Summary
Microsoft has quietly discontinued the Power Apps per App Plan by removing it from the January 2026 licensing guide. There was no announcement. If you currently use this licence type, your costs will increase at your next renewal.
The $5/user/app/month subscription SKU is no longer available for new purchases
Existing customers can continue until their next renewal
Replacement options are Power Apps Premium ($20/user/month) or Pay-As-You-Go ($10/active user/app/month)
Organisations using per App for limited deployments face cost increases of 100% to 300%
What Power Apps Is and Why You Need Premium Licensing
Power Apps is Microsoft’s low-code application platform. It allows organisations to build custom business applications without traditional software development. A warehouse team might build an inventory tracking app. HR might create an onboarding checklist. Finance might develop an expense approval workflow. These applications connect to data sources like SharePoint, Dataverse, SQL Server, or third-party systems, and run on phones, tablets, or browsers.
Some Power Apps functionality is included with Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365 licences. Users with these subscriptions can build and run applications that use standard connectors and store data in SharePoint or Excel. The included functionality covers basic scenarios.
Premium features require separate licensing: Dataverse (Microsoft’s business data platform), premium connectors for systems like SAP or Salesforce, custom connectors you build yourself, and AI Builder capabilities. If your application needs any of these capabilities, you need a premium Power Apps licence for every user who runs the application.
If an application needs Dataverse, premium connectors, custom connectors, or AI Builder, every user who runs it needs a premium Power Apps licence.
The per App Plan was one of two premium licensing options. It allowed organisations to license specific users for specific applications at a low per-app cost. The alternative, Power Apps Premium (formerly called per User), licenses a user for unlimited applications at a higher monthly rate.
What Was Removed
The Power Apps per App Plan allowed organisations to license individual users for specific applications at $5 per user per app per month. If someone needed access to two apps, you bought two per App licences for that user. The model suited targeted deployments where users needed only one or two applications rather than broad platform access.
Microsoft introduced the per App option in October 2019 at $10/user/app/month alongside the per User licence at $40/user/month. Both prices were cut by 50% in October 2021, establishing the $5 and $20 price points that remained until now.
In 2023, Microsoft removed per App from the public Power Apps pricing page, showing only Power Apps Premium. The licence remained available through commerce systems and was documented in licensing guides. Some Microsoft representatives began telling customers that per App would end in February 2024. As Jukka Niiranen noted, “just because customers and partners hear Microsoft employees say something, that doesn’t mean it’s true.” Nothing happened in 2024. Nothing happened in 2025. The SKU continued selling.
Then, in January 2026, it simply disappeared from the licensing guide. Rich Gibbons spotted the change on 6 January: “They’ve not made an announcement, they’ve simply removed it from the January 2026 licensing guide.” A single sentence in a PDF document. No explanation of what is happening or how customers will be affected.
The Power Apps per App Plan was removed from the January 2026 licensing guide and is no longer available for new purchases.
If you have not already purchased per App licences, you have missed your chance. The SKU remains on pricelists because existing customers can continue until renewal, but new purchases are blocked.
The Impossible Licence
Some licensing professionals will be relieved to see per App go. Microsoft never made it work properly.
The original 2019 definition allowed users to “run max 2 apps and 1 portal within an environment.” The definition was technically unenforceable. How do you build a licensing system that counts apps per user per environment and stops them at two? Microsoft’s product team never managed it. The 2021 price cut simplified the rule to one app per licence, but the operational problems persisted.
The core issue was reporting. It was impossible to know which users and which apps had per App licences assigned. The Power Platform Admin Centre provided no visibility into this data. Organisations bought licences, allocated them to environments, and then had no way to verify compliance or track usage.
The per App model was unenforceable in practice and lacked the reporting needed to verify licence assignments, usage, and compliance.
Jukka Niiranen, who spent years communicating directly with Microsoft’s product team about this gap, created an internal meme to track the absurdity: a canvas app called “Per App Clock” that displayed how long customers had been waiting for proper licence reporting. The answer was years.
Eventually, the Power Platform Admin Centre received updates that provided some visibility. But detailed data on specific licence assignments was never made available, presumably because Microsoft’s own systems had unavoidable gaps from tenants that adopted per App early when the rules were unclear.
From a compliance and administration standpoint, per App was a nightmare. You could buy it, but you could not properly manage it. The retirement removes a product that created audit risk without providing the tools to mitigate it.
Your Replacement Options
Two licensing models remain available for Power Apps premium features.
Power Apps Premium costs $20 per user per month and allows each licensed user to create and run unlimited applications. Volume pricing reduces this to $12 per user per month for organisations purchasing 2,000 or more new user licences. According to Microsoft’s licensing FAQ, this licence includes access to Dataverse, premium connectors, and AI Builder credits.
The Premium licence covers everything. A user with this licence can run any Power Apps application in your tenant that requires premium features, regardless of how many applications exist or how often they use them. The cost is fixed and predictable.
Pay-As-You-Go charges $10 per active user per app per month through Azure consumption billing. An active user is someone who opens an app at least once during that calendar month. If a user does not open the app in a given month, you pay nothing for that user that month. The meter appears in Azure Cost Management, allowing you to track spending alongside other Azure consumption.
