We are pleased to introduce a new and more flexible way to pay for Power Apps and related Power Platform services. Starting today in preview, customers can use an Azure subscription to cover their Power Apps and Dataverse costs based on actual usage.

Historically, low-code platforms have required customers to figure out their licensing needs in advance – often involving time-consuming procurement processes negotiated between developers, makers and IT professionals. While there are many benefits to the scale and predictability of user-based licensing, several scenarios today require the agility of a usage-based model. With deep roots in both Microsoft 365 as well as Azure, Power Platform is uniquely equipped to offer customers both options.

With the new pay-as-you-go plan, customers only pay for what they use, giving them more flexibility to get started with low code with low risk and then scale their investments over time based on the usage patterns of their solutions.

Great for developers building Power Apps that leverage Azure services
The pay-as-you-go option for Power Apps is a great solution for developers who are already using Azure subscriptions to pay for the cloud services they need for their applications. Let’s say you are planning to build a Power Apps mobile app that leverages Dataverse as well as a set of Azure-hosted APIs. Today you would need to purchase Power Apps licenses from Microsoft or a partner, and allocate those licenses before deploying your app , and also pay for the Azure services you are using with your Azure subscription. Now, with Power Apps pay-as-you-go you can simply use the same Azure subscription you are using to pay for your Azure services to pay for Power Apps as well.

Test the waters
When building a new app it is often tough to predict how many users will want to use it, making it hard to forecast your licensing needs in advance. Now you can start with the pay-as-you-go option to gauge usage patterns then determine whether purchasing a pre-paid Power Apps subscription plan makes sense.

Only pay when users use your apps
Let’s say you have created an app (or set of apps) that you need to share with a large set of users in your organization, but which you expect will only be used by a varying subset of those users on an occasional basis. In this instance it may be more economical to leverage Power Apps pay-as-you-go instead of purchasing pre-paid Power Apps subscription plans for every user you share the app with.

Share costs across your organization
Many organizations want to allocate software license costs to the department or team that used the licenses. Power Apps pay-as-you-go makes this possible by letting teams pay for Power Apps using Azure subscriptions linked to their own departmental budgets, and by providing the option to use Azure Cost Management and Azure tags to visualize and divide up costs.