You may have heard some good things about Microsoft Power Automate, and you may be wondering—Is Power Automate free? We’ll get to the answer in a while. In addition, we will also be covering 8 things you need to know about Microsoft Power Automate licensing and pricing.
Is Power Automate free?
Well, yes and no. Here’s the short answer: only part of the Power Automate platform is free. Specifically, Power Automate Desktop is available to all Windows 10 users for free, as recently announced by Microsoft on 2 March 2021. But the full-fledged Power Automate platform is not free.
And although Power Automate Desktop is free, it does have some restrictions, which we will explain later on. We will also discuss everything about licensing and pricing that you’ll need to know as you contemplate whether to upgrade to a paid subscription.
Check out how you can make the most use of the free Microsoft Power Automate Desktop with our free Microsoft Power Automate Desktop tutorials and blog posts.
What’s the difference between Power Automate Desktop and Power Automate?
Power Automate Desktop is part of the Power Automate platform.
Microsoft Power Automate (formerly Microsoft Flow) is a cloud-native, low-code automation platform that brings together UI- and API-based automation with AI. Enterprises can use Power Automate to automate workflows and business processes to enhance operational efficiencies.
With Power Automate, you can automate mundane, menial tasks, and free yourself up to focus on higher value and more interesting work. There are 3 types of flows that you can create:
- Cloud flows are a series of actions that can be triggered by an event, via a schedule or on-demand. Power Automate enables you to interact with the various services through the use of more than 200+ data connectors. Cloud flows are API-based automation.
- Desktop flows are used to automate tasks involving desktop and/or web applications. You would use desktop flows (UI-based automation) instead of cloud flows if there are no existing connectors available to connect and interact with the required web applications. This is where Power Automate Desktop comes in. Do note that you will need to download and install Power Automate Desktop in order to create desktop flows.
- Business process flows consist of a series of stages and steps that guide users to get work done in a consistent and streamlined manner.
Now, let’s address some of the burning questions that you might have regarding Power Automate pricing and licensing.
Table of contents
- Free Microsoft Power Automate Desktop restrictions
- Overview of Power Automate Licensing and Pricing
- So how do you decide which plan to purchase?
- Not all plans come with Robotic Process Automation (RPA) functionalities
- Both the “per user” and “per flow” plans come with service limits
- Not all types of flows need to be licensed
- What can you use the AI builder for?
- Limited Power Automate capabilities are also included within Power Apps, Office 365, Dynamics and Windows licenses
- Conclusion
1. Free Microsoft Power Automate Desktop restrictions
The free version of Power Automate Desktop is meant for individual users to make their work more productive at a personal level. This means that many capabilities that make it easier to coordinate automation at an enterprise level are not available for free.
Some examples of the restrictions on the free Power Automate Desktop include:
- You can only access your flows from your desktop. This means no access from the Power Automate platform—Microsoft’s online portal for flows. Being able to access the flows online is handy because it allows you to start your flows on the go—from any web browser and even your mobile device.
- You can’t collaborate on desktop flows with your colleagues
- You can’t combine desktop flows with cloud flows. Combining with cloud flows is useful because it allows you to use API integrations where they are available, and APIs are a more robust and efficient way of passing data from one app to another.
- You can’t use AI builder to extract data from documents. If you deal with a lot of semi-structured or unstructured documents in your daily work, you would probably want to be able to extract data intelligently and automatically from your documents.
- You can’t schedule your flows, i.e. no unattended RPA functionality. This means you have to be present to trigger your flow manually. Want to run a report every day at midnight while you’re sleeping at home? You’ll have to pay extra for that.
Now that you have some idea of the kind of features that you may have to pay for, let’s have a look at Power Automate licensing and pricing.
2. Overview of Power Automate Licensing and Pricing
Per user | Per user with attended RPA | Per flow | |
Licensing scheme | Unlimited flows per user | Unlimited flows per users | Unlimited users per flow |
Cloud flows and business process flows | Included | Included | Included |
Attended desktop flows (including Power Automate Desktop) | Not included | Included | Not included |
Unattended desktop flows | Not included | Not included | Not included |
AI Builder | Not included | 5,000 service credits per month | Not included |
Usage limit | 5,000 daily API requests per user | 5,000 daily API requests per user | 15,000 daily API requests per licensed flow |
Typical use case | To support the adoption of automation across the entire organization | Similar to per user case, but with additional RPA capabilities | To support the implementation of flows that are used by a large number of users |
Price | US$15 per user per month | US$40 per user per month | US$100 per flow per month |
Minimum purchase | N/A | N/A | 5 flows |
The table above refers to full-fledged, general purpose Power Automate capabilities. Licensing is supported on both a “per user” basis as well as a “per flow” basis.
