The cheapest Microsoft 365 plan for Excel on the desktop is Microsoft 365 Personal, at $99.99 a year or $9.99 a month in the US. Microsoft 365 Basic costs less but has no desktop apps, so it lacks the Get Data from PDF import. For two or three statements a year, a subscription is rarely the cheapest route.
Which Microsoft 365 plan is the cheapest with desktop Excel?
Microsoft 365 Personal is the lowest-priced subscription that installs the full Excel app. It covers one person on up to five devices. The only cheaper way to own desktop Excel is to skip the subscription and buy Office Home 2024 once, which costs more on day one and less from the second year on.
The reason the desktop app matters is a single menu. Excel's PDF import sits under Data, Get Data, From File, From PDF, and Microsoft's support page on importing data from external sources lists Excel for Microsoft 365 on Windows and Mac, plus Excel 2024, 2021, 2019 and 2016, as the versions it applies to. The same page notes that the PDF connector needs .NET Framework 4.5 or later on a Windows PC. That list is a list of desktop apps. A browser-only plan is not on it. Microsoft's separate table of Power Query data sources by Excel version is narrower: it ticks the PDF connector for Microsoft 365 plans on Windows, has no column for 2021 or 2024, and lists no PDF source for Excel on a Mac.
So the question "which plan is cheapest" really splits in two:
- Cheapest subscription with desktop Excel: Microsoft 365 Personal.
- Cheapest way to own desktop Excel with no renewal: Office Home 2024, a one-time purchase for one PC or Mac.
The one-time route has its own trade-offs, such as no new features after purchase and a single-device license. Those are weighed in detail in buying Excel without a subscription, so this post sticks to the subscription plans and how their prices stack up for statement work.
One more check before paying anything: you may already own a copy. If a work laptop, an old Office box or a family member's plan gives you desktop Excel, the cheapest plan is the one you have. Open Excel, click the Data tab and look for Get Data. If it is there and offers From PDF, you can stop reading price tables.
Microsoft 365 plan prices for Excel, per person and per year
Microsoft's consumer plans range from $19.99 a year for Basic to $199.99 a year for Premium, with Personal and Family in between. Personal is the cheapest for one user. Family becomes cheaper per head once two or more people in a household use it, because up to six people share one price.
These are the US prices on Microsoft's compare all Microsoft 365 plans page and its Microsoft 365 Basic page, read in October 2026. Prices change, and some regions differ, so check the page before you buy.
| Plan | Yearly price | Monthly price | People | Desktop Excel | PDF import in Excel |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Basic | $19.99 | $1.99 | 1 | No (web and mobile only) | No |
| Microsoft 365 Personal | $99.99 | $9.99 | 1 | Yes | Yes, in desktop Excel for Windows |
| Microsoft 365 Family | $129.99 | $12.99 | Up to 6 | Yes | Yes, in desktop Excel for Windows |
| Microsoft 365 Premium | $199.99 | $19.99 | Up to 6 | Yes | Yes, in desktop Excel for Windows |
| Office Home 2024 | $179.99 once | Not offered | 1 PC or Mac | Yes | Not confirmed by Microsoft, test first |
Reading the table for statement work
Three things stand out once you look at it with a statement in mind.
First, the jump from Basic to Personal is $80 a year, and the only part of it that matters for a PDF statement is the desktop app. The extra storage and the AI chat do not convert anything for you.
Second, paying monthly costs more over a year. Twelve months of Personal at $9.99 comes to $119.88, which is $19.89 more than the yearly price. Monthly billing only wins if you plan to cancel after one or two months.
Third, Premium adds nothing a statement needs over Personal or Family. Its extras are aimed at heavier AI use. For importing a PDF table, it is the most expensive way to reach the same menu.
If you share a household, the Family price divided across real users can drop below Personal. The math for two, three and six people is worked out in what Microsoft 365 Family costs per person.
Does Microsoft 365 Basic include Excel's PDF import?
No. Microsoft 365 Basic gives you Excel only on the web, iOS and Android, and the PDF import Microsoft documents is a desktop feature. Basic is a storage and email plan with web apps attached. It is cheap, but it does not open the menu that reads a PDF statement into rows.
Microsoft's Basic page lists 100 GB of cloud storage, ad-free Outlook, and Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote marked "use free on web, iOS, and Android only." In other words, the Excel you get with Basic is the same free web version anyone with a Microsoft account can open. Paying for Basic does not upgrade it.
