Your Guide to Power Platform Licensing (2024)

A comprehensive guide to understand the Power Platform licensing and making it more approachable.

(Power Apps, Power Automate, PowerBI, Power Apps Portal, Power Pages, Power Virtual Agent, AI Builder and Dataverse)

In this blog post, we outline and describe a comprehensive guide to understanding the Power Platform licensing and making it more approachable. I spent a lot of time dissecting the licensing details and providing some common use cases and decision points, so I hope you will find this guide timely and useful.

This guide was revised on September 1, 2022 to include latest license and product changes in Power Automate and Power Pages, and again on November 22, 2022 to include updated information on Power Pages.

Downloadable Guide Available

Why Do We Need a Guide for Licensing?

As is the case with Microsoft licensing, you often need a Ph.D. in quantum physics to make sense of this maze of products and the interaction between said products. Many readers may think Power Apps and PowerAutomate are part of Microsoft/Office 365 and, therefore, free to use. While this is true for some scenarios, it isn’t if you want to take advantage of the numerous advanced features of the platform.

To better understand the licensing and its complexity, it is essential to remember that the Power Platform originated from the Microsoft Dynamics product group and was later adapted and integrated into Microsoft Office 365. A good history of its capabilities and how it became the Power Platform can be found in this blog post from James Phillips, President of Microsoft Business Applications.

What Is The Power Platform?

The Power Platform is Microsoft’s low code / no-code platform that answers the need to rapidly create powerful business applications, analyze data, automate processes and create virtual agents all in one platform to meet today’s business challenges.

At the core of the platform are several products:

• Power BI is the oldest component of the platform that helps an organization make informed, confident business decisions by putting data-driven insights into everyone’s hands.
• Power Apps is Microsoft’s low-code / no-code application development platform that turns ideas into organizational solutions by enabling everyone to build custom apps that solve business challenges.
• Power Pages (formerly known as Power Apps Portal) is Microsoft’s low-code extranet platform that enables external access to create extranet websites.
• Power Automate (AKA Flow) is Microsoft’s workflow tool that boosts business productivity to get more done by giving everyone the ability to automate organizational business processes.
• Power Virtual Agents is Microsoft’s no-code platform that creates chatbots to engage conversationally with your customers and employees.
• AI Builder is Microsoft’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) toolkit that extends the Power Platform and integrates with Power Apps, PowerBI and Power Automate and provides no-code AI and Machine Learning (ML) capabilities.
• Dataverse (AKA Common Data Services “CDS”) is Microsoft’s Cloud database technology. Microsoft Dataverse is the data backbone that enables people to store their data in a scalable and secure environment dynamically.

What Do You What Do You Get With Microsoft/Office 365?

Microsoft’s strategy for Microsoft/Office 365 has always been to provide a comprehensive platform to allow ease of use and customization. As a result, as part of Microsoft 365, Microsoft includes some of the capabilities found in the Power Platform. If you are licensed for Microsoft 365 (Business or Enterprise plan), you get the following capabilities included as part of your license.

• Power Apps for right “seeded” capabilities, including the ability to create Canvas applications with standard “free” connectors.
• Power Automate for rights “seeded” capabilities to execute flows within the daily API limits that leverage standard “free” connectors.
• Dataverse for Teams, AKA a scaled-down version of the Common Data Services (formerly Project Oakdale), is used to build rich applications running inside Microsoft Teams within the size and constraints limits.
• Power Virtual Agents for Teams, AKA a scaled-down version of Power Virtual Agents, runs inside the Microsoft Teams client.
• Ability to customize SharePoint/Microsoft lists using Power Apps.
• Power BI professional if you have Microsoft Office 365 E5 or Microsoft 365 E5.

Most of you may ask, why would I need more? This depends on your needs. You will often require additional licenses if you need to use an App or Flow that requires a premium connector. Since 2019, Microsoft reclassified the connectors and now most of the more advanced connectors have been classified as Premium. (Example: Any connection that requests an API or call to a web service, SQL connectors, Dynamics connectors and Azure connectors). So how do you decide? If your Application or Flow needs to connect to data stored in Office 365, in most cases, you will be okay with the seeded licenses. Still, any time you will need to connect to a system outside of Office 365, you will need to consider purchasing additional licenses (more to come below).

There is, however, one exception, if you are building an app with the new Dataverse for Teams, calling API from this app is now included.

So, when you find yourself needing more, below is a guide to more advanced scenarios.

