What is Power Apps? App types, data, licences and real uses

What is Power Apps? Microsoft's low-code tool for business apps: the three app types, where the data lives, what Microsoft 365 covers, Teams, Copilot and real uses.

Power AppsQuick reference12 min read

Checked against Microsoft Learn 22 Oct 2026 · 25 sourcesPosted by the Maker DeskHow we write guides

Power Apps is Microsoft's low-code platform for building the business apps a spreadsheet or an email chain can't handle: a request form, an inspection checklist on a phone, a case-management app for a whole team. You build with screens and Excel-like formulas, start from your data, or describe the app to Copilot. People then run it in a browser, in the Power Apps mobile app or inside Microsoft Teams, against data you already have or data stored in Dataverse, the platform's own database.

Note

Checked against Microsoft Learn on 22 October 2026, and against Microsoft's Power Apps pricing page.

The three kinds of Power Apps app, and which licence each one needs.

The three kinds of app

	Canvas app	Model-driven app	Code app
Starts from	A blank screen	Your Dataverse tables	Your own web app code
How you build	Place controls on screens and set their behaviour with Power Fx formulas in Power Apps Studio	Add forms, views, dashboards and a site map in the app designer	React, Vue or another single-page app framework in an editor such as Visual Studio Code
Data	Dataverse or any connector	Dataverse only	Dataverse and Power Platform connectors, called from JavaScript
Layout	Every pixel is yours	Generated from the components, responsive by default	Every pixel is yours
Who builds it	Makers comfortable with Excel-style formulas	Makers modelling a process	Professional developers
Licence for users	Microsoft 365 if it uses standard connectors only; otherwise premium	Always premium	Always premium

Canvas apps are the classic Power Apps. Microsoft compares building one to arranging a slide deck in PowerPoint: drop on galleries, forms and buttons, then write formulas such as Filter(Tasks, Status = "Open") in the formula bar. Power Fx is the same language family as Excel formulas, and an app recalculates the way a worksheet does.

Model-driven apps turn it around. You design the data first (tables, columns, relationships, business rules) and the app's screens follow from it. Model-driven apps share one consistent, responsive layout, which helps when people move between apps all day. Our canvas vs model-driven guide has five questions that settle the choice between them.

Code apps are for developers who want full control of the interface but still want Power Platform's sign-in, connectors and governance. You write a single-page web app, add connectors with the Power Apps client library, and publish it to an environment with the Power Apps CLI (pa app push). It's then governed like a canvas app: the same sharing limits, data policies and Conditional Access apply. Two things to know first:

An admin turns them on per environment: Manage > Environments > the environment > Settings > Product > Features, then the Enable code apps toggle.
They aren't supported in Power Apps for Windows, can't customise SharePoint list forms and don't work with Power Platform Git integration.

Note

Microsoft's main Power Apps overview still says you can create two types of app, canvas and model-driven. Code apps are documented separately, in the developer section of Learn.

Power Pages: the sibling for outside users

Power Apps is for people inside your organisation. When customers, partners or the public need a website, that's Power Pages, a separate product for external-facing sites built on the same Dataverse data. It has its own licensing for site visitors; Power Pages or SharePoint explains when you need it.

Where the data lives

A Power Apps app doesn't need its own database. It reaches data in two ways.

Connectors. A connector is a ready-made link to a service: SharePoint, Excel, Outlook, Office 365 Users, SQL Server, Salesforce and many more. Microsoft's pages don't agree on the count: the maker overview says canvas apps connect to more than 200 data sources, while the code apps page says more than 1,500 connectors. What matters more is the class:

Standard connectors, such as SharePoint, Outlook, Excel and Teams, come with Microsoft 365.
Premium connectors need a premium licence. SQL Server, Azure SQL, the other Azure connectors and the Dynamics 365 connectors are all premium, even though they feel like everyday plumbing.
Custom connectors (your own APIs) and the on-premises data gateway also need a premium licence.

Dataverse. Dataverse stores data in tables of rows and columns, with role-based security, business rules and relationships built in. Dynamics 365 apps keep their data there too, so an app can work on it without any integration. If you're choosing between a SharePoint list and Dataverse for a new app, Dataverse or SharePoint lists compares them honestly, licence cost included.

Warning

Large lists catch out most first canvas apps. When a formula can't run at the data source, Power Apps works on only the first 500 rows by default and shows no error. Read why a gallery stops at 500 rows before you build on a big SharePoint list.

What Microsoft 365 includes and what needs Premium

Many Microsoft 365 licences include limited Power Apps rights: apps that use Microsoft 365 data and standard connectors. That covers a surprising amount, such as a canvas app on a SharePoint list that sends Outlook email.

