Microsoft Power Apps
A Microsoft tool for building internal business apps — forms, approvals, dashboards — on top of data you likely already keep in Microsoft 365 or SharePoint.
What you'd use it for
Building an internal form, approval workflow, or dashboard that reads and writes real data your team already keeps in Microsoft 365, SharePoint, or Dynamics 365.
- Turn a SharePoint list or Excel table into a form-based app people fill in and submit, without writing SQL.
- Connect to Dataverse, Dynamics 365, SQL, Salesforce, and hundreds of other services through prebuilt and custom connectors so app screens read and write live data.
- Build a canvas app by describing it in natural language and having Copilot draft the screens and logic.
- Model structured data in Dataverse with real tables, relationships, and security roles rather than a spreadsheet.
- Add a Copilot chat pane inside a canvas app so end users can ask questions of the app's own data.
The verdict
Power Apps is best understood as the paid, connected alternative to an ungoverned spreadsheet, earning its keep once a form or dashboard needs to read and write data other Microsoft 365 tools already hold. The catch is licensing rather than capability -- the free Developer Plan proves the idea works, but every real user of a finished app needs a Premium seat billed per person, so cost scales with headcount rather than with how many apps you build. It suits organisations already committed to Microsoft 365 or Dynamics 365, where the connectors and Dataverse integration do real work, and is a poor fit as a general low-code platform for anyone whose data does not already sit in Microsoft's ecosystem.
What it costs
| Tier | Price | For | Includes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Developer Plan | $0 | One person building and testing an app before anyone else touches it. | Three developer environments, prebuilt and custom connectors, 2 GB Dataverse storage, up to 750 automation runs a month. |
| Premium | $20/user/month, paid yearly | An organisation running a handful of custom apps in production. | Unlimited apps per licensed user, full connector access, 250 MB Dataverse database and 2 GB file storage per user, Copilot chat in canvas apps. |
| Premium (2,000-seat minimum) | $12/user/month, paid yearly | Larger organisations licensing the whole company at once. | The same Premium entitlements at a lower per-seat rate, contingent on committing to 2,000+ seats. |
Read from Microsoft Power Apps's own pricing page on 25 Sep 2026. Vendors change prices without notice.
What you need to start
- A Microsoft 365 or Power Platform work/school account backed by Microsoft Entra ID -- personal addresses such as Gmail cannot sign up
- A Premium licence, currently $20 per user per month billed yearly, for every person who uses a finished app in production -- the free Developer Plan is build-and-test only
- Existing data in Dataverse, SharePoint, Excel, Dynamics 365, or another connected source for an app to be useful
Minutes to sign in with a work account and get a blank app running in Power Apps Studio; moving a real app into production additionally requires buying a Premium seat for every user who will touch it.
Your first run Signing in with a work or school account and choosing Create from blank drops you straight into Power Apps Studio with an app already open and running; pointing that app or a template at an existing Excel table or SharePoint list produces a working, clickable form in the same sitting.
Where it breaks
Pricing is quoted per licensed USER, not per app — one licence lets that person run unlimited apps you've built, but every person who touches any app in production needs their own seat. Additional Dataverse storage beyond the included entitlement bills separately at $40/GB/month.
Browser-based app builder and runtime, with a mobile player app for iOS and Android. Requires a Microsoft 365 or standalone Power Platform licence; most value shows up when your data already lives in Dataverse, SharePoint or Dynamics.
First entry in this reference. There is no previous check to compare it against.
When not to use it
Not for a solo operator or small team without an existing Microsoft 365 or Dynamics 365 tenant, since the licensing and Dataverse model only pay off once your data already lives there. Not for anyone who wants an unattended, scheduled automation, since that is Power Automate, a separate product and purchase. Not for a team expected to grow past a handful of named users without budgeting a Premium seat for each one.
Power Apps solves a specific, recurring problem: the internal tool nobody wants to pay a developer to build. An approval form, an asset checkout list, a site-inspection app — the kind of thing that would otherwise live in a spreadsheet emailed around until someone overwrites someone else’s changes.
You describe the app in natural language or drag together a canvas from templates, and it runs against Dataverse — Microsoft’s structured database — or against connectors to SharePoint, Excel, Dynamics 365, and hundreds of other services. The AI layer (agentic features, Copilot chat) helps you build faster and, increasingly, lets the app itself take action rather than just display data.
An app here waits for someone to open it
An app built here waits for a person to open it. It does not run unattended on a schedule the way a Power Automate flow or a Make scenario would — building the automation that fires without you is a separate, related Microsoft product (Power Automate), sold and licensed on its own track. What Power Apps gives you is the connected front end: a form or dashboard that reaches your real data the moment someone uses it.
The licensing trap
The free Developer Plan is real and lets you build and test without paying anything — but it explicitly cannot run apps in production. The moment a second person needs to use what you built for real work, that person needs a Premium seat, priced per user regardless of how many apps they touch. For a five-person team standardising on two or three internal apps, that is the entire cost model: five seats, not five app licences.
Alternatives
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Turns a Google Sheet or database into a working mobile app for field teams, with no code required to build it.
Websites & appsAppsGlide
An app builder that turns a table of records into something staff and customers can actually use on a phone, without anyone writing code or shipping to an app store.
Websites & appsAppsNoloco
A no-code builder for client portals and internal tools that reads directly from Airtable, Google Sheets or a database, with AI generating the first layout for you.
Records & databasesAppsAirtable
A database that looks like a spreadsheet, with an API, forms, views and AI fields on top — the place most small businesses end up keeping the records an automation needs to read and write.
Get Microsoft Power Apps
Buying the tool is not the hard part.
The ebook is about what to hand over, in what order, and how you find out when it goes wrong. One payment, no subscription.