Your Guide to Power Platform Licensing

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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

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:

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.

Summary of Power Apps Licensing Options

Example for Pay-As-You-Go Scenario

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:

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.

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.

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.

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:

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, “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:

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.

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

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 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.

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.