Pay-As-You-Go requires linking your Power Platform environment to an Azure subscription. Charges accumulate based on actual usage and appear on your Azure bill. This model suits organisations with variable or unpredictable usage patterns, or those who prefer consumption-based billing over subscription commitments.
The per App meter ($10/active user/app) remains available through Pay-As-You-Go even though the per App subscription plan ($5/user/app) has been discontinued. The subscription gave you a fixed monthly cost regardless of whether users opened the app. PAYG charges only when users are active, but at double the rate.
Cost Impact by Scenario
The financial effect depends on how many applications each user needs and how frequently they use them.
Single application, consistent usage: |
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Consider an organisation with 100 users each accessing one Power Apps application every month. Under the old per App Plan, this cost $500 per month ($5 multiplied by 100 users). Moving to Premium would cost $2,000 per month ($20 multiplied by 100 users). Moving to Pay-As-You-Go would cost $1,000 per month if all users are active monthly ($10 multiplied by 100 active users). The cost increase ranges from 100% with PAYG to 300% with Premium. |
Single application, intermittent usage: |
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Usage patterns significantly affect PAYG calculations. If only 30 of those 100 users typically open the app in a given month, Pay-As-You-Go would cost $300 per month ($10 multiplied by 30 active users). That is actually 40% less than the old $500 per App subscription cost. Intermittent usage may favour PAYG despite the higher per-user rate, because you stop paying for users who are not using the application. |
Multiple applications per user: |
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The economics shift as users need more applications. Under per App pricing, each additional application added $5 per user. Under Premium, the $20 covers unlimited applications. At four applications per user, the costs equalise. A user needing four apps costs $20 under per App ($5 multiplied by 4) and $20 under Premium. Beyond four apps, Premium becomes cheaper. A user needing six apps would have cost $30 under per App but costs only $20 under Premium. Organisations where users typically access four or more Power Apps applications should have already been using Premium. For them, this retirement changes nothing. The impact falls on organisations that deliberately chose per App for limited, targeted deployments. |
Breakeven calculation: Per App was optimal when users needed three or fewer applications each. A user with three apps cost $15 under per App versus $20 under Premium. That $5 saving per user per month added up for large deployments. At 500 users with three apps each, the monthly saving was $2,500. That saving disappears entirely under the new options. |
Nonprofit Organisations
Microsoft offered up to 10 free Power Apps per App licences to qualified nonprofits through the Microsoft 365 admin centre. The Microsoft Tech Community documented this process as recently as April 2025.
With the per App Plan discontinued, this free licence programme will presumably end. Matt Burr of Motive Consulting raised the question on LinkedIn on 6 January 2026, noting that this change significantly affects Microsoft’s nonprofit offering. Organisations could previously obtain 10 free app licences; any replacement through Microsoft Elevate remains unclear.
Nonprofits using these free licences for volunteer management, donation tracking, or programme delivery applications should contact Microsoft’s Tech for Social Impact team for guidance on replacement options before their current licences expire.
Planning for Your Next Renewal
Your existing per App licences remain valid until your agreement renews. The SKU has been removed from new purchases, not from existing subscriptions. When your renewal date arrives, you will need to transition to one of the replacement options.
🟢 Check your current licence inventory. In the Power Platform Admin Centre, navigate to Licensing, then Capacity add-ons. The screen shows how many per App passes you have allocated and to which environments they are assigned. You may find licences allocated to environments that no longer need them, or apps that have fallen out of use.
🟢 Document how users actually access your apps. The choice between Premium and Pay-As-You-Go depends heavily on how consistently they do so. If you have users who open apps only a few times per year, PAYG may cost less despite the higher per-user rate. If usage is consistent and monthly, the maths changes.
Given the historical reporting problems, you may not have clean data on per App usage. The forced transition is a good opportunity to audit what you actually have deployed and who actually uses it.
🟢 Calculate both pricing scenarios. Work through the numbers for your specific situation.
For a user needing two apps with consistent monthly usage: | For a user needing two apps who uses them only six months per year: | For a user needing one app with consistent monthly usage: |
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Premium costs $20 per month and PAYG costs $20 per month (2 apps multiplied by $10) | Premium costs $240 per year ($20 multiplied by 12 months) while PAYG costs $120 per year ($20 multiplied by 6 active months) | Premium costs $20 per month while PAYG costs $10 per month |
The options are equivalent | The intermittent user pays half under PAYG | PAYG is half the price if the user is reliably active |
These scenarios suggest that PAYG favours organisations with either low app counts per user (one or two apps) or intermittent usage. Premium favours organisations with higher app counts per user (four or more) or where administrative simplicity matters more than optimising costs.
Factor this into broader renewal planning. If your Enterprise Agreement renewal is approaching, Power Apps licensing changes should be part of your overall negotiation preparation. Understanding your Power Apps requirements helps you negotiate appropriate terms across your entire Microsoft relationship.
🖐 Review your Power Apps licensing exposure before renewal. Learn more: Microsoft Licensing Services for Enterprises.
If you need help with Microsoft licensing, get in touch. We don’t sell Microsoft licences or cloud services, so our advice is independent.