Power Apps pay-as-you-go bills USD 10 per person, per app, per month, only in the months they open it, through an Azure subscription. Against Power Apps Premium at NZ$32.40 per user per month on Microsoft's NZ list, that makes pay-as-you-go the cheaper way to run one app for most people, and Premium the cheaper way the moment someone uses two. Since the per app plan came off general sale on 2 January 2026, this is the option that took its place for small firms, and almost nobody mentions it.
The two prices side by side
| Pay-as-you-go | Power Apps Premium | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | USD 10 per active user per app per month (about NZ$17 at the mid-2026 rate; moves with the exchange rate) | NZ$32.40 per user per month, paid yearly, fixed in NZD |
| Counted when | The person opens that app at least once in the month | Every month, used or not |
| Covers | That app only | Unlimited apps, premium connectors, the on-premises gateway, model-driven apps |
| Dataverse capacity | 1 GB database and 1 GB file free per pay-as-you-go environment, then billed per GB | 250 MB database and 2 GB file accrued per licence into the tenant pool |
| Billing | Azure subscription, USD | Microsoft 365 admin centre or your CSP partner, NZD |
| Who is excluded | Anyone who already holds Premium; Microsoft 365 users of standard-connector apps | n/a |
Sources: Microsoft Learn's pay-as-you-go meter page for the USD rate and the capacity rule; microsoft.com/en-nz for the Premium price; both checked September 2026.
The break-even, worked
- One app, opened every month: pay-as-you-go about NZ$206 a year; Premium NZ$389. Pay-as-you-go wins by nearly half.
- One app, opened four months a year (the seasonal user, the director who checks quarterly): about NZ$69 versus NZ$389. Not close.
- Two apps, every month: about NZ$413 versus NZ$389. Premium edges it, and it also buys the gateway and the accrued capacity.
- Three apps or a model-driven app plus a canvas app: Premium, clearly.
Whether you need either at all depends on what the app connects to, which is the subject of the Power Apps premium licence trap. The number that flips it is apps per person, not days of use. A firm that builds one app and shares it with everyone is a pay-as-you-go firm. A firm whose office staff live in two or three apps buys Premium for those people and pays-as-it-goes for the rest.
What it costs you that the table does not show
An Azure subscription to own, in US dollars, reconciled by someone. An exchange rate that moved 10% in a year more than once this decade. An environment decision: the app has to live in a pay-as-you-go environment, which is a sensible thing to have anyway but is a decision somebody makes. And a governance habit: a pay-as-you-go environment is easy to share widely, which is the point, and also how a firm ends up paying for forty people who opened an app once out of curiosity. Share deliberately.
Where it fits in the small-firm picture
If your real question is whether Dataverse costs anything at all, is Dataverse free has the free-versus-paid table.
The licence line is the number that kills small Power Platform projects, and for a single app pay-as-you-go roughly halves it. That changes the SharePoint-or-Dataverse decision at the margin: a 10-person firm with one Dataverse app is looking at about NZ$2,000 a year rather than NZ$3,888, close enough to the SharePoint route's zero that the relational database wins more often. The rest of the licence picture is on Power Platform pricing in NZ; the capacity side on Dataverse pricing in NZ; and why the per app plan it replaced is worth asking your partner about anyway is in the per-app plan post.
Common questions
How does Power Apps pay-as-you-go work?
You link a Power Platform environment to an Azure subscription. Any app in that environment can be shared with anyone in the tenant, and each month Azure bills USD 10 for every person who opened each app at least once that month. People who already hold Power Apps Premium are not counted, and an app that uses only standard connectors is free for Microsoft 365 users. The environment also gets 1 GB of Dataverse database and 1 GB of file capacity free, then pays per GB.
Is pay-as-you-go cheaper than a Power Apps Premium license?
For one app, usually yes. USD 10 is about NZ$17 at the mid-2026 rate, against NZ$32.40 for Premium, so a person who opens one Dataverse app every month costs roughly half on pay-as-you-go. The break-even is two apps: two active apps a month is about NZ$34, and Premium at NZ$32.40 covers unlimited apps, the gateway and 250 MB of accrued capacity. Add exchange-rate movement, and the answer is: one app, pay-as-you-go; two or more, Premium.
Do I need an Azure subscription for pay-as-you-go?
Yes. That is the mechanism: the environment is linked to a billing policy on an Azure subscription and the usage lands in Azure Cost Management alongside anything else you run there. A firm with no Azure footprint can create a subscription for this alone, but somebody has to own it, watch the bill and reconcile it in NZD.
Can I mix pay-as-you-go and Premium licences?
Yes, in the same environment. Users with a Premium licence are excluded from the meter; everyone else who opens a premium app is billed. A common pattern for a 12-person firm is Premium for the four who live in the app and pay-as-you-go for the eight who open it once a month.
Where to start
Tell me how many apps and how many people. One free 30-minute call and you get the licence mix that is cheapest and legitimate, in NZD.