Power Apps licensing

What it does

Two paid shapes for standalone Power Apps — per user and per app — plus seeded rights that arrive with Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365, a pay-as-you-go meter billed through Azure, and free developer and trial plans. Microsoft's Learn pages describe the shapes; the actual use rights live in the Power Platform Licensing Guide PDF, and that's where any real answer has to come from.

Key facts

Microsoft defers the detail. Both the licensing overview page and the capacity pages point at the Power Platform Licensing Guide for plan capabilities, and at the Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide for the D365 side. Treat the PDF as the source of truth and Learn as orientation.
Power Apps per user has been renamed Power Apps Premium in current Microsoft documentation. Both names are still in circulation; the managed environments licensing page uses Power Apps Premium.
Power Apps per app licenses a user for one app (canvas or model-driven) or one portal, in one specific environment. Since October 2021 each licence is one app pass. Subscriptions bought before 1 October 2021 keep three app passes per licence for the agreement term.
Per app plans aren't assigned to users in the Microsoft 365 admin centre. They're purchased there, allocated to environments in the Power Platform admin centre, and consumed when an app is shared with an unlicensed user. They don't appear on the Billing > Licenses page.
Power Apps for Microsoft 365 (the seeded plan) covers creating, running and sharing apps against Microsoft 365 data and standard connectors, running in browser and mobile, and running canvas apps offline. It does not cover premium connectors, custom connectors, or on-premises data via gateway.
Select Microsoft 365 licences carry a limited Dataverse service plan. It exists so Microsoft apps like Project can store data in Dataverse in the default environment. It doesn't entitle anyone to build custom apps or use premium connectors, and creating Dataverse in a production or sandbox environment still needs a premium licence.
Power Apps for Dynamics 365 covers customising and extending the licensed D365 app, in the context of that app's use rights. Outside that context you're back to standalone licensing.
The free Power Apps Developer Plan gives an individual their own developer environment. Anyone can self-serve sign up even if they already hold a paid licence. No sharing. Managed environments aren't entitled under the Developer Plan when running assets.
Trials: Power Apps trials run 30 days. Users can self-serve into them, and internal trial plans don't show in the Microsoft 365 admin centre — Get-AdminPowerAppLicenses exports them.
Pay-as-you-go bills Power Apps usage through an Azure subscription with no upfront commitment.

When to use / skip

Per user is the right answer whenever a person will use more than about three apps, or when the number of apps is going to grow and you'd rather not re-do the maths every quarter. Per app suits a defined population using a defined app — a depot, a field team, a single process — and it suits pilots, because you can allocate capacity to an environment without touching anyone's user licence. Pay-as-you-go is the honest choice when nobody can tell you how many users there'll be, and it's worth proposing precisely because it converts a procurement argument into a monitored Azure spend. Seeded rights are the trap rather than the option: they cover a genuine set of scenarios and stop dead at the first premium connector.

Configuration decisions

Per user, per app, or pay-as-you-go — and this is a per-population decision, not a per-tenant one. Most programmes end up with a mix.
If per app, which environments get the capacity allocated, including test and UAT. Capacity allocated to production doesn't help the UAT environment.
Whether the per-app licensing toggle is on in app settings, since that's what makes passes assign on share. Apps created after 1 October 2020 in an environment with allocated capacity get it on by default.
Whether auto-claim policies assign licences automatically, or whether the client wants an approval step.
Whether the Developer Plan is allowed, and whether developer environment creation is restricted at tenant level.

Gotchas

The per-app licence covers running an app. It does not let that user create or own Power Automate flows that use premium features — that needs Power Apps per user or Power Automate per user. Flows associated in-context to the app are the exception.
Reduce per app capacity on an environment to zero and the users already synced into Dataverse are not disabled. They just can't launch apps. Remove their roles explicitly.
Sharing an app consumes per app capacity. Over-sharing is a licensing event, not just a security one.
Users disabled in an environment can still be enabled through a per app plan — via a security group share, Add-AdminPowerAppsSyncUser, or a force-sync flow. Three mitigations for one problem is a sign of how often it happens.
Makers are sometimes prompted to start a trial when creating a premium connection over a gateway. Microsoft documents this as an artefact of a no-longer-required licence check; the workaround is to accept the trial.
Availability of per app plans differs by purchasing channel. Confirm with the client's licensing desk or partner rather than assuming what's on a public page applies to their agreement.

Consultant notes

Never quote a price. Give the client the shape, point them at the Licensing Guide PDF and their Microsoft account team, and put the assumption in the risk log. Prices and channel availability both change and you will be held to whatever you said.
Get the licence position confirmed in writing before design. "We think we're covered by our E5" has derailed more delivery timelines than any technical decision.
Do the per user versus per app maths on the three-year view, not the go-live view. Per app looks cheap for one app and stops looking cheap at four.
Watch for the D365 seeded-rights boundary. Customising the licensed app is covered; building a standalone app that happens to read D365 data usually isn't, and that's a conversation to have early rather than at audit.

Sticky note: recheck plan names and channel availability before quoting anything — this area moves, and "per user" has already become "Premium" once.