Power Platform Licensing Guide for UK Businesses

A clear, practical breakdown of current Power Platform licensing for UK organisations, covering the removal of the per-app plan, the Power Apps Premium model, Microsoft 365 included rights, Dataverse capacity, and how to reduce your licensing spend.

The Per-App Plan Has Been Removed

If you have an existing per-app subscription, contact your Microsoft partner or account team to understand your transition options and timeline.

The Current Power Apps Licensing Model

As of 2025, Microsoft offers one primary paid Power Apps plan for commercial customers:

Power Apps Premium, £15.40 per user per month (paid annually). This gives a licensed user unlimited access to all Power Apps canvas and model-driven apps, Power Automate cloud flows using premium connectors, and a Dataverse capacity allocation of 250 MB database + 2 GB file storage per user.

A volume discount is available at scale: £9.20 per user per month for organisations with 2,000 or more seats.

What Microsoft 365 Already Includes

Many organisations overlook the Power Platform capability already included in their Microsoft 365 subscription. These seeded rights are meaningful:

• Power Apps for Microsoft 365, canvas apps that use standard connectors (SharePoint, Teams, Outlook, Excel). No premium licence required.
• Power Automate for Microsoft 365, cloud flows using standard connectors. Covers the majority of approval, notification, and SharePoint automation use cases.
• Power BI Free, personal dashboards and reports. Sharing and collaboration requires Power BI Pro (included in Microsoft 365 E5, or available separately).

Pay-as-You-Go, The Flexible Alternative

Pay-as-you-go is available via an Azure subscription and allows organisations to get started without upfront licence commitment. Usage is metered and billed through Azure billing. This is particularly useful for:

• Pilots and proof-of-concept projects where user numbers are uncertain
• Seasonal workloads with variable user counts
• Organisations that want to charge Power Apps costs back to specific Azure cost centres

Pay-as-you-go does not replace Power Apps Premium for steady-state production use, at consistent usage levels, a per-user licence is almost always more cost-effective.

Premium Connectors, What They Are and What They Cost

Premium connectors are included with Power Apps Premium at no additional per-connector cost. Common premium connectors include:

• Salesforce, ServiceNow, SAP, Dynamics 365 (non-Teams)
• SQL Server (direct connection, not via on-premises data gateway)
• DocuSign, Adobe Sign, Stripe
• Any custom connector you build

The critical point: if any user of an app or flow uses a premium connector, that user needs a Power Apps Premium or Power Automate Premium licence, regardless of whether they personally interact with the premium connector. One premium connector in a shared flow affects the licence requirement for everyone in its scope.

Audit your connector usage with the Power Platform admin centre's connector analytics. Many teams unknowingly use premium connectors in background flows and are unaware of the licence implications.

Dataverse Capacity, The Hidden Cost Trap

Dataverse is the enterprise data platform underpinning model-driven apps, Dynamics 365, and advanced Power Apps solutions. Capacity is provisioned in gigabytes and comes from two sources:

• Default tenant allocation: 1 GB database + 1 GB file storage per tenant
• Per-user additions: Each Power Apps Premium licence adds 250 MB database and 2 GB file storage

Overage is charged at approximately £32 per GB database and £1.50 per GB file storage per month. Organisations building on Dataverse without monitoring their capacity regularly discover unexpected charges at renewal.

Best practices for Dataverse capacity management:

• Set up capacity alerts in the Power Platform admin centre
• Archive or delete sandbox environments that are no longer in use (they consume capacity)
• Use bulk delete system jobs to purge old audit logs and activity records
• Separate development and production environments, dev environments often grow disproportionately

Cost Optimisation Strategies for UK Organisations

• Start with a Microsoft 365 audit, confirm which users genuinely need premium connectors or Dataverse before purchasing Power Apps Premium
• Use the Power Apps Developer Plan, free for individual developers to build and test. Ensure no production workloads run in developer environments
• Consolidate environments, each environment consumes a minimum of 1 GB Dataverse capacity. Unused sandbox environments are a common source of waste
• Review at renewal, Power Platform usage patterns change. Conduct a licence right-sizing review 60–90 days before renewal using admin centre analytics
• Consider volume pricing, at 2,000+ users, the per-user price drops from £15.40 to £9.20, a 40% saving. Plan headcount growth when negotiating agreement terms

Licensing for Power Automate RPA (Robotic Process Automation)

Desktop automation via Power Automate Desktop requires separate RPA licences:

• Attended RPA, a human triggers and monitors the desktop flow. Requires the Power Automate per-user with RPA add-on (approximately £12.50/user/month in addition to the base licence).
• Unattended RPA, flows run without human interaction, on a machine. Requires the unattended RPA add-on (approximately £67/bot/month).

RPA licensing is often significantly underestimated in project budgets. Ensure your architecture decisions account for attended vs unattended requirements early in the design phase.