When a company moves from Microsoft 365 back to a perpetual volume license like Office LTSC Standard 2024, they usually bring their subscription habits with them.
“I assigned the license to Sarah, so she can use Word on her laptop, her phone, and the terminal server, right?”
Wrong.
If you are treating Office LTSC like a User subscription, you are actively failing compliance. Here is the single, golden rule of Microsoft perpetual Office licensing that catches everyone off guard.
The Rule: Office LTSC is strictly Per-Device
Unlike Microsoft 365 (which lets one user install Office on up to 5 devices), Office LTSC 2024 is strictly licensed to a physical piece of hardware.
When you buy a volume license for Office Standard or Professional Plus, you are not buying a license for “Sarah.” You are buying a license for “Laptop Asset #145”.
What this means practically:
- Multiple Users, One PC: If Sarah, John, and Mike all share “Laptop Asset #145” on different shifts, you only need one Office LTSC license. This is great for manufacturing floors and nursing stations.
- One User, Multiple PCs: If Sarah has a desktop at work and a laptop for home, she needs two Office LTSC licenses. The license does not follow the user.
The Terminal Server Trap (RDS)
This is the most common reason businesses fail Microsoft audits.
Many IT admins install Office LTSC Professional Plus on a Windows Terminal Server (RDS environment) so their remote workers can access Word and Excel. They assume they just need to buy one copy of Office for the server, or maybe one for every user who logs in.
Here is the actual law:
If you host Office LTSC on a server, every single physical client device that accesses that server must have its own dedicated Office LTSC license.
Let’s do the math for a 50-person company using thin clients to access an RDS server running Office LTSC 2024:
* You do not buy 1 license for the server.
* You do not buy 50 User licenses.
* You MUST buy 50 Office LTSC Device licenses and assign them to the 50 thin clients.
If those 50 users go home and access the server from their personal home PCs, those 50 home PCs also need their own Office LTSC licenses. (This is why businesses running RDS almost strictly use Microsoft 365 Shared Computer Activation nowadays, as it licenses the user, not the metal).
The “Primary User” Exception (Roaming Rights)
There is one tiny bit of grace from Microsoft.
If a device (like a desktop PC) is licensed for Office LTSC, the “Primary User” of that device is granted Roaming Rights.
The Primary User can remotely access their own licensed work desktop from a third-party, unlicensed device (like a hotel kiosk), and use Office. However, they cannot use an unlicensed tablet to access a server running Office.
M365 vs Office LTSC
| Feature | Microsoft 365 Apps | Office LTSC 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| Licensing Metric | Per User | Per Physical Device |
| Installs Allowed | Up to 5 PCs/Macs per user | strictly ONE physical device |
| Shared RDS/VDI | Yes (Shared Computer Activation) | Yes (If EVERY client device is licensed) |
| Payment Model | Monthly/Annual Subscription | One-time Perpetual Purchase |
| Feature Updates | Monthly | Never (Static codebase) |
Summary
Before you purchase Office LTSC 2024 to “save money on subscriptions”, do a hard count of your hardware. If your users have a laptop, a home desktop, and a tablet, buying them LTSC licenses for all three devices will cost exponentially more than just paying the $12/month for Microsoft 365.
Reserve Office LTSC strictly for air-gapped networks, single-station kiosks, and shift-worker computers where the device count is lower than the human count.