Power BI Licensing

Unlike the other component of the Microsoft Power Platform, PowerBI licensing is straightforward. Power BI comes in three editions:

• Free: limited to building reports and dashboards for yourself and embedding them in the Dataverse for Teams.
• Professional: the ability to share reports and dashboards in your organization through the Power BI service and embed into any applications within the capacity limit. Power BI Professional is licensed per user and costs $10/user/month (included if you have Office 365 or Microsoft 365 E5).
• Premium: For an organization with many users where licensing per user would become cost-prohibitive and for organizations with large reporting needs, organizations with the need for larger capacity and dedicated compute capacity. Power BI Premium can be purchased on a per-user basis ($20/user/month) or in dedicated scenarios starting at $4,900/month, so most organizations under 500 users would likely choose the per user pricing.

Power Apps Licensing

Power Apps licensing has changed many times over the past three years. Unfortunately, it is more complicated than ever. So Power Apps comes with three distinct user interfaces:

• Power Apps Canvas: Canvas apps are free form apps where you can leverage your creativity to create web or mobile applications. Power Apps Canvas which uses standard connectors are free to use in your Microsoft Office 365 environment. The list of standard connects can be found at this link.
• Power Apps Model Driven: Model Driven are apps that are driven by data and a component-focus approach to app development. Unlike Canvas apps, the design is limited to predefined layouts and components. For those familiar with the Dynamics CRM platform, model-driven apps are the technology used for Dynamics CRM apps and Customer Engagement applications.
• Power Apps Pages: Pages address the need to create externally-facing web portals like communities, customer services portals and many more with various ways to identify users or browse content anonymously. Power Apps Pages are not new but instead a rebranding of the Dynamics Portals (formerly Power Apps Portals).

To learn more or run a scenario by me directly, please book a meeting here.

So, if you are in need to buy licensing for Power Apps because you need larger capacity, require a premium connector, need to build a model-driven application (instead of just Canvas apps), need to build a portal or just a more complex application, you must purchase Power Apps licensing. Power Apps premium licenses are available in three versions.

• Power Apps Per App Plan
  • Don’t be fooled by the title; although this is per app, this is still licensed per user per app with a maximum of oneapplication. For example, you may have 30 applications in your tenant, but a portion of your users’ community only needs access to one of those applications. In this case, you can license a part of your users based on a perapp model.
  • Enabled rights to use the Dataverse CDS as a data source with basic capacity.
  • Cost is $5/user/per app/month (includes up to one individual app).
• Power Apps Per User Plan
  • Allows an unlimited number of apps, licensed per user per month.
  • Enabled rights to use the Dataverse CDS as a data source with larger capacity.
  • Cost is $20/user/month.
• Power Apps Consumption-Based Plan - “Pay-As-You-Go”
  • This is a new plan and exciting for organizations not yet ready to fully commit to user-based licenses.
  • In this scenario, the licenses are dynamically billed on per active users/month.
  • For instance, if your organization has 1000 users but only 100 average use the app monthly, you can leverage the pay as you go plan and pay for active monthly users.

Summary of Power Apps Licensing Options

Example for Pay-As-You-Go Scenario

Power Pages (formerly Power Apps Portal)

Power Pages is Microsoft’s low code platform to create and manage data driven public facing web sites. In other words, Power Pages is a low-code, data-centric business website developer leveraging Dataverse.

With Power Pages, you can create web site that are anonymous and/or secured:

• Once you license a Power Apps per-user plan or license Power Pages, you automatically get the right to create a site (portal) to enable interaction with anonymous or external users.
• If you need more than one portal, you can purchase rights for more capacity. Capacity is defined as page views for anonymous scenarios and per-login for authenticated scenarios.
• Each portal comes with a predefined number of logins and page views.

Previously the Power Portal was expensive to license, and we are happy that Microsoft has streamlined the licensing and made it more affordable.

So, how do you estimate the cost of a Power Pages? Let’s look at a few scenarios.

• Anonymous web sites: This is licenses on a per-visitor basis. You need to estimate your number of visitors and buy packs of “visitors/months”
• Authenticated users: If you need to authenticate users and interact with data, you need to license each logged in user. The pack is on a per-user/per-month basis, so if you need 100 users login/month, you need to buy a pack of 100 users/month which is the minimum capacity.

Pay-as-you-go: If you are not sure and just starting out, you can pay as you go. This is metered, based on consumption, and can get pricey quickly.

Summary of Power Pages pricing:

Power Pages feature comparison:

Now, if your portal includes internal users, those with a Power Apps licenses can access the portal without consuming a license.

All plans include Dataverse storage and access to authentication providers, you can find more at this link.

