Power Platform licensing and Power Automate price in 2026. What seats, bots and capacity packs cost.

Power Platform is licensed through per user and per app subscriptions, with Dataverse, AI credits and Power Pages sold as separate capacity. The seat price is small. Capacity and request limits decide most of the invoice.

Power Platform seats are priced low, and most first year budgets are built on them. The lines that grow after that are capacity charges for Dataverse storage, AI credits, portal visitors, unattended bots and API requests, which this page prices one by one.

How is Microsoft Power Platform licensed in 2026?

Power Platform is licensed in three layers that stack. You buy a per user or per app subscription, that subscription gives access to premium connectors and Dataverse, and use above the included amounts is bought as capacity for storage, AI and portals.

Seat counts set the storage you accrue and the API requests you are allowed, so an error in the first layer compounds. Microsoft sets out the SKUs and billing routes in its pricing and billing guide.

What does Microsoft 365 already include?

Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365 licenses include seeded Power Platform use at no extra charge. Seeded rights cover apps and flows that use standard connectors and stay inside the Microsoft 365 data boundary, such as SharePoint lists, Outlook and Teams.

The boundary is crossed the moment an app or flow calls a premium connector, a custom connector, an on premises data gateway or a custom Dataverse table. SQL Server and Salesforce are common examples. From then on, every person who runs that app or flow needs a standalone license.

Which standalone licenses does Microsoft sell?

The core subscriptions are Power Apps Premium, Power Automate Premium, and the Process and Hosted Process bot licenses for unattended automation. Power Pages, Dataverse, AI credits and copilots sit on top as capacity. Microsoft lists current rates on the Power Apps pricing page.

What do Power Apps and Power Pages cost per user?

Power Apps Premium lists at $20 per user per month, paid yearly, and covers unlimited apps with premium connectors and Dataverse for one person. Power Pages is sold as monthly capacity packs for signed in and anonymous visitors to each site.

Power Apps Premium and the 2,000 seat price

Microsoft also lists Power Apps Premium at $12 per user per month for organizations that buy a minimum of 2,000 licenses. Each Premium license adds 250 MB of Dataverse database and 2 GB of file capacity to the tenant pool, which matters later if you cut seats.

The lower SKU changes the arithmetic for large buyers. Two thousand seats at $12 cost $24,000 a month, the same as 1,200 seats at $20. Above a measured need of 1,200 users, the minimum commitment is the cheaper route. Our Power Apps licensing guide covers the use rights.

What happened to the per app plan?

Microsoft stopped selling the per app plan, which cost $5 per user per app per month, to new Enterprise Agreement and MPSA customers on January 2, 2026. Existing EA customers can keep it, renew it and adjust counts at true up. MPSA customers lose it when their agreement expires, while CSP still sells it to new and renewing customers.

For occasional users there is a pay as you go meter at $10 per active user per app per month, billed through Azure only for people who open the app that month. Our note on per app plan pricing compares the options.

How does Power Pages billing work?

Power Pages bills monthly by authenticated and anonymous user capacity packs, per website, at the tier 1 prices in the table. It replaced the older portal login and page view metrics. Forecast external traffic before choosing a tier, because anonymous spikes from a campaign can raise the bill quickly.

The pay as you go alternative is $4 per active authenticated user and $0.30 per active anonymous user per site per month. That is twice the pack rate, so packs suit steady traffic and metering suits a seasonal site.

What is the Power Automate price per user and per bot?

Power Automate Premium lists at $15 per user per month and covers premium cloud flows plus desktop flows in attended mode, where a person starts the automation at their own machine. Unattended robotic automation is licensed per bot at $150 or $215 a month.

What does unattended automation cost?

Power Automate Process lists at $150 per bot per month and runs unattended desktop flows on a machine you provide. Hosted Process lists at $215 and adds a Microsoft hosted virtual machine, so the $65 gap pays for infrastructure you would otherwise run and patch.

