How to share Azure Test Plans results with someone who has no licence

Your auditor, your release board and your client sponsor all need to see the test results. None of them have an Azure DevOps licence. Here is exactly what each access level allows, what the built-in exports actually contain, and the four routes out — with the cost of each.

Verified against Microsoft documentation, August 2026 · About 9 minutes

This is the most common question a test manager running Azure Test Plans ever asks, and the answers you find online are usually wrong in the same direction: they assume every reader needs the $52 licence. They don't. But the honest answer is more awkward than that, because the cheap route gives your reader a portal they can't navigate, and the free route strips out the evidence.

Let's do it properly.

What each access level actually allows

Azure DevOps has three access levels relevant to Test Plans, and the boundary that matters is not where most people think it is.

The headline: the read-access floor is $6 per user per month, not $52. A Basic user can execute tests, mark outcomes, view charts and read reports. What they cannot do is author or manage anything — the Define tab is gated behind Basic + Test Plans. Microsoft's FAQ is unambiguous about it:

"The Define tab is only available to users with Basic + Test Plans access or equivalent. Users with Basic access can use the Execute and Chart tabs but can't author or manage test cases through the Define tab."

If you have been buying $52 seats for people who only ever look at results, you have been overspending by roughly ninety per cent. Worth an afternoon's audit of your own licence assignments.

Stakeholder access is not a reading licence

Free Stakeholder access does not get you into Test Plans. Microsoft states it plainly:

"Users with Stakeholder access can't access the Test Plans web portal. However, they can provide feedback through the Test & Feedback extension."

Worth knowing, if you ever need to argue this with a procurement team who has read a different page: Microsoft's own Stakeholder access documentation contradicts itself here. The quick-reference table lists Azure Test Plans as "No access" for both private and public projects, while the prose further down the same page says "Stakeholders have limited access to Azure Test Plans" and grants two capabilities — providing feedback through the extension, and applying a work item template to a test case. Both statements are on the page. The table is the one that matches observed behaviour: a Stakeholder cannot open the Test Plans hub.

One further change that has caught people out: on Azure DevOps Services, the formal Request feedback action and the extension's Feedback requests page are gone. Stakeholders capture screenshots and notes in the extension and file bugs or tasks. The full request-and-response workflow, with Feedback Response work items, now only exists on Azure DevOps Server.

Which Visual Studio subscriptions include it

Visual Studio Enterprise, Visual Studio Test Professional and MSDN Platforms subscriptions all include Test Plans access at no extra charge, and subscribers don't count against your five free Basic users. Visual Studio Professional maps to Basic only — no Test Plans. If your organisation already holds Enterprise subscriptions, check who has one before you buy anything.

Route one: buy Basic seats

At $6 a month this is genuinely cheap, and for an internal colleague who will look at results regularly it is usually the right answer.

It fails for external readers. Your auditor from a Big Four firm, your client's programme manager, the regulator's examiner — none of them are going to be provisioned an identity in your Azure DevOps organisation, and your own security team will be the ones saying no. It also fails on comprehension: you are handing someone who has never seen Azure DevOps a portal with tabs, filters and configuration dimensions, and asking them to find the number themselves. They will email you and ask what it means, which is the thing you were trying to avoid.

Route two: the built-in Export to email or PDF

Test Plans has an Export option that produces an email or a print-to-PDF of a plan or suite. It is more limited than it looks, and Microsoft documents every limit:

• Maximum 75 test suites in a single operation.
• Maximum 1 MB of data.
• "You can't export test plan attachments." Microsoft's words, not ours.

And a detail that catches people: this exports the properties and details of the plan, suites and cases. It is not an execution report. If what you need to send is "here is what we ran and what happened," this is not the tool.

Route three: export test cases to CSV or XLSX

This is the route most people reach for second, and it is the one that most reliably disappoints, because of a distinction the menu label hides.

It exports test cases, not test results. The columns are ID, Work Item Type, Title, Test Step, Step Action, Step Expected, Area Path, State, Assigned To, plus anything you add through Column options. Each test step becomes its own row.

There is no outcome. No run date. No tester. No evidence. Nothing about what actually happened when someone executed the thing. Azure Test Plans has no built-in CSV or XLSX export of test results at all.

If you still want it for case inventory, the documented limits are: files capped at 20 MB, test case titles capped at 128 characters, test cases must be in Design state to import, and the operation fails if any test case has more than 1,000 related links. There is no single-action undo on a bulk import, and each import writes a revision to every affected test case.

Route four: build it from the REST API

Everything you need is exposed. Test results, iterations, run attachments, result attachments — all reachable over REST at api-version=7.1 with a personal access token carrying the vso.test scope. You pull the data, render it into a self-contained HTML file, and send that file to whoever needs it. No licence, no login, no portal.

This is the only route that produces something an unlicensed reader can genuinely use, and it is also the reason so many test managers end up maintaining a PowerShell script or a Power BI workbook they never wanted to own. It works. It is also now your job to keep it working, forever, including the week you are on holiday.

What every route has in common

None of them carry the evidence.

The screenshots your testers captured, the step-level notes, the attachments proving the thing actually behaved as claimed — those live on test results inside Azure DevOps, and every export route above either drops them or requires you to write the code that fetches them. That is why the pack you send to an auditor is so often assembled by hand: someone opens each failed result, downloads the image, and pastes it into a document that has no traceable link back to the run that produced it.

We wrote a separate guide on exactly where that evidence lives and how to get it out: Exporting test evidence from Azure Test Plans.

It isn't just Microsoft

It would be reasonable to assume a commercial test management tool solves this. We checked the major ones in August 2026, and none of them do.

The one vendor that genuinely gives you free readers withholds reports from them. Which means the sentence "share a test evidence report with an unlicensed stakeholder" describes something no major test management product currently does.

The short version

• Stakeholder access cannot open Test Plans. Don't plan around it.
• The read floor is $6/user/month, not $52 — check whether you're overpaying today.
• The built-in export gives you plan and suite properties, capped at 75 suites and 1 MB, and cannot include attachments.
• "Export test cases to CSV/XLSX" exports cases, not results. There is no built-in results export.
• The REST API can give you everything, and then you own a script forever.
• No major commercial test tool solves this either, as of August 2026.

Sources

• Manual test permissions and access — Microsoft Learn
• About access levels — Microsoft Learn
• Stakeholder access quick reference — Microsoft Learn
• Azure Test Plans FAQ — Microsoft Learn
• Navigate Test Plans (export limits) — Microsoft Learn
• Bulk import and export test cases — Microsoft Learn
• Azure DevOps pricing — Microsoft Azure