What Power Automate Costs in 2026

A standard-connector flow runs on existing Microsoft 365 licenses. A premium or custom connector needs one of the paid licenses below, or a pay-as-you-go environment that bills each run to Azure. Premium and Process are paid yearly.

Automated and scheduled flows use their owner's license. Instant flows use the triggering user's license. When an owner leaves or a service principal has no license, cover the flow with Process, a flow group, or a designated licensed user.

• Microsoft 365 rights: standard connectors, 6,000 requests per user a day.
• Premium: US$15 per user per month, 40,000 requests a day, one attended bot, 50 MB of process mining.
• Process: US$150 per flow or bot per month, 250,000 actions a day, one unattended bot.
• Hosted Process: US$215 per bot per month, a Microsoft-hosted machine for unattended runs.

Pay-as-you-go charges US$0.60 per premium cloud or attended desktop run and US$3.00 per unattended or hosted run. Standard-connector flows are free, as are designer tests and resubmitted failures. GILD calculates that 250 premium runs a month cost the same as one Process license. Above that, Process costs less and stays flat.

Unattended runs break even sooner. GILD calculates that 50 of them a month match the price of one Process bot. Keep the two billing models in separate environments, because Microsoft ignores Process licenses in a pay-as-you-go environment.

One Process license covers a group of up to 25 solution-aware cloud flows sharing 250,000 actions a day. Microsoft recommends one license per core process, such as invoice processing. Add every parent and child flow to the group. Child flows do not inherit capacity.

GILD calculates about US$6 per flow a month when all group slots are used. Assign licenses directly to any flow that needs more daily actions than one license gives. One flow accepts up to 10 stacked licenses. Groups do not accept stacked licenses.

Agent flows charge 13 Copilot Credits per 100 actions. Pay-as-you-go credits cost US$0.01 each, and Microsoft also sells prepaid packs and a one-year prepurchase plan. GILD calculates that a 20-action run uses 2.6 credits, about US$0.03, against US$0.60 for a premium cloud run on pay-as-you-go.

At 250,000 daily actions, GILD calculates that Process costs about US$0.00002 per action, roughly 65 times less than an agent flow action. Agent actions triggered through an agent by a Microsoft 365 Copilot licensed user carry no credit charge. Converting a cloud flow to an agent flow is irreversible.

AI Builder steps use AI Builder credits before Copilot Credits. Since November 1, 2025, new customers buy Copilot Credits for these steps. Licenses bought or renewed from November 1, 2026 include no seeded AI Builder credits. Move AI step costs to the Copilot Credit budget at renewal. Prompt rates below are per 1,000 tokens.

• Basic prompt: 0.1 credit per 1,000 tokens, US$0.001 at Microsoft's listed rate.
• Standard prompt: 1.5 credits per 1,000 tokens, US$0.015 at Microsoft's listed rate.
• Premium prompt: 10 credits per 1,000 tokens, US$0.10 at Microsoft's listed rate, so a 5,000-token prompt costs about US$0.50.
• Document processing: 8 credits per page, US$0.08 at Microsoft's listed rate.

Premium includes process and task mining with 50 MB of data per license, up to 100 GB per tenant. The Process Mining add-on, US$5,000 per tenant per month paid yearly and available only with Premium, adds 100 GB of storage. Hosted Process, at US$215 per bot per month, removes the Windows machines a team would otherwise run for unattended bots.

Every price and meter is Microsoft's published figure, linked in Sources. GILD read Microsoft's Power Automate pricing page on October 12, 2026. The same day it read these Microsoft Learn pages: Power Automate license types, the licensing FAQ, request limits, pay-as-you-go meters, Copilot Studio billing rates and AI Builder licensing. GILD calculated the monthly and per-action figures from those prices and meters. The pay-as-you-go comparisons assume premium runs stay within their entitlements. Examples from teams come from the public accounts GILD collected for its Power Automate Signals page.

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Official documentation

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Public source

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1. 1Microsoft Power Automate pricingOfficial documentationmicrosoft.com
2. 2Microsoft Learn: Types of Power Automate licensesOfficial documentationlearn.microsoft.com
3. 3Microsoft Learn: Power Automate licensing FAQOfficial documentationlearn.microsoft.com
4. 4Microsoft Learn: Requests limits and allocationsOfficial documentationlearn.microsoft.com
5. 5Microsoft Learn: Pay-as-you-go metersOfficial documentationlearn.microsoft.com
6. 6Microsoft Learn: Support for service principal owned flowsOfficial documentationlearn.microsoft.com
7. 7Microsoft Learn: Overview of process mining in Power AutomateOfficial documentationlearn.microsoft.com
8. 8Microsoft Learn: Hosted RPA overviewOfficial documentationlearn.microsoft.com
9. 9Microsoft Learn: AI Builder licensing overviewOfficial documentationlearn.microsoft.com
10. 10Microsoft Learn: AI Builder licensing and Copilot CreditsOfficial documentationlearn.microsoft.com
11. 11Microsoft Learn: Agent flows overview (Copilot Studio)Official documentationlearn.microsoft.com
12. 12Microsoft Learn: Copilot Studio billing rates and managementOfficial documentationlearn.microsoft.com
13. 13Microsoft Learn: Copilot Studio licensingOfficial documentationlearn.microsoft.com
14. 14Reddit r/PowerAutomate: flow groups for a client running about 50 flows (Aug 15, 2026)Public sourcereddit.com
15. 15Reddit r/PowerAutomate: Premium licenses or a Process license? (Aug 12, 2025)Public sourcereddit.com
16. 16Power Platform Community: the premium HTTP connector for 1,000 users (Nov 26, 2025)Public sourcecommunity.powerplatform.com