Both are priced per concurrent automation rather than per user. One bot can serve many processes if runs are scheduled well, so plan concurrency before you count licenses.

When does pay as you go beat a license?

In an environment linked to an Azure subscription, Microsoft meters flow runs at $0.60 for cloud and attended flows and $3.00 for unattended runs. Flows that use only standard connectors are not charged. Divide the license price by the run rate to find the break even.

• Attended user. $15 divided by $0.60 is 25 runs a month. Below that, the meter is cheaper.
• Unattended bot. $150 divided by $3.00 is 50 runs a month. A reconciliation bot that runs 20 times costs $60 metered.

How are Dataverse, AI Builder and API requests charged?

All three are charged as capacity on top of seats, and most tenants we see buy them reactively, after a warning or a throttling event.

How does Dataverse storage grow unnoticed?

Dataverse splits into database, file and log capacity. Since December 2025, a tenant with Premium licenses starts with 20 GB of database capacity, up from 10 GB, plus a base file and log allocation and per license accruals. Extra capacity lists at $40 per GB for database, $2 for file and $10 for log each month.

Audit logs, plugin trace logs and attachments grow without anyone watching. Microsoft lists which tables count where in its capacity and storage guide. Set audit retention rules early, or log capacity becomes a recurring pack purchase.

How do AI Builder credits draw down?

Document processing and prediction models draw AI Builder credits faster than buyers expect. Microsoft stopped selling AI Builder capacity packs to new customers on November 1, 2025, and existing customers can renew them only until November 1, 2026. Seeded credits in premium licenses end on that date too, but existing customers keep them to the end of their term.

After that, AI Builder draws on Copilot Credits, at $200 for 25,000 a month or $0.01 each on the meter. Microsoft offers no conversion rate between the two. Measure current AI Builder use now, before sizing a commitment, and use our Copilot Credits cost calculator for the estimate.

What are Power Platform request limits?

Each license carries a daily API request entitlement, published in Microsoft's request limits guide. Premium users get 40,000 requests per 24 hours. Seeded Microsoft 365 users, per app users and Dynamics 365 Team Members get 6,000, and a Process license gets 250,000.

A request add on raises the tenant limit by 50,000 per 24 hours but cannot yet be assigned to a user or flow. When usage exceeds the entitlement, Microsoft may throttle, and the usual fix is more capacity or a Process license for the busiest flow.

What have we seen in recent Power Platform reviews?

Across roughly 25 to 35 Power Platform reviews I led in 2024 and 2025, the seat price was almost never the problem. The cost hid in premium seats assigned to people who did not need them, capacity bought at list after throttling, and request overages on integration heavy flows.

• Over assignment. Premium seats ran 20 to 35 percent above what a clean entitlement map supported. The median reduction across the roughly 30 reviews was 28 percent.
• Reactive capacity. In about three of four tenants, Dataverse or AI capacity packs had been bought at list price, outside any negotiated discount.
• Request overages. Overages on the daily API entitlement typically appeared within 90 days of the first integration heavy flow going live.

Why licensing every maker with Premium costs more than it saves

The usual partner pitch is to license every maker and user with Power Apps Premium so no one hits a wall. We disagree. In most tenants we reviewed, premium seats were over assigned by a fifth or more, while the real cost crept in through Dataverse and AI capacity that no one had modeled.

Map who actually needs premium connectors and Dataverse, license those users, and meter capacity against a benchmark before buying packs. Blanket premium licensing is easy to sell and expensive to own, and it hides the consumption cost that scales with use.

Power Platform is cheap to start and expensive to scale. The seat price is the headline, and the capacity packs are the invoice.

How much can an entitlement map save on Power Apps Premium?

Say your partner sold you 1,500 Power Apps Premium licenses at $20, which is $360,000 a year. An entitlement map shows that 1,100 of them run apps that touch a premium connector or Dataverse. The other 400 use SharePoint apps that Microsoft 365 already covers.

The last two rows are what most right sizing exercises miss. If the tenant was using that 100 GB, half the seat saving goes back to Microsoft as capacity. Clean up audit logs and stale tables before the seat cut and the full $96,000 stays with you.

