Power Platform Pay as You Go: Convenience at a Cost

• Many Power Platform services offer pay as you go alternatives to standard user licensing.
• Such pay as you go utilization billing can be twice as expensive as regular licensing costs.
• However, utilization-based billing can make sense in certain specific, limited scenarios—even if it costs organizations more.

Power Platform services (including Power Apps, Power Automate, Power Pages, and Dataverse) have introduced pay as you go (PAYG) billing plans as an alternative to their standard user-based licensing. These PAYG plans may be metered on monthly unlicensed users or actual service utilization. In all cases, PAYG will be more expensive than the equivalent user-based billing, but it may be appropriate in some scenarios such as new app rollouts and infrequently or seasonally used line-of-business offerings.

How Does PAYG Work?

Standard Power Platform licensing is usually provided via a Per-User license, entitlements that are included in Microsoft 365 or Dynamics 365 licenses, or through the licensing of a Power Automate flow.