How to Migrate SharePoint Online Content to Another Tenant: All Available Options

Moving SharePoint content between tenants — for a merger, acquisition, or restructuring — has more options than it used to, ranging from a manual drag-and-drop to a native Microsoft-managed pipeline. What you keep (permissions, version history, workflows) varies a lot between them, which is the real deciding factor, not just price.

In this post: Native Microsoft 365 migration · Manual download and upload · Microsoft Migration Manager · PowerShell with PnP · Power Automate · Graph API / REST API · Third-party tools · Comparison table · When would you actually use this? · Related reading

Native Microsoft 365 migration

Best for: orgs that want a Microsoft-managed move without a third-party tool in the mix.

Microsoft now ships native cross-tenant migration for both SharePoint sites and OneDrive accounts, run through SharePoint Online PowerShell (Start-SPOCrossTenantSiteContentMove for sites, a separate flow for OneDrive) after establishing trust between the two tenants via Entra B2B. It requires a per-user Cross-Tenant User Data Migration Add-On license and real prerequisite setup, and it’s a one-and-done move (no incremental/delta passes), but the content moves entirely within Microsoft’s cloud without leaving it. See Cross-Tenant SharePoint Migration: What You Need to Know for the full licensing and setup walkthrough. Worth checking before reaching for a third-party tool by default — this option didn’t exist a couple of years ago and covers a meaningful chunk of what used to require one.

Manual download and upload

Best for: a handful of files, nothing more. No tooling required, but everything that isn’t the raw file content — Created By/Modified By metadata, permissions, version history, workflows — is lost in the process. Doesn’t scale past “small and simple.”

Microsoft Migration Manager

Best for: large document-library-only migrations, free and Microsoft-supported. The real limitation: it’s document libraries only — lists, metadata, permissions, and workflows aren’t part of what it moves.

PowerShell with PnP

Best for: migrating lists and libraries with metadata, scripted and automatable:

# Connect to source tenant and export
Connect-PnPOnline -Url "https://source.sharepoint.com/sites/MySite" -Interactive
Get-PnPListItem -List "Documents" | Export-Csv "Documents.csv"

# Connect to destination tenant and import
Connect-PnPOnline -Url "https://destination.sharepoint.com/sites/MySite" -Interactive
Import-Csv "Documents.csv" | ForEach-Object { Add-PnPListItem -List "Documents" -Values $_ }

Retains metadata and lookup fields, fully automatable — but permissions and version history aren’t preserved through this path, and it requires actual PowerShell scripting comfort.

Power Automate

Best for: incremental migrations — moving documents or list items on an ongoing basis rather than a single cutover. Same gap as the PnP approach: no permissions or version history, and it’s noticeably slower than the other options at real scale.

Graph API / REST API

Best for: developers with a custom migration requirement none of the above cover. Graph’s file copy operation is the core building block:

POST /sites/{sourceSiteId}/drives/{sourceDriveId}/items/{sourceItemId}/copy

Fully customizable, but it requires real development effort to build into something production-worthy, and Graph’s rate limits become a real constraint at large migration volumes.

Third-party tools

Best for: full-fidelity migration (metadata, permissions, version history, workflows, security settings all preserved) without building it yourself. The tradeoff is straightforward: a paid license, in exchange for not having to solve the metadata/permissions preservation problem from scratch.

ShareGate — widely used, strong UI, no scripting required.
AvePoint Fly — comprehensive migration with detailed reporting.
Quest Metalogix — enterprise-scale migrations.
CloudM Migrate — particularly strong for Teams and OneDrive migrations specifically.

Native Microsoft 365 cross-tenant migration didn’t exist a couple of years ago and now covers a meaningful chunk of what used to require a third-party tool by default.

Comparison table

Method	Documents	Lists	Permissions	Metadata	Versions	Cost
Native M365 migration	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Add-on license
Manual copy-paste	Yes	No	No	No	No	Free
Migration Manager	Yes	No	No	No	No	Free
PowerShell (PnP)	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No	Free
Power Automate	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No	Free
Graph API / REST API	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No	Free (dev time)
Third-party (ShareGate, etc.)	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Paid

When would you actually use this?

A full site or OneDrive account needs to move with everything intact — check the native Microsoft 365 option first, then a third-party tool if licensing or the one-and-done limitation rules it out.
Only document content matters, no lists or permissions — Migration Manager is the free, Microsoft-supported answer.
You need this integrated into a larger automated process (part of a bigger provisioning or onboarding flow) — that’s when PnP PowerShell or the Graph API earns the extra development effort.

Cross-Tenant SharePoint Migration: What You Need to Know — the deep dive on the native Microsoft 365 option covered briefly above, including licensing and real limitations.
SharePoint Copy Files: Everything You Need to Know — for moving files within a tenant rather than across one.

Choosing the right approach comes down to what you actually need preserved, not just what’s free. Questions about your specific migration scenario? Drop them in the comments.