Azure IAM, LLC explains Microsoft's monthly active user billing for guest governance in Entra ID Governance: the 75 cent meter, the actions that trigger it, the January 30, 2026 enforcement, and how an enterprise retiring Microsoft Identity Manager should budget for contractors and partners.
-- Every enterprise that retires Microsoft Identity Manager (MIM) for Entra ID Governance eventually asks the same budget question: what does Entra ID Governance's new guest user licensing actually cost? Azure IAM, LLC, an independent identity consulting firm that migrates MIM estates, says the answer has two parts, a per seat license for employees and a usage meter for guests, and that the meter is the part most budgets miss. The firm's services are described at https://azureiam.com/.
Two licensing models in one product. Member users are licensed per seat. Microsoft lists Entra ID Governance at 7 dollars per user per month and Entra Suite, which includes it, at 12 dollars, with an Entra ID P1 or P2 prerequisite. Guests are different. Any account with a userType of Guest is billed under a monthly active user model: 75 cents per guest per month, charged to an Azure subscription linked to the tenant. The External ID free tier of 50,000 monthly active users does not apply; Microsoft's documentation states there is no free tier for governance billing. The only seat requirement on the guest side is one Entra ID Governance or Entra Suite license for an administrator.
What counts as active. A guest is billed when at least one Governance exclusive action touches that guest in a calendar month, and only once that month no matter how many actions follow. Microsoft's list of billable actions includes inactive guest access reviews, machine learning assisted reviews, catalog access reviews, access package auto-assignment, sponsor approvers, custom extension policies, Verified ID requirements, marking a guest as governed, direct assignment of an identity not yet in the directory, lifecycle workflow runs, and guest lifecycle policies that disable or delete accounts. Features that shipped with Entra ID P2, including basic access reviews and basic entitlement management, are not metered. A guest whose access package was auto-assigned in March and untouched in April costs nothing in April.
What changed in 2026. Enforcement of the linked subscription began on January 30, 2026, with access reviews following by March 31, 2026, per Microsoft Message Center item MC1225192. Without a linked subscription, administrators cannot create or update entitlement management policies, auto-assignment rules, or lifecycle workflows that scope to guests, cannot create inactive or machine learning assisted reviews of guests, and cannot mark a guest as governed. Existing policies keep running. Tenants that governed partners under the old P2 entitlement for years now find new guest policies blocked until billing is turned on.
The arithmetic. Microsoft's own examples are small: a tenant with 10,000 guests that runs an inactive guest review and finds 240 inactive accounts is billed for 240 guests that month, 180 dollars. A lifecycle workflow that runs against 300 guests bills 300, 225 dollars. The cost becomes material when an enterprise governs its contractor and partner population the way MIM did, continuously. Azure IAM's arithmetic for a Contoso sized estate: 5,000 contractor guests, each touched by a monthly lifecycle workflow or sponsor attestation, is 5,000 times 75 cents times twelve, or 45,000 dollars a year, on top of the per seat licenses for employees. In MIM, those contractors were objects in the metaverse with no per identity charge.
Five ways to keep the meter honest. Azure IAM advises clients to size the meter before linking the subscription. First, run Microsoft's EIG Guest Usage Monitoring Workbook, which reports the actions that would have been billed. Second, set up a multitenant organization for sister tenants; guests from participating tenants do not accrue to the meter. Third, scope reviews to inactive guests only, since only guests included in the review are billed, not every guest scanned. Fourth, keep quarterly review cadences where the control allows it, because a guest reviewed four times a year costs 3 dollars, not 9. Fifth, choose P2 era features where they are sufficient and reserve the metered ones for the populations that need them.
The migration decision. For estates whose external population is small or lightly governed, the guest meter is a rounding error and Entra ID Governance is the simpler target. For estates with tens of thousands of contractors, partners, students, or affiliates governed on a monthly cycle, the meter changes the comparison with SailPoint IdentityIQ, which is licensed per governed identity under a negotiated agreement rather than a usage meter. MIM 2016 SP2 remains supported until January 10, 2029, so the choice can be made on the numbers rather than on a deadline. Azure IAM models both targets against the actual guest counts and review cadences of a MIM estate as part of a fixed fee assessment; a consultation request at https://azureiam.com/contact is the first step.
Contact Info:
Name: Robin Lilly
Email: Send Email
Organization: Azure IAM, LLC
Address: 2521 North Main Unit 1-276, Las Cruces, New Mexico 88001, United States
Website: https://azureiam.com
Source: NewsNetwork
Release ID: 89207910
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