Microsoft Power Apps is a tool for people who want to build simple, attractive business apps without writing code. Power Apps lets you build an app that runs across a wide range of devices, including phones, and works both on-premises and in the cloud.
You can use Power Apps to build an app around almost any data: spreadsheets, calendars, or business records. Build an app for a salesperson to track leads, an app for an office manager to manage employee schedules, or an app that surfaces the metrics your company runs on.
Picture an app that pulls data from a custom API or connector and turns it into actionable insight, then publish it to one person or your whole organization. The range is wide. You can add business rules, embed Power BI reports, run business processes inside the app, and use built-in AI to improve the experience for your users.
What Are the Types of Power Apps?
You can build three types of apps: canvas, model-driven, and Power Pages.
Canvas Apps
Canvas apps start from the end-user experience. You design a custom interface on a blank canvas and connect it to your choice of data, drawing on hundreds of sources and more than 1,000 prebuilt connectors. You can build canvas apps for web, mobile, and tablet.
Canvas apps give you full control of the layout and the flow. You decide exactly how the app looks and feels, screen by screen.
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Model-Driven Apps
When you build a model-driven app, you use the full power of Dataverse to configure forms, business rules, and process flows fast. You build it from the Power Apps maker portal.
Model-driven apps start from your data. You shape your core business data and processes in Dataverse, then model the forms, views, and other components on top. The result is a responsive UI generated for you, consistent across devices.
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Power Pages
Power Pages is the third type, and it is the current name for what used to be called Power Apps portals. Power Pages lets you build external-facing websites where people outside your organization sign in with a range of identities, create and view data in Dataverse, and browse content, including anonymously. Microsoft retired the legacy portals studio in 2024. All sites now open in the Power Pages design studio.
Power Apps Build Tools
- Power Apps Studio is the maker for canvas apps. Building an app here feels a lot like building a slide deck in PowerPoint. It is a no-code approach.
- App designer for model-driven apps lets you define the sitemap and add components to build a model-driven app.
- Power Pages design studio is a what-you-see-is-what-you-get tool for adding and configuring web pages, components, forms, and lists. It surfaces the business data you store in Dataverse.
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What Can You Integrate With?
Power Apps integrates with Microsoft products, third-party connectors, and your own custom connectors.
You can browse the full connector reference on Microsoft Learn.
Common connectors include:
- Microsoft Power Automate (workflow automation)
- Dataverse
- Dynamics 365
- Microsoft 365
- SharePoint
- SQL Server
- Azure
- and many more
What Does Power Apps Cost?
Confirm current pricing on Microsoft's Power Apps pricing page, because the licensing model changes. As of this update, the model centers on Power Apps Premium, licensed per user, which lets a licensed user build and run unlimited custom apps and access unlimited Power Pages sites. There is also a pay-as-you-go option billed through Azure, so you only pay for the users who actually open an app in a given month. Microsoft retired the standalone Per App plan for most purchasing channels, so plan around the per-user and pay-as-you-go models.
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What Are the Benefits of Power Apps?
Power Apps lets you build capable apps that connect to the Microsoft cloud and to non-Microsoft services. Picture a tool where people across marketing, sales, and support all work on the same app, a central place where everyone sees the same data, communicates, and works together.
The point is no-code or low-code development. You no longer need to hire an expensive developer to build the app for you. You use out-of-the-box connectors that are ready to switch on, and you build with a drag-and-drop designer.
Power Apps runs on the Power Platform, a single platform for building apps from one source of truth. It is one place to manage your custom apps, Dataverse (the data platform formerly called Common Data Service), external data sources, and custom connectors.
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What Are the Benefits of Low-Code Apps?
Low-code apps raise agility across your organization. You build apps fast, modernize manual processes, and solve hard problems without a long development cycle.
A business user with no deep development background can build an app using prebuilt connectors and a drag-and-drop builder. That is the unlock.
- Lower cost. You do not need to hire expensive developers.
- Higher productivity. Almost anyone can build apps in Power Apps after learning the core building blocks. Faster turnaround.
- Faster transformation. With no deep technical training required, a maker can build a working proof of concept in minutes.
- Easier maintenance. Because Microsoft maintains the connectors, it handles connector and API updates for you.
What Are the Benefits of Using AI for Building Apps?
Power Apps puts advanced capability that used to require a professional developer into everyone's hands, including prebuilt AI components. You can use out-of-the-box AI for form processing, object detection, text recognition (OCR), and prediction, all running on Azure AI at scale.
The newest layer is Copilot in Power Apps. You describe the app you want in plain language, and Copilot helps generate the data structure, the screens, and the logic to get you started. Makers and app users both get Copilot-assisted experiences. You do not have to spend thousands of dollars on AI research and development. You build on what Microsoft already shipped.