You need premium rights for anything beyond that: Dataverse, premium or custom connectors, the gateway, every model-driven app and every code app. Two options, at Microsoft's US list prices in October 2026:

Option	What it is	Price (USD)
Power Apps Premium	Per user: unlimited apps and Power Pages sites, premium, custom and on-premises connectors, and 250 MB of Dataverse database plus 2 GB of file capacity added to the tenant's pool	$20 per user per month, paid yearly; $22 for terms that start on or after 1 January 2027
Per app pay-as-you-go meter	Billed through an Azure subscription for each person who opens a given app at least once in the month	$10 per active user per app per month

So "Power Apps Premium" is simply the per-user licence that unlocks everything above. Building is free: you don't need a licence to make a canvas app. Running an app is what needs one.

Two traps:

A Dataverse service plan in the Microsoft 365 admin center doesn't let users run custom apps. It exists for Microsoft 365's own features.
In a managed environment, every active user needs premium rights, even for a standard app, and Microsoft starts blocking unlicensed users there in February 2027.

Power Apps licensing explained covers the details, guests and the enforcement date.

Power Apps in Teams

Microsoft documents five ways to use Power Apps in Teams: embed a canvas app or a model-driven app as a tab in a team, or as a personal app, or build a canvas app inside Teams on Dataverse for Teams.

To add an existing app, sign in to Power Apps, select Apps, then More actions (...) next to the app, and select Add to Teams. Your Teams admin must allow custom apps to be uploaded, and the app must be in the same tenant as your Teams account. People who open it still need the licence the app requires.

Warning

Dataverse for Teams is being retired. No new Dataverse for Teams environments can be created from 15 November 2026; environments not upgraded to Dataverse are suspended on 15 September 2027 and decommissioned on 30 October 2027. Apps built on full Dataverse keep working in Teams. What to do with each environment.

Copilot in Power Apps

Copilot shows up in two places: helping makers build, and helping users inside the app.

For makers:

Describe the data, get an app. From the Power Apps home screen, select Start with data > Create new data, describe what you want to track, and Copilot creates Dataverse tables you build a canvas app on.
Plans turn a description of a business process, plus images such as a process diagram or a screenshot of an old system, into a whole solution: Dataverse tables, canvas and model-driven apps, Power Pages sites, flows and Copilot Studio agents.
Formulas. Copilot can create and edit Power Fx formulas for you in the formula bar.
Generative pages (in model-driven apps) generate a working React page from a description and up to six Dataverse tables. In the browser it's available only for environments in the United States, Great Britain, Australia and Singapore; Microsoft recommends AI coding tools such as GitHub Copilot CLI, which work worldwide.

For app users (mostly model-driven apps): form fill assistance and smart paste suggest values for empty fields, which people accept or reject; row summaries; and a Copilot control you can add to a canvas app (preview). Form fill assistance needs a Power Apps Premium licence and is a production-ready preview in Power Apps.

Admins control this in the Power Platform admin center. Generally available Copilot features are on by default and only Microsoft Support can turn them off. Preview features can be turned off per environment (Settings > Features > Copilot) or for the tenant (Settings > Copilot in Power Apps (preview)). Availability varies by region.

Note

App building is moving. Microsoft now has a "vibe" Power Apps experience in preview, and app creation in Copilot Studio (preview), which can consume Copilot Credits. The two pages don't quite agree: the vibe page says app building will "soon roll out" to Copilot Studio, while Copilot Studio's own pages describe it as already rolling out gradually.

What people actually build

Microsoft's own templates give a fair picture: help desk management, employee onboarding, asset checkout, site inspection and budget tracking. Here's how typical jobs map onto the app types:

The job	App type	Usual data
A site inspection with photos, on a phone	Canvas	SharePoint list, or Dataverse if it must work offline
Book out laptops and kit	Canvas	SharePoint list
A nicer form on a SharePoint list	Canvas, as a customised list form	The list itself
A help desk with cases, contacts and history	Model-driven	Dataverse
Onboarding that walks people through the same stages	Model-driven, with a business process flow	Dataverse
Act on a number in a Power BI report	Canvas, inside the report as a Power Apps visual	Whatever the report shows
A customer-facing portal	Not Power Apps: Power Pages	Dataverse

Start with a canvas app on SharePoint when the data is simple, the audience is small and everyone already has Microsoft 365.
Choose Dataverse early if the app will grow: relationships, security roles and business rules are hard to bolt on later.
Check the app's licence designation (Standard or Premium) before you share it widely.

Don't

Don't build a new app on Dataverse for Teams: it's retiring.
Don't assume a Microsoft 365 licence covers an app because it opens for you; you might hold a premium licence your users don't.
Don't use Power Apps for a public website. That's Power Pages.

Weighing Power Apps against Power Automate and Power BI? Power Apps vs Power Automate vs Power BI sorts jobs by tool.

Sources

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