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Which is cheapest for a 25-person team?

Teams Essentials at $1,200 a year on annual billing, then Slack Pro at $2,175, then Discord Nitro bought individually at $2,997. But a team already paying for Microsoft 365 gets Teams for $0 extra.

What does Slack Free actually limit?

Message history is searchable for 90 days only, apps are capped at 10, and meetings are 1:1 huddles. A team that needs its record searchable in six months needs Pro.

Why is Teams Essentials only $4 when Business Basic is $7?

Essentials is chat and meetings only. Business Basic adds business email, web apps, and 1 TB of storage. Microsoft raised Basic from $6 to $7 on July 1, 2026; standalone Teams plans were excluded from that increase.

Does monthly billing cost more?

On Slack, yes: Pro is $8.75 a month billed monthly against $7.25 annual, a 21 percent premium, and Business+ is $18 against $15. At 25 seats that is $450 a year on Pro for the billing cycle alone.

Comparisons • 13 min read

Slack vs Microsoft Teams vs Discord: Team Communication Pricing Playbook

A 25-person team pays $2,175 a year for Slack Pro, $1,200 for Teams Essentials, or $2,997 if everyone buys Discord Nitro. This guide prices all three ladders and the ceilings that force an upgrade.

By Enow A. Jovial • Published 2026-11-05

A 25-person team pays $2,175 a year for Slack Pro, $1,200 a year for Microsoft Teams Essentials, or $2,997 a year if every member buys Discord Nitro themselves — and only one of those three bills comes with an admin console, a contract, and a way to remove someone who leaves. The three products answer the same question — where does the team talk — with three different business models: Slack sells seats, Microsoft sells a suite that happens to include chat, and Discord sells perks to individuals. This guide prices all three ladders, the ceilings that force an upgrade, and the arithmetic that decides which bill is real for a team of 5, 25, or 100.

The three products, in one paragraph

Slack is a SaaS work chat product sold per seat: a free tier with 90 days of message history and up to 10 apps, Pro at $7.25 per user per month on annual billing, Business+ at $15, and Enterprise Grid by quote. Microsoft Teams is sold two ways: standalone as Teams Essentials at $4 per user per month on annual billing, or bundled inside Microsoft 365 Business Basic at $7, Standard at $14, and Premium at $22 — and the bundle is the product most teams actually buy, because it carries email, Office apps, and 1 TB of storage with it. Discord is a community platform with a free tier and two individual subscriptions: Nitro Basic at $2.99 a month and Nitro at $9.99 a month. Discord has no per-seat team plan, no admin console, and no central billing: a team on Discord is 25 people each holding their own subscription, which changes the cost math and the control math at the same time.

> [!KEY TAKEAWAY]

> At 25 seats on annual billing, Slack Pro costs $2,175 a year, Teams Essentials costs $1,200, and Discord Nitro bought individually costs $2,997 — but the cheapest sticker price is not the cheapest bill. If the team already pays for Microsoft 365, Teams costs $0 extra; if it does not, Slack Pro is the only one of the three that is actually built to be administered as a team product.

Why it matters

Team chat is a SaaS subscription that compounds with headcount, and the per-seat price is only the first term. The second term is the ceiling: Slack's free tier deletes searchable history after 90 days, so a team that grows past the trial period either pays or loses its own record. The third term is the bundle: a team that buys Microsoft 365 for email and documents gets Teams inside the $7 Business Basic price, which makes the standalone $4 Essentials plan the wrong comparison for most buyers. The fourth term is administration: removing a departed employee from Slack or Teams is one console action or one API call; removing one from Discord is asking 25 individuals to leave a server. The bill that looks cheapest on the pricing page is often the one with the largest hidden term, and the guide below prices each term separately so the comparison is honest.

> [!FOUNDER]

> "The question is never which chat app is cheapest per seat. It is which one you can still administer when the team doubles and one person leaves on bad terms. Price the exit before you price the entry." — Enow A. Jovial, Founder & Chief Executive Officer

The price ladders

| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |

!Slack Pro at $7.25 per user per month on annual billing, with unlimited message history, unlimited app integrations, and group huddles

Slack's monthly-billing premium is the cleanest number on the page: Pro costs $8.75 a month when billed monthly against $7.25 annual, which is 21 percent more, and Business+ costs $18 against $15, which is 20 percent more. $

\text{Monthly-billing penalty} = 25 \times (\$8.75 - \$7.25) \times 12 = \$450

Microsoft raised the prices of most Microsoft 365 business suites on July 1, 2026: Business Basic rose from $6 to $7 and Business Standard from $12.50 to $14, while standalone Teams Essentials stayed at $4 because standalone Teams SKUs were explicitly excluded from that update. The figures are stated as corroborated secondary reads because Microsoft's own pricing pages return a blocked shell from this network rather than the price table.