You can download the detailed Microsoft Power Apps and Power Automate Licensing Guide here.
3. So how do you decide which plan to purchase?
Generally speaking, you should purchase the “per user” plans if you need to support the adoption of automation across your entire organization. In this case, you just need to know the total number of users, and not have to bother with tracking how many flows are activated within your organization.
On the other hand, if you have a (small) number of flows that are used by a large number of users within your organizations, it might be more cost-effective to purchase the “per flow” plan. In this way, you do not need to license each and every user who might trigger the flow knowingly or unknowingly.
4. Not all plans come with Robotic Process Automation (RPA) functionalities
RPA functionality (including Power Automate Desktop) is only available through the “per user with attended RPA” plan. This supports use cases whereby the user will manually trigger the attended desktop flows. This plan provides for desktop flow authoring, bot orchestration and management.
If you require the desktop flow to run autonomously, i.e. without user intervention, you need to purchase additionally the “Power Automate unattended RPA add-on”. The number of add-ons required depends on the number of bots, which in turn depends on the number of concurrent flows that you need to run. Alternatively, if you can serialize your flows to run sequentially, then this add-on is not necessary. The “Power Automate unattended RPA add-on” is priced at US$150 per bot per month.
Please also note that any services or applications the unattended bot accesses must be licensed separately. For instance, if the bot is accessing Windows or Office, the “Microsoft 365 – Unattended License” must also be purchased in addition to the “Power Automate unattended RPA add-on”.
5. Both the “per user” and “per flow” plans come with service limits
Specifically, there is a daily cap of 5,000 API requests for the “per user” and “per user with attended RPA” plans. Similarly, there is a daily cap of 15,000 API requests per licensed flow for the “per flow” plan. To increase the daily service limits, you will need to purchase the “Power Apps and Power Automate capacity add-on”. Don’t say we did not warn you!
6. Not all types of flows need to be licensed
Only top-level flows that are activated need to be license. “Child” flows that are triggered by another flow do not need to be additionally licensed. Yay!
7. What can you use the AI Builder for?
AI Builder is a Microsoft Power Platform capability that provides AI models that are designed to optimize your business processes. AI Builder enables your business to use AI to automate processes and glean insights from your data in Power Apps and Power Automate.
Have a look at how Power Automate’s AI Builder works in this invoice processing example.
The AI Builder can support use cases like forms processing, text classification and recognition, sentiment analysis, object detection, language detection, key phrase extraction, receipt processing, and more.
The “per user with attended RPA plan” comes with 5,000 service credits per month. Service credits are deducted when AI Builder services are used, and do note that different use cases burn down the service credits at different rates.
Additional AI Builder capacity can be purchased for $500/month per 1,000,000 service credits. Do note that the AI Builder service credit capacity is pooled on the tenant level.
8. Limited Power Automate capabilities are also included within Power Apps, Office 365, Dynamics 365 and Windows licenses
Limited Power Automate use rights are included with select Windows licenses (namely Windows 10 Pro, Windows Enterprise E3 and Windows Enterprise E5) to create and execute personal desktop automation for attended RPA capabilities in Power Automate Desktop.
Do note that usage is limited to non-production purpose and localized on the Windows machine only. Unlike the “per user with attended RPA” plan, you would not be able to manage or monitor your desktop flows from the Power Automate platform, or to trigger a desktop flow from another flow for example.
The free Microsoft Power Automate Desktop is Certainly Worth Trying
We have reviewed the key aspects of Microsoft Power Automate licensing and pricing. The Power Automate Desktop software that is “bundled” with the Windows 10 Pro license does appear to be rather attractive, allowing users, particularly citizen developers to start instantly, and at no cost.
On the flip side, the licensing structure might be somewhat confusing to someone new to Microsoft, especially with regards to the various add-ons you might need to purchase in order to fulfil your use cases. As they always say, caveat emptor!