Power Pages licensing explained: who counts as an authenticated or anonymous user
How Power Pages counts users each month, who is never counted, and how internal staff with Power Apps or Dynamics 365 licences are handled. Plus subscription packs versus pay-as-you-go, the pages and visitors that are exempt, and where to watch consumption.
Power PagesLook it up · Quick reference4 min read
Power Pages isn't licensed per page view or per login any more. It's licensed per unique user, per website, per calendar month, in two kinds: authenticated (signed in) and anonymous (just browsing). Knowing exactly who counts saves real money, and avoids surprises at go-live.
Note
Checked against Microsoft Learn on 6 October 2026. Prices change; see Microsoft's licensing FAQ for current figures.
Authenticated users
- Who: anyone who signs in through any identity provider: Microsoft Entra ID, a local account, Google, and so on.
- Counted: once per website per calendar month, however many times they sign in.
- What makes them unique: the Dataverse contact record they're mapped to. One contact equals one user, even across many sign-ins.
- Several sites: someone who signs in to three websites counts three times, once per site.
Anonymous users
- Who: visitors who browse without signing in.
- What makes them unique: an anonymous ID in a browser cookie. A new browser, a new device or cleared cookies means a new ID, and another count.
- Browse, then sign in: a visitor who browses anonymously and then signs in the same day (UTC) is counted only as authenticated.
Never counted
| Situation | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Websites in trial or private mode | Develop and test without spending capacity |
| People with a Power Apps per user licence, or a Dynamics 365 enterprise licence that covers the site | Internal staff often cost nothing extra (see below) |
| Visits only to sign-in, register, invitation or external-sign-in callback pages | A site whose only public page is sign-in doesn't need anonymous capacity |
System pages starting with /_, such as /_services and /_resource | |
| Responses that are redirects (3xx), client errors (4xx) or server errors (5xx) | |
| Requests only for static files (CSS, JavaScript, images) | |
| Bots and crawlers | |
| Uptime monitors that send a non-browser user agent | Point monitors at /_services/about to be safe |
Tip
If your whole site is for signed-in users, protect the home page with page permissions, not with a JavaScript redirect. A client-side redirect can leave pages reachable anonymously, and those visits count.
Internal staff
Employees signing in with Microsoft Entra ID can be covered by licences they may already have:
| Their licence | Covers |
|---|---|
| Power Apps per user | Unlimited Power Pages websites |
| Power Apps per app | One website, in the environment the per-app capacity is assigned to |
| Dynamics 365 enterprise | Unlimited websites that map to the licensed Dynamics 365 app, in the same environment |
| None of these | An authenticated user subscription or pay-as-you-go, like any external user |
For these licences to be recognised, users must sign in with Microsoft Entra ID through the built-in provider, and the licence must be in the same tenant as the site.
Subscription or pay-as-you-go?
| Subscription capacity | Pay-as-you-go | |
|---|---|---|
| How it works | Buy packs in advance: 100 authenticated or 500 anonymous users per pack, per website, per month | Billed for the actual monthly active users, through an Azure subscription linked to the environment |
| Minimum per environment | 25 authenticated, 200 anonymous | None |
| Unused capacity | Doesn't roll over to next month | Not applicable |
| Good for | Steady, predictable traffic | New sites, seasonal peaks, unknown demand |
If an environment has pay-as-you-go turned on, prepaid capacity assigned to it is ignored. Move that capacity to another environment.
Both include Dataverse storage with the licence. Each website no longer needs 1 GB of Dataverse capacity, as it did under the old portals model.
Watching consumption
- Power Platform admin center → Billing → Licenses → Power Pages: see capacity assigned and consumed per environment, overage, and history.
- Downloadable reports: daily counts of first-time users per site. Sum a month's Billed quantity to get the monthly total.
- Analytics tools count differently. Application Insights or Google Analytics run in the browser, include error pages, and miss blocked scripts. Their numbers won't match the meters, and that's expected.
Sources
- Microsoft Learn: Power Platform licensing FAQs: Power Pages
- Microsoft Learn: Pay-as-you-go meters: Power Pages
- Microsoft Learn: Pay-as-you-go known issues and FAQ
- Microsoft Learn: Manage and monitor Power Pages capacity
- Microsoft Learn: Website capacity consumption reports