The worked cost: 5, 25, and 100 seats

The monthly cost formula is the same for every seat-based plan:

\text{Annual cost} = \text{Seats} \times \text{Price per user per month} \times 12

| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |

| Slack Pro ($7.25) | $435 | $2,175 | $8,700 |

| Slack Business+ ($15) | $900 | $4,500 | $18,000 |

| Teams Essentials ($4) | $240 | $1,200 | $4,800 |

| Microsoft 365 Business Basic ($7) | $420 | $2,100 | $8,400 |

| Microsoft 365 Business Standard ($14) | $840 | $4,200 | $16,800 |

| Microsoft 365 Business Premium ($22) | $1,320 | $6,600 | $26,400 |

| Discord Nitro Basic ($2.99) | $179.40 | $897 | $3,588 |

| Discord Nitro ($9.99) | $599.40 | $2,997 | $11,988 |

The arithmetic checks: 25 seats of Slack Pro at $7.25 is $181.25 a month and $2,175 a year; 25 seats of Teams Essentials at $4 is $100 a month and $1,200 a year; 25 individual Nitro subscriptions at $9.99 are $249.75 a month and $2,997 a year. Three-year totals at 25 seats are $6,525 for Slack Pro, $3,600 for Teams Essentials, and $8,991 for Nitro — a $5,391 gap between the cheapest and the dearest over three years. But the table hides the decisive number: a team that already pays for Microsoft 365 Business Basic pays $0 more for Teams, because the $7 per user is already on the invoice for email and documents. The marginal cost of Teams for that team is zero. The reverse is also true: a team with no Microsoft footprint that buys Business Basic only for Teams pays $7 a seat for a chat app it could have bought standalone at $4, plus email and storage it may not need.

The ceilings that force an upgrade

| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |

!Discord Nitro plans, showing Nitro Basic at $2.99 a month with 50 MB uploads and Nitro at $9.99 a month with 1 GB uploads and HD video streaming

The ceiling that bites first is almost always Slack's 90-day history: a team that starts free and grows discovers at month four that its first quarter of decisions is unsearchable, and the only way back is the paid tier. The second ceiling is the Microsoft 365 business-plan cap of 300 users: beyond 300, the business plans stop and the team moves to enterprise licensing, which is quote-only. The third is Discord's missing administration: there is no way to buy Nitro for a team, no way to enforce who holds it, and no way to revoke it centrally.

> [!WARNING]

> Discord Nitro is a consumer subscription, not a team plan. Buying it for a team means 25 individual purchases, 25 separate renewals, and no admin console to remove a departed member or enforce retention. A regulated team that needs audit logs, data loss prevention, or offboarding in one action cannot get them from Discord at any price — the product does not sell that control.

Who should NOT pick each one

Do not pick Discord for a team that handles client data, health information, or anything under a retention policy: there is no admin console, no export, and no way to prove who saw what. Do not pick Slack if the whole company already pays for Microsoft 365 Business Basic or above — Teams is already bought, and paying $7.25 a seat for Slack on top of $7 a seat for the suite is paying twice for chat. Do not pick Teams Essentials if the team needs email or desktop Office apps: Essentials is chat and meetings only, and the upgrade path is the $7 Business Basic bundle, not a bigger Teams plan. Do not pick Slack Free for anything the team must be able to search in six months: the 90-day history limit is a hard delete of the record, not a soft cap. And do not pick any of the three on monthly billing without pricing the premium: Slack charges 20 to 21 percent more per month, which is $450 a year at 25 seats on Pro for nothing but the billing cycle.

Decision table

| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |

The switching checklist

[x] Step 1: Price the marginal cost, not the sticker. If Microsoft 365 is already on the invoice, Teams costs $0 extra; if it is not, Essentials at $4 is the honest Teams price.

[x] Step 2: Count the history the team must keep. Slack Free deletes searchable history after 90 days; if the record matters, budget Pro from day one.

[x] Step 3: Test the offboarding path. Remove a test account from each candidate and confirm the action is one console step, not a message to the person asking them to leave.

[x] Step 4: Bill annually where the discount is real. Slack annual billing saves 20 to 21 percent over monthly; at 25 seats on Pro that is $450 a year.

[x] Step 5: Check the 300-user cap. Microsoft 365 business plans stop at 300 users; a team growing past that needs enterprise licensing priced by quote.

[x] Step 6: Keep Discord for community, not for the payroll. Use Discord where the audience is volunteers and the conversation is public; use Slack or Teams where the conversation is the company's record.

> [!TIP]

> Run the 90-day test before committing: put the team on Slack Free for one quarter and watch what happens to the searchable record at day 91. The teams that feel the loss are the teams that need Pro, and the $2,175 annual bill at 25 seats is the price of keeping the company's own memory.

What this guide does not do

This guide prices the chat products, not the whole collaboration stack. The team-workspace pricing guide compares Notion, Airtable, and Coda on per-seat database pricing, which is the docs-and-databases half of the same buying decision. The engineering issue-tracker guide prices Linear, Jira, and ClickUp, which is where the work tracked in chat actually lives. And the project-management guide prices Asana, Monday, and Trello for teams that need tasks rather than threads. For the numbers behind the seat math, run the pricing calculator at 5, 25, and 100 seats before signing an annual contract — and confirm the Microsoft figures against the vendor's own pricing page at purchase time, because Microsoft's pages did not render from this network and the figures here rest on corroborated 2026 reads.