For a UK sole trader who wants a professional email address on their own domain, Microsoft 365 Business Basic is the only one of the two built to deliver it, from around £5.40 a user a month excluding VAT on an annual commitment. Google Workspace Individual costs more, at £7.99 a month, and keeps you on your personal @gmail.com address; it cannot issue you@yourbusiness.com at all (Google). If a proper business email matters, Business Basic wins on cost and capability together.
Key pointers
- If you need name@yourbusiness.com, Google Workspace Individual cannot provide it: it only runs on a personal domain such as gmail.com, hotmail.com or yahoo.com (Google).
- Microsoft 365 Business Basic includes a custom-domain mailbox as standard, but you still need to buy the domain itself separately, typically £3 to £15 a year.
- Google Workspace Individual is strictly single-user: it runs on a personal Google Account with no admin console, so you cannot add a second seat within the same plan (Google). Business Basic has no minimum and scales to up to 300 users on the same plan.
- Google Workspace Individual gives 1 TB of storage; Microsoft 365 Business Basic gives 1 TB too, so storage is not the deciding factor (Google).
- If you already use gmail.com as your email and just want more Meet and Calendar features without a domain, Google Workspace Individual is the only one of the two that fits.
- Microsoft's £5.40 price excludes VAT; a VAT-registered sole trader adds 20% but reclaims it, so it costs them nothing net, while a non-VAT-registered sole trader, the more common case below the £90,000 threshold, absorbs the 20% as a real extra cost (GOV.UK). Google Workspace Individual is billed as a consumer subscription, and its £7.99 price is understood to already include VAT.
- Neither plan includes real endpoint antivirus or device management: Business Basic has email spam filtering only, and Defender for Business is a Premium-tier feature or a separate add-on, not part of Basic (Microsoft Learn).
- If a custom domain from Google is what you actually want, Google Workspace Business Starter at £5.90 a month (annual) undercuts Google Workspace Individual and includes the domain email Individual leaves out (Google).
What this decision means for a sole trader
The question underneath "Google Workspace Individual or Microsoft 365 Business Basic" is usually a different one: do you want to keep trading from a personal email address, or move to one that carries your business name. Google Workspace Individual is built for the first answer. It takes an existing @gmail.com account and adds business-grade extras, mainly around video calls and appointment booking, without ever touching the domain question (Google). Microsoft 365 Business Basic is built for the second. Below the desktop-apps tier, its entire value proposition is a proper mailbox on your own domain, alongside Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive storage (Microsoft).
That single structural difference decides most of the choice before cost even enters it. A driving instructor, market trader or freelance designer who quotes jobs from a Gmail address can genuinely use everything Google Workspace Individual offers: longer Meet calls with clients, a booking page for lessons or consultations, and mail merge for a newsletter to past customers, all for £7.99 a month. A sole trader who invoices through a brand that matches a website and business cards needs the domain that only Business Basic, or Google's own Business Starter, can provide.
Storage is close to a non-issue between the two. Google Workspace Individual gives 1 TB pooled across Gmail, Drive and Photos; Microsoft 365 Business Basic gives 1 TB of OneDrive per user, plus SharePoint for document libraries (Google). Neither is likely to constrain a single laptop-and-phone operation in its first few years.
Pricing and cost model
Google Workspace Individual is billed at £7.99 a month through the subscriber's personal Google Account, the price Google set when it launched the UK edition in August 2022 (UC Today). A UK reseller tracking Google's most recent price round, in late 2025, lists Business Starter, Standard and Plus as revised but explicitly excludes Workspace Individual from that change (UK IT Services), so £7.99 a month remains the best-evidenced current figure. Google does not publish a fixed sterling rate card for this tier the way it does for its Business editions, so confirm the exact amount shown at checkout before you commit.
Microsoft 365 Business Basic's list price rose by roughly 17% on 1 July 2026, taking the UK annual-commitment rate to about £5.40 a user a month, excluding VAT (Managed IT Pros). That is the rate for a 12-month commitment paid monthly or upfront; a rolling monthly subscription with no commitment costs more, and the exact flexible-billing figure is best checked at signup rather than assumed. Existing subscribers keep their prior rate only until their next renewal. The same 2026 packaging update also doubled the included primary mailbox on Business Basic from 50 GB to 100 GB, in a rollout Microsoft says reaches tenants gradually (Neowin).
