Microsoft 365 outage credits: what you can really claim
Microsoft 365 goes down and social media “experts” appear telling you Microsoft owes you money. It might, but only if you’re on a business/enterprise/government/education plan, the outage hit your users hard enough and you ask for a credit. Microsoft won’t apply a Microsoft 365 “service credit” automatically, and for a small business it’s often only a few dollars off a future bill. Here’s how to tell if you qualify, what the credit is worth and how to claim it.
Here’s how Microsoft’s uptime promise (the SLA) really works, what it means for a small business on Business Basic or Business Standard, and how to claim.
What Microsoft actually promises
Microsoft promises 99.9% uptime each month, for each service separately: Exchange Online, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive and so on. The promise lives in the Service Level Agreement for Microsoft Online Services (the SLA), and the current edition is dated November 1, 2026.
That sounds great, especially the “99.9% uptime” bit but in practice that promise is full of ‘fine print’ loopholes that drastically reduce what Microsoft has to give back to customers.
It’s only a partial discount based on a very strict calculation. The payment is really a reduction on a future bill, and only if you ask for it.
The credit is also your only contractual remedy. There is nothing for lost sales, overtime or missed deadlines. Microsoft does not apply credits automatically.
The SLA only applies to some Microsoft 365 plans. Consumer plans (Basic, Personal, Family, Premium and Pro) don’t qualify.
Is it worth claiming?
For one or two users on a Business plan, even a 50% credit is worth only $3.50 to $14 off one month’s bill. So you might not think it’s worth the trouble, except to make a point to Microsoft about the importance of reliability even to their smallest business customers.
For 50 Business Standard users who lost most of a working day, up to $350 is worth the paperwork.
Downtime is counted in user minutes, not clock minutes
99.9% of a 30 day month leaves 43.2 minutes, and a 31 day month leaves 44.6. That’s where the “44 minutes” you see quoted online comes from. Unless you’re a one person business, it is not 44 minutes on the clock.
Microsoft counts user minutes: the minutes in the month (less scheduled downtime) multiplied by your number of users. Downtime is counted the same way, each incident’s length multiplied by the number of users it actually hit.
Monthly uptime % = (User minutes − Downtime) ÷ User minutes × 100
Main example: one or two users on Business Basic or Standard
For a one person business, user minutes really are clock minutes. A 30 day month has 43,200 of them. Lose more than 43.2 minutes and you’re owed 25%; lose more than 7 hours 12 minutes and it’s 50%.
With two users, the month has 86,400 user minutes. The 25% line is 86.4 lost user minutes and the 50% line is 864. Here’s how some typical outages work out:
| What happened | Lost user minutes | Uptime | Credit |
| Both users locked out for 1 hour | 120 | 99.86% | 25% |
| One of the two locked out for 1 hour | 60 | 99.93% | Nothing |
| One of the two locked out for 8 hours | 480 | 99.44% | 25% |
| Both users locked out for 8 hours | 960 | 98.89% | 50% |
In money terms, two Business Standard users pay $28 a month. A 25% credit is worth at most $7, and a 50% credit at most $14. On Business Basic, halve those numbers.
Second example: a 50 user office
A 50 user office has 2,160,000 user minutes in a 30 day month, so the 25% line is 2,160 lost user minutes. When only some staff are hit, a bigger office can easily end up with nothing.
| What happened | Lost user minutes | Uptime | Credit |
| All 50 users locked out for 1 hour | 3,000 | 99.86% | 25% |
| 10 of the 50 locked out for 3 hours | 1,800 | 99.92% | Nothing |
| 10 of the 50 locked out for 8 hours | 4,800 | 99.78% | 25% |
| All 50 users locked out for 8 hours | 24,000 | 98.89% | 50% |
On Business Standard, 50 users pay $700 a month. A 25% credit is worth at most $175, and a 50% credit at most $350.
What counts as “down” is defined narrowly
Each service has its own definition of downtime. Slow, flaky or half working doesn’t count.
| Service | Counts as downtime only when users can’t… |
| Exchange Online | send or receive email in Outlook on the web |
| Teams | chat or start online meetings |
| SharePoint Online | read or write a site collection they have access to |
| OneDrive | view or edit their own files |
The Exchange wording matters. If Outlook on the web worked but desktop Outlook didn’t, that isn’t SLA downtime.
Downtime adds up across the calendar month. Several smaller incidents in the same month can push you over the line together.
What a credit is worth
The credit depends on how far below 99.9% your uptime fell for that service that month.
| Monthly uptime | Credit | Outage needed in a 30 day month, if every user was hit |
| Below 99.9% | 25% | more than 43.2 minutes |
| Below 99% | 50% | more than 7 hours 12 minutes |
| Below 95% | 100% | more than 36 hours |
25% of what?
Not 25% of your whole Microsoft 365 bill. The credit only applies to the service that went down. If only SharePoint failed, the credit covers SharePoint, not the entire plan.
Most organizations buy a suite, such as Business Standard or E3. Then Microsoft prorates the suite price between its services, so an Exchange claim earns a percentage of the Exchange share of the price.
For scale: Business Standard costs $14 per user per month since July 1, 2026. Two users pay $28 a month, so even 25% of the whole bill is only $7. An Exchange only credit is a fraction of that.
It’s a credit, not cash
Approved credits come off a future invoice. No money is paid back, and the credit can’t be more than that month’s fee for the service.
For a big organization that lost a full afternoon, a claim is worth the paperwork. For a small office, the credit may be a few dollars. Claim it on principle if you like, but don’t expect real money.
How to claim an SLA credit
The deadline is the end of the calendar month after the outage. An outage on September 15 must be claimed by October 31
If you bought direct from Microsoft
In the Microsoft 365 admin center, go to Support | New service request and ask for an SLA service credit. Quote the incident ID from the Service Health page.
