Microsoft made Teams Rooms Basic free in 2022 and most Australian SMBs still assume every room needs a paid licence. Plenty of resellers are happy to leave that assumption alone. This guide sets out what each tier includes and the specific situations where Pro is worth the money. We install and license both, so we have no reason to push you either way.
The one-paragraph answer
Teams Rooms Basic is free, capped at 25 rooms per tenant, and covers one-touch join, content sharing and calendar integration on a single display. It is enough for huddle rooms and small meeting rooms that only ever do Teams calls.
Teams Rooms Pro is a paid per-device monthly licence with no room cap, which we quote in Australian dollars at current CSP pricing. It adds dual displays, Front Row and other layouts, intelligent camera and speaker features, the Pro Management portal, Conditional Access and Intune enrolment, and detailed analytics. You need it for boardrooms, for any room you want under your security baseline, and for any fleet you want managed properly.
Feature comparison
| Capability | Basic | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Paid, per device per month, quoted in AUD |
| Room cap per tenant | 25 | Unlimited |
| One-touch join, Teams meetings | Yes | Yes |
| Wired and wireless content sharing | Yes | Yes |
| Exchange calendar and room booking | Yes | Yes |
| Direct Guest Join to Zoom and Webex | Yes | Yes |
| Dual-display support | No | Yes |
| Front Row and gallery layouts | No | Yes |
| Intelligent camera framing and people recognition | No | Yes |
| Intelligent speakers (speaker attribution in transcripts) | No | Yes |
| Teams Rooms Pro Management portal | No | Yes |
| Proactive device health alerts and remote remediation | No | Yes |
| Conditional Access and Intune device compliance | No | Yes |
| Call quality and room usage analytics | Basic in Teams Admin Centre | Detailed in Pro portal |
| Copilot and AI meeting features on the room device | No | Yes, where licensed |
Feature availability is current at September 2026. Microsoft moves items between tiers occasionally, so confirm against the current comparison before a large purchase.
When Basic is genuinely enough
You are a Basic candidate if all of these are true for a given room:
- The room seats fewer than eight people and one display or interactive board covers it.
- It joins Teams meetings and occasionally a Zoom or Webex call as a guest.
- You have fewer than 25 rooms across the tenant.
- You do not require the room device to be under Conditional Access.
- Someone can walk to the room if it needs a reboot.
That describes most huddle rooms and small meeting rooms in a 20 to 100 person Australian business. Putting Pro on those rooms is a recurring monthly cost for features you will not use.
The four situations where you need Pro
1. The room has two displays
Dual-display layouts (remote participants on one screen, content on the other) are Pro-only. If you have specified dual 75" or 86" displays for a boardroom, the licence decision is already made.
2. The room must be under Conditional Access
If your Microsoft 365 baseline, your Essential 8 maturity target, or your ISO 27001 scope says all tenant devices sit under Conditional Access and device compliance, room devices are not exempt. Intune enrolment and Conditional Access for Teams Rooms is a Pro capability. Excluding rooms from Conditional Access to save the licence fee is a finding waiting to happen.
3. You want the room managed, not just installed
The Pro Management portal is the difference between finding out a room is broken when the CEO walks in, and finding out at 6am from an alert and fixing it remotely before anyone arrives. Proactive health monitoring, remote restarts, firmware scheduling, and fleet-wide configuration are all Pro. If you are paying an MSP for managed room support, they need Pro to deliver it.
4. Remote participants matter to the business
Intelligent camera framing, people recognition, Front Row and intelligent speakers all improve the experience for the person dialling in. If client meetings, board meetings, or interstate team meetings run through this room, the remote experience is the point of the room, and Pro is what delivers it.
The mixed model
Licences are assigned per room resource account, so you can put Pro on the rooms where it earns its keep and Basic everywhere else. A typical office with three huddle rooms and one boardroom pays for one Pro licence, not four. Upgrading a room later takes minutes.
Where the licence sits in the overall cost
The licence is a small slice of a Teams Room's total cost; hardware, audio and installation are the bulk of it. Our Teams Rooms cost guide breaks down hardware, audio, installation and the items that get left off quotes.
How we handle licensing on an install
Every Teams Rooms installation we deliver includes creating the resource account, setting calendar processing, assigning the licence, and enrolling the device in the tenant. As a Microsoft CSP we supply the Basic or Pro licences on your existing agreement, and we specify the tier per room in the design proposal so there is no surprise on the first invoice.
Frequently asked questions
Is Teams Rooms Basic really free? Yes. Teams Rooms Basic is a zero-cost licence available to any Microsoft 365 tenant, capped at 25 room devices per tenant. It is assigned to the room's resource account the same way a paid licence would be. You still pay for the hardware and installation.
Can I mix Basic and Pro licences in the same tenant? Yes. Licences are assigned per room resource account, so you can run huddle rooms on Basic and boardrooms on Pro in the same tenant. The 25-room cap applies only to Basic-licensed devices.
Does Teams Rooms Pro include the hardware? No. Pro is a software and management licence only. Hardware is purchased separately from a certified vendor such as MaxHub, Logitech, Yealink or Poly, and installation is a separate service.
Can I upgrade from Basic to Pro later? Yes, and it takes minutes. Assign the Pro licence to the room's resource account and the device picks up the additional features on its next sign-in. The reverse also works if you downgrade.
Do I need Teams Rooms Pro for Conditional Access? In practice, yes. Enrolling room devices in Intune and applying Conditional Access and device compliance policies is a Pro capability. If your security baseline or ISO 27001 scope requires all tenant devices to be under Conditional Access, budget for Pro on every room.