This catches people who search for the cheapest plan and stop at the lowest price on the page. They pay $19.99, open Excel in the browser, and find no Get Data from PDF entry. The browser version's gaps are covered in what the Excel for the web PDF import lacks.
What Basic can still do for a statement:
- Store the PDF and the finished spreadsheet in OneDrive.
- Open an .xlsx or CSV file that something else produced, and let you sort, filter and total it.
- Share the finished sheet with an accountant.
What it cannot do is the conversion itself. If the conversion is the job, Basic is the wrong plan at any price.
Cost per statement on a Microsoft 365 plan: a worked example
The real price of a plan for statement work is its yearly cost divided by the statements you convert in that year. A plan that looks cheap per month can cost tens of dollars per statement for a light user, while a heavy user brings it down to a few dollars. Run your own numbers before you subscribe.
Here is the formula: yearly plan price, divided by statements converted in the year, equals the cost per statement. It leaves out your cleanup time, which is the same whichever plan you pick.
Example: three households
The statement counts below are examples, not averages. Swap in your own.
| Example household | Statements in a year | Plan | Yearly cost | Cost per statement |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tax-time only | 3 | Personal, yearly | $99.99 | $33.33 |
| One account, every month | 12 | Personal, yearly | $99.99 | $8.33 |
| Two accounts, every month | 24 | Personal, yearly | $99.99 | $4.17 |
| Tax-time only, one month billed | 3 | Personal, one month at $9.99 | $9.99 | $3.33 |
The last row is the one people miss. If all your statements arrive at once, a single month of Personal at $9.99, cancelled before it renews, brings the price per statement down sharply. You need to remember to cancel, and you lose the desktop apps when the month ends. A free trial can do the same job for $0 if you are eligible, as laid out in using a Microsoft 365 free trial for one PDF.
What the formula leaves out
Two costs sit outside the table. The first is time: the import gives you a table, but you still fix dates, page headers and amounts that arrive as text. The second is page count. A long statement does not change the plan price, but it multiplies the cleanup, and statements vary more than people expect. How many pages a bank statement usually runs shows what adds pages, such as check images and long transaction lists.
When the cheapest Microsoft 365 plan is still the wrong buy
Even the cheapest desktop plan is the wrong purchase when you only need a handful of conversions, when your statement is a scan, or when you are on a Mac, where Microsoft lists no PDF import. In each case you pay for Excel and still do the hard part another way. Check all three before you enter a card number.
A few statements a year
At three statements a year, Personal works out to more than $30 per file. That is a high price for a table you could get another way. If you already pay for Microsoft 365 for other reasons, use it. If you would be subscribing only for this, a free route or a per-file purchase is cheaper.
A scanned statement
The PDF import reads text that is already in the file. If your statement is a scan or a photo, there is no text to read, and Excel shows no useful tables. Try to highlight one line of the PDF in a viewer. If nothing highlights, no Microsoft 365 plan fixes that on its own. You need OCR first.
An older Excel on a Mac
The import runs on Power Query, and Mac support for it is not the same as on Windows. Microsoft's version table lists no PDF source for Excel on a Mac, so a plan upgrade does not add the import there. Which Excel versions include Power Query sets out the versions that have it and the ones that do not. On a Mac, Preview and Numbers can do the job instead, as shown in converting a PDF to Excel on a Mac for free.
Paying for Premium to get Copilot
Some people buy the highest plan hoping AI will clean up the import. The table above shows Premium costs twice as much as Personal. Whether the AI features earn that for statement work is a separate question, and for a few files a year the answer is usually no.
Matching a Microsoft 365 plan to your yearly statement count
Pick by volume. Under about five statements a year, avoid a new subscription and use a free route, a trial month or a per-file converter. From about ten a year, Personal on yearly billing is reasonable if you also use Word and Excel for other work. Households with several users should price Family per head.
A short decision list:
- You already have desktop Excel anywhere. Use it. The cheapest plan is the one you are paying for now.
- You need one batch of statements, once. Use a trial, or pay for one month and cancel.
- You convert monthly and use Office for other tasks. Personal, billed yearly, is the cheapest desktop option.
- Several people at home use Office. Compare the Family price divided by real users with Personal.
- You never want a renewal. Look at the one-time Office Home 2024 license instead of any plan.
- You only convert statements. A subscription is the wrong tool for the job.
For that last case, a per-document price can come in lower. CheapBankConvert charges once per statement and nothing renews: in early pricing, $2.99 for up to 10 pages, $5.99 for 11 to 40, and the first two pages of any file are a free preview. It is getting ready to open, so treat those as early prices rather than a promise.