Google Workspace for Education vs Microsoft 365 Education: Which is better for a school? Or are there other alternative options?

Hello, I'm trying to set up emails for my school, and I've already bought a custom domain (e.g. school.edu) and would like to give every teacher and students a school email (eg. [email protected]). Our school has about 1000 students, and so we would require an admin panel to manage the emails (students can will lose and forget their email passwords). I'm thinking an admin (me) would create a new email upon new student enrollment, generate a random password, and give the new email and password to the student that they can log in in a web portal application (either Gmail or Outlook or other). This is the only functionality I want, so I'm ok with not having any other services (like Word PowerPoint Excel or Google Classroom or Youtube).

So, which should I use? Google Workspace for Education or Microsoft 365 Education? In terms of price, both have free tiers so I guess I'll try using the free tier frist and then maybe upgrade when I like it or when necessary. But for that upgrade, I would also need to consider the price. I heard Outlook is $5/user/month, so that'd be $5000/month or $60k/year, which is absurd for some mail.

Or are they any free (or nearly free, maybe $3/yr or $5/yr or less than $10/yr) services that let me do that? I'm not looking for self hosting options or setting up a local server in the physical campus of school, as they're going to be a nightmare and a headache. Someone suggested Azure but won't I need to write the admin panel and stuff from scratch if I self host there?