Power Automate Licensing

Like Power Apps, you may find yourself needing more than the seeded use rights you get with Office 365. Power Automate can be extended to add more capacity, higher limits and access to premium connectors. Here is how it works:

• Power Automate Per User Licensing
  • This allows individual users to create unlimited flows based on their needs and include premium connectors.
  • License is required to activate the flow, which means that technically if one user creates a flow, and someone else activates the flow (through a trigger), they also need to be licensed either individually or through a per-flow plan.
  • Cost is $15/user/month.
• Power Automate per consumption plan “Pay-as-you-go plan”
  • This is a brand new option which was released in the summer of 2022, this option allows to bridge the gap between per flow licenses and per user licenses and is a great way to license flow with premium connector that are used infrequently. This model covers the three deployment model (Cloud flow, Desktop flow attended and Desktop flow unattended) The cost is $0.6/run for Cloud flow and Desktop flow or $3/run for unattended RPA.
  • For example, if you have a flow to download data from one system and import in SharePoint and it runs two times/day, the yearly cost will be roughly $400/year
• Power Automate unattended bot RPA
  • If you need to run bots in a virtual machine, you can select this new plan at $150/year
  • This allows you to run unlimited bots for one individual machine

• Power Automate Per User with Attended RPA
  • If you need attended RPA (use of UI Flows). One bot at a time.
  • Includes 5,000 services credits for AI Builder.
  • Cost is $40/user/month.
• Power Automate Per Flow Plan
  • This allows unlimited users to use a flow or scenarios when a “service account” is using the flow on behalf of other users.
  • There is a minimum of five flow purchases.
  • $100/flow/month (with a minimum of $500/month).

How about an application built with Power Apps that triggers a flow? Microsoft has a solution for this, and in this case, licensing Power Apps allows the use of a flow as long as the flow is executed in the context of the application. (This scenario is not very clear and subject to interpretation, and we are not sure how it is going to be enforced). This is covered in more detail in the Power Automate Licensing guide on Page 13 – Power Automate user rights included in Power Apps licenses.

So, when do you need per attended with attended RPA licensing? This is only required if you plan to leverage the new UI Flows, AKA Robotic Process Automation flow that leverages the new Power Automate Desktop (formerly known as WinAutomation).

Lastly, regarding building flow, there is also another option in leveraging Azure Logic Apps; few of you may know that Azure Logic Apps share the same engine in the backend and, for the most part, have the same capabilities. Except Logic Apps only costs you on a per consumption basis, which depending on your flow, may be very cost-efficient (Note: you can export a Flow from Power Automate to Logic Apps and vice versa).

Power Virtual Agents Licensing

Power Virtual Agents, “PVA,” does have a seeded version for Office 365 users except for Dataverse for Teams, which includes the right for PVA. If you want to use Power Virtual Agents, be aware of the licensing requirements. It comes in two editions:

• PowerVirtual Agents for Teams:
  • This comes at no cost but has limited capabilities.
  • 2000 sessions/tenant/month.
• Power Virtual Agents Capacity Pricing:
  • Create and maintain internal or external facing bots, which cost $1,000/per month for 2000 sessions.

AI Builder

AI Builder is a great service component that allows infusing AI into your Applications and Flows. AI Builder is included in the Power Automate with attended RPA flow or can be purchased additionally.

In December 2021, Microsoft announced that Power Apps per app plan would receive an entitlement of AI Builder service at no cost.

• AI Builder with Attended RPA
  • 5000 Service Credit
  • Included
• AI Builder Capacity
  • 1M Service Credit
  • $500/month

While you think we are done, there are a few more things to cover!

Dynamics 365 Usage Rights for the Power Platform

If your organization is licensed for Dynamics 365, there is some good news. Dynamics 365 comes with user rights for Power Automate and Power Apps; this means you can potentially build additional applications and complex flows without the need to purchase additional licenses and even deploy a portal as long as the applications are created within the context (again, don’t ask me what this means and how this is enforced) of the Dynamics application and located in the same environment.

Dataverse Licensing

Dataverse is a fantastic cloud-based database will all features you will expect from a hosted database system including, relational data model, business rules, advanced security, backup/restore and full Application Lifestyle Management (ALM). Dataverse is not licensed independently but comes bundled with Power Apps, Power Automate or Power Virtual Agents with default capacity based on the plan selected.

Once licensed for Power Apps, your tenant will receive a based capacity (5GB or 10GB) and then each user license will incrementally increase the based capacity.

Additional capacity for Dataverse may be needed and can be purchased in increments of 1GB at $30/GB/Month of incremental space.

More about how to manage storage capacity at this link.

In Summary

At Withum, we are big fans of the Microsoft Power Platform. Over the past few years, we have helped countless organizations leverage this platform’s power to deliver rapid and innovative applications that drive better business outcomes. To ensure that you aren’t surprised, we recommend that you first gain a deep understanding of your needs and business objectives before jumping and building your applications – this may save you some surprises at the end that may drive up the cost.

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