What is Entra ID P2?

This sounds like a really basic question, but is actually a question we get from many of our customers.

The answer is: Microsoft Entra ID P2 is a license for Entra ID. You have three+ license levels in Entra ID:

• Free
• P1
• P2
• Entra Suite

The P1 license is included in the Microsoft 365 E3 and Microsoft 365 Business Premium licenses, while the P2 license is included in the E5 license. You can also buy the Entra licenses separately. What we typically see and recommend is that customers with E3 license buy P2 add-on licenses at least for their admins.

The Entra Suite is, as the name implies, more a collection of Entra products in addition to Entra ID (like Private Access and Internet Access). I’ll go in depth on the Entra Suite in a later post.

So which license do you need? We recommend everyone working with internal IT to have the P2 license. And for larger companies, and those of you who have extra focus on security, to have the P2 license for everyone in your organization, especially to get the risk-based conditional access.

These are some of the features you miss out on if you only have the P1 license:

• Access Reviews
• Privileged Identity Management (PIM)
• Risk Based Conditional Access
• Authentication Context (step-up authentication)
• Token protection
• Vulnerabilities and risky account detection

And if you are on the Entra ID Free plan you should seriously consider upgrading your license if you are using it in a production environment. The Free plan does not have any Conditional Access, less functionality around group and password management, and no SLA.

And remember: don’t let license costs prevent you from using separate administrator accounts – licenses are counted per human, not per account.

If you want to get the most out of you Microsoft Entra licenses, or just want to make sure your tenant is secure, check out our service Proactive Security Monitoring.