Neither headline price is the whole bill. Business Basic needs a domain name, which is not included and typically costs £3 to £15 a year depending on the registrar and the .co.uk or .com extension chosen. Google Workspace Individual needs nothing extra if you are happy to stay on gmail.com, but if you later decide you do want a domain, you would need to move to Google Workspace Business Starter instead, at £5.90 a month on an annual commitment or £7 a month flexible (Google), which is cheaper than Individual and adds the domain email Individual cannot offer.
VAT treatment differs by how you buy. Microsoft publishes its Business-tier price excluding VAT, so a VAT-registered sole trader adds 20% at checkout but reclaims it on their VAT return, leaving no net cost. A sole trader below the £90,000 VAT registration threshold is typically not VAT-registered and cannot reclaim anything, so for them the 20% is a genuine extra on top of the £5.40 headline figure (GOV.UK). Google Workspace Individual is billed through a personal Google Account as a consumer subscription rather than a business one, and its £7.99 price is understood to already include VAT, so there is normally nothing further to add.
Vendor and option comparison
| Criterion | Google Workspace Individual | Microsoft 365 Business Basic |
|---|---|---|
| UK price | £7.99 a month | About £5.40 a user a month ex VAT, annual commitment |
| Custom domain email | Not available; personal domain only (Google) | Included, on a domain you buy separately |
| Storage | 1 TB, pooled across Gmail, Drive and Photos (Google) | 1 TB OneDrive, plus SharePoint |
| Mailbox | Shares the 1 TB pool | 100 GB primary mailbox, up from 50 GB since the 2026 update |
| Office-style apps | Docs, Sheets, Slides, browser-based on every tier | Word, Excel, PowerPoint, browser and mobile only on Basic |
| Meetings | Meet, longer group calls, noise cancellation, breakout rooms (Google) | Teams, chat, video calls, file sharing |
| Security | No endpoint protection beyond Google's account security | Exchange spam/malware filtering and MFA only; no endpoint antivirus on this tier (Microsoft Learn) |
| Extras | Appointment booking pages, mail merge, eSignature (Google) | None beyond the productivity suite itself |
| Adding staff later | Not possible on this plan; move to a Business tier | Add licences on the same plan, up to 300 users |
| Billing | Personal Google Account, no admin console | Business subscription, admin centre included |
Choose Google Workspace Individual if you are staying on a personal Gmail address by choice, and the appointment booking page or longer Meet calls solve a real problem you already have. Choose Microsoft 365 Business Basic if a domain-matched email address is part of how you present the business, since it is both cheaper and the only one of the two that delivers it. Neither suits a sole trader who wants installed desktop Office apps; that needs Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Apps for Business instead.
Editorial analysis
The comparison only looks close on the surface, because both plans cost a similar handful of pounds a month and both offer 1 TB of storage. Once you add the domain question, most of the ambiguity disappears. A sole trader who has already decided they want you@yourbusiness.com should treat Google Workspace Individual as the wrong product entirely, not just the more expensive one, since no amount of extra spend on that tier buys a custom domain. The genuinely close call is narrower: whether the Meet and Calendar extras in Google Workspace Individual are worth more than the roughly £2 a month saved by staying on Business Basic, and that answer depends entirely on how often the business actually runs client video calls or takes bookings.
Sources
- Learn about Google Workspace Individual, Google
- Set up Google Workspace for your organization, Google
- Google Workspace UK pricing, Google
- Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Microsoft
- What is Microsoft Defender for Business?, Microsoft Learn
- Register for VAT, GOV.UK
- Google Workspace Individual Now Available in Europe, UC Today
- Google Workspace Price Hike 2025, UK IT Services
- Microsoft 365 Business Plans Compared (2026), Managed IT Pros
- M365 Business Basic vs Standard vs Premium: UK Pricing 2026, Core IT Tech
- Microsoft explains Exchange mailbox storage boost from 50 to 100 GB, Neowin