Incident IDs start with two letters for the service, then a number. EX means Exchange Online, SP is SharePoint, TM is Teams and MO covers several Microsoft 365 services at once.
If you bought through a reseller (CSP)
Your reseller has to file the claim, through Microsoft’s Partner Center. Microsoft won’t accept a claim from you directly.
Resellers set their own, earlier cutoffs. Microsoft also wants an email from the customer asking for the credit, sent from your company domain, not a personal address.
What to include in an SLA claim
Microsoft makes it unnecessarily difficult to make an SLA claim and rejects claims it can’t check, so gather:
- The incident ID(s) from Service Health
- What users couldn’t do, in the SLA’s terms (for Exchange: send or receive in Outlook on the web)
- When it started and ended for your users, and the total duration
- How many users were affected, and where
- What you did to try to fix it, plus any support ticket numbers
- Error messages or screenshots
A Service Health post only says your organization might be affected. The claim has to prove that it was. Microsoft’s partner guidance also warns that advisories usually don’t qualify; incidents do.
Microsoft is unreasonably strict about the evidence. Even when the company knows there’s been a widespread, if not global, breakdown, Microsoft requires direct evidence of how the outage affected your organization.
To make things even worse, it’s very likely that any SLA claim is firstly accepted or rejected by some AI agent that’s programmed to disallow claims that don’t meet very strict criteria.
Which Microsoft 365 plans are covered
The SLA covers paid business, enterprise, education and government plans. It’s the same SLA whether you bought direct, through a volume licensing agreement or from a reseller. Home plans have no SLA at all.
| Plan | Covered? | Notes |
| Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Standard, Premium | Yes | |
| Office 365 E1, E3, E5 and Microsoft 365 E3, E5 | Yes | |
| Frontline plans (F1, F3) | Yes | |
| Standalone Exchange Online, SharePoint and Teams plans | Yes | |
| Paid education and government plans | Yes | |
| Microsoft 365 Apps for business or enterprise | Partly | Covers the apps and OneDrive. No Exchange mailboxes or Teams, so nothing to claim when email goes down |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot | No | We couldn’t find a separate uptime promise for it |
| Microsoft 365 Personal, Family, Basic, Premium and Outlook.com | No | Consumer plans |
| Free plans, free trials, preview features | No | Excluded by the SLA |
Business Basic and Business Standard: what you can claim
Both plans are fully covered by the SLA, but the money involved is small. Business plans top out at 300 users, and most offices using them have far fewer.
What each plan covers
Each service is claimed separately. A big outage often hits Exchange, Teams and SharePoint together, so even a small business could have three claims.
| Service | Business Basic | Business Standard |
| Exchange Online email | Yes | Yes |
| Teams | Yes | Yes |
| SharePoint and OneDrive | Yes | Yes |
| Office on the web and mobile | Yes | Yes |
| Desktop Office apps | Not included | Yes |
Business Basic has no desktop Office apps, so most Basic users already work in Outlook on the web. That’s exactly what the Exchange SLA measures, so their downtime is easy to show. Business Standard users mostly live in desktop Outlook, so check whether Outlook on the web failed too.
The most you could get
These are ceilings: 25% or 50% of the whole bill. You’d only reach them if every service in the plan failed that badly. An Exchange only claim gets a share of these amounts.
| Users | Business Basic bill | Basic ceiling at 25% / 50% | Business Standard bill | Standard ceiling at 25% / 50% |
| 1 | $7 | $1.75 / $3.50 | $14 | $3.50 / $7 |
| 2 | $14 | $3.50 / $7 | $28 | $7 / $14 |
| 50 | $350 | $87.50 / $175 | $700 | $175 / $350 |
Bills use the list prices since July 1, 2026: $7 for Business Basic and $14 for Business Standard per user per month, with an annual commitment.
Whoever sends you the bill handles the claim
Small businesses buy these plans in several ways, and that decides where the claim goes.
- Direct from Microsoft (the invoice or card charge comes from Microsoft): claim it yourself in the admin center, under Support | New service request.
- Through an IT provider or MSP: they file it through Partner Center. Email them from your company address asking for the credit.
- From your domain or web host (GoDaddy’s Microsoft 365 email is a common example): the host sold you the licenses, so the claim goes to them. Ask what they offer.
Free seats get nothing
Microsoft gives nonprofits Business Basic free for up to 300 users. The SLA excludes free services, so donated Business Basic seats can’t earn a credit. The same goes for free trials, but paid seats at nonprofit discount prices are covered.
Some outages don’t count
Some outages never count, even if your staff couldn’t work:
- Scheduled maintenance that Microsoft announced in advance
- Problems outside Microsoft’s control, such as your internet provider, your own network or your devices
- Your own misconfiguration, or third party software
- Free services, free trials and preview features
When Microsoft 365 goes down, read these next
An outage hurts some setups more than others, and Microsoft outage shows how vulnerable the new Outlook is explains why classic Outlook kept working when the new Outlook couldn’t open messages. If iPhone or iPad users keep getting login prompts after a Microsoft outage, Fix for Apple Mail bug with Microsoft mailboxes has the simple fix that Microsoft’s advice doesn’t mention.
If you manage Microsoft 365 for your office, Microsoft Rewrites How Microsoft 365 Updates Are Delivered: What IT Admins Need to Know covers the release settings to check in the admin center. Classic Outlook bug leaks your Windows login: update Office now explains how to install the fix and confirm that every PC is protected.
Home plans don’t get SLA credits, even the most expensive one. Microsoft 365 Pro vs Premium: Is $1,200 a Year Worth It? looks at what Microsoft’s top consumer plan actually gives you for the money.