Near the volume line the answer can flip. A tenant with 2,100 seats on the $12 SKU pays $25,200 a month. Cutting to 1,600 seats at $20 would cost $32,000, so the better course is to trim to the 2,000 minimum and redeploy spare seats.

What licensing traps catch Power Platform buyers?

Three traps recur in almost every unmanaged tenant, and the 2026 product changes added a fourth.

• Premium creep. A standard flow gains one premium connector, and every user of the app it feeds now needs Premium.
• Capacity surprise. Dataverse and AI capacity is bought at list price after throttling or a storage warning.
• Request overage. Integration heavy flows exceed the daily API entitlement and force add on purchases.
• Retirement drift. Per app licenses and AI Builder credits reach end of sale, and partners quote replacements your agreement may not require.

Mistakes that cost the most

One common mistake is assigning Premium by job title, for example to every analyst, instead of by the apps each person runs. Our guide to Power Platform governance and license sprawl covers the controls.

Another is ignoring the Dataverse warnings Microsoft sends at 15 and 5 percent remaining capacity. Once the tenant is over its limit, admins cannot copy, restore or create environments until capacity is bought or freed, which is how emergency packs end up bought at list.

How do you check your own Power Platform usage?

You can build the entitlement map from tools Microsoft already provides. Start with the inventory, then match it to license assignments and capacity.

1. Inventory. Export apps, flows and their connectors with the Center of Excellence Starter Kit or the Get-AdminPowerApp and Get-AdminFlow PowerShell cmdlets.
2. Connectors. Review the data policies in the Power Platform admin center, which group connectors as business, non business or blocked.
3. Assignments. Compare the inventory with Premium and Process assignments in the Microsoft 365 admin center.
4. Capacity. On the Dataverse capacity page, use "See Dataverse capacity per license" to see how your entitlement was calculated.
5. Requests. Download the Power Platform request usage reports and sort by the heaviest flows.

What will the Microsoft account team say, and how should you answer?

Expect pressure toward more Premium seats and earlier capacity commitments. These lines come up most, with replies that hold.

What should the Power Platform contract include?

Power Platform discounts are negotiated inside the wider Microsoft Enterprise Agreement. Time the request with the renewal and the Microsoft 365 and Copilot conversation. Our Power Platform negotiation guide covers tactics, and the Microsoft 365 license optimizer right sizes the seats that feed Power Platform.

Terms to ask for

• Price hold. Fix Premium and Process unit prices for the full term, so a list increase does not reach you at true up.
• Capacity on the price sheet. Put Dataverse, Copilot Credit and Power Pages packs at the seat discount, so emergency buys never land at list.
• Reduction right. Ask to reduce Premium seats at each anniversary. Without it, seats committed at signing usually stay on the invoice until renewal, even after the entitlement map shows they are idle.
• Legacy rights. Have the agreement confirm per app licenses and seeded AI credits for the full term, so a partner cannot treat either as expired at the next true up.
• Volume tier. Confirm when the 2,000 seat SKU applies. A 500 user tenant will rarely reach it; a 20,000 user tenant should price every seat on it.

Timeline before the renewal

Our Microsoft Practice runs this sequence for tenants of every size.

What to do next

1. Inventory. Export every Power Platform app and flow and the connectors each one uses.
2. Tag. Mark which apps need premium connectors or Dataverse, and which stay within seeded rights.
3. Reassign. Give premium seats only to users who touch premium, after checking the capacity those seats accrue.
4. Meter. Track Dataverse and AI Builder consumption for a full quarter before buying any pack.
5. Model requests. Test integration heavy flows against the daily request limits.
6. Benchmark. Price capacity packs before any reactive purchase.
7. Negotiate. Fold the Power Platform line into the next Microsoft agreement negotiation.
8. Get advice. Engage independent advisory before signing a capacity or Copilot Credit commitment.

Frequently asked questions