still need workflows that connect email to your CRM, accounting software or website.

In Lithuania, many accountants, lawyers and public institutions work with Word and Excel files, so Microsoft 365 causes the least friction: a document you receive opens exactly as it did for the sender, and complex Excel workbooks with macros work. Google Docs and Sheets open Office files, but complex formatting or macros do not always survive.

If your outside communication is mostly PDFs and email, this difference hardly matters. Many service businesses run on Google Workspace and send exported files to their accountant without any trouble.

Another point is e-signatures. In Lithuania documents are often signed with a qualified electronic signature (for example, via Dokobit or Mobile-ID). That works regardless of which suite you choose, because signing happens in a separate tool.

If you are unsure, test it: both vendors offer a free trial. Spend a couple of weeks working with your real documents, especially the ones you send to your accountant or clients, and see where the friction shows up.

An illustrative case: an accounting services firm in Šiauliai with six employees and about sixty clients. Every month clients email their invoices; staff save them, enter them into the accounting software and fill in Excel summaries. The firm already uses Outlook and desktop Excel.

For this firm I would recommend staying with Microsoft 365. The staff are used to Excel, client files arrive in Office formats, and moving to Google would cost time with no clear benefit. We would cut the routine inside the Microsoft environment: Outlook attachments would go automatically into tidy OneDrive or SharePoint folders by client, and AI would extract invoice data and prepare it for the accounting software.

If this were a brand-new firm with no habits yet, planning from day one to hand a lot of work to workflows, I would consider Google Workspace too. But for an existing team, switching suites rarely pays off just for easier connections.

Both vendors provide tools for moving email, calendars and files. Technically, the key step is changing your domain’s DNS records (MX and others) so mail starts flowing to the new system. I plan it for a weekend or a quieter period and lower the DNS record TTL in advance.

The hardest part is usually not the technology but the habits: shared folders, file links in old emails, phone sync, and other systems where people sign in with their Google or Microsoft account. Before migrating, I list every place the old account is used, so nothing stops after the switch.

For a small team, the move usually takes a few days, but allow a couple of weeks for everyone to get used to it. If you are happy with your current suite and the only reason to switch is workflows, let’s first check whether the same thing can be done in your existing setup.