Power Automate Premium costs $15 per user per month, paid yearly, which is $180 a user a year. It adds premium and custom connectors, attended desktop flows and 40,000 actions a day to what Microsoft 365 already includes. Unattended bots are licensed separately at $150 a bot a month (Process) or $215 with a Microsoft-hosted machine (Hosted Process). The seeded AI Builder credits that came with Premium are removed on November 1, 2026.
Those are Microsoft's list prices, read from the Power Automate pricing page and the Microsoft Learn licensing pages. The per-unit price is not where budgets go wrong. What decides the bill is how many people Microsoft's rules say must hold Premium, how many bots and environments need a Process license, and what your document flows run on after November. This is the breakdown we would want before a true-up.
How much does Power Automate Premium cost?
Here is the full published price list for Power Automate as a standalone product in the United States.
| License | List price | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 (included) | Part of your M365 license | Cloud flows with standard connectors only, 6,000 actions a day per user. |
| Power Automate Premium | $15 a user a month, paid yearly | Premium and custom connectors, attended desktop flows (RPA), 40,000 actions a day, 50 MB of process mining data, 250 MB Dataverse database and 2 GB file capacity, 5,000 AI Builder credits a month until November 1, 2026. |
| Power Automate Process | $150 a bot a month, paid yearly | One unattended bot, or one licensed flow or flow group, with 250,000 actions a day. |
| Power Automate Hosted Process | $215 a bot a month, paid yearly | Everything in Process, plus a virtual machine that Microsoft hosts on Azure. |
| Process Mining add-on | $5,000 a tenant a month, paid yearly | 100 GB of process mining data. Available as an add-on to Premium only. |
Microsoft adds that listed prices are for marketing purposes and your actual price shows at checkout, and that enterprise agreements are negotiated with a Microsoft representative. For most US teams buying through the admin center, the table is what you pay.
Is Power Automate Premium per user?
Yes. Premium is a user license assigned at the tenant level, and a licensed user can run flows in every environment without a second license. The question that matters is which users need one, and Microsoft's licensing FAQ answers it in four rules:
- Automated and scheduled flows run in the owner's license context. If the flow uses a premium connector, only the owner needs Premium.
- Instant flows, the ones someone starts with a button or from an app, run in the context of whoever starts them. If one uses a premium connector, every user who runs it needs Premium, or the flow needs a Process license instead.
- RPA developers who build and manage desktop flows in the portal need Premium, even when the bots they build run on Process licenses.
- Flows with no premium connector need nothing extra. A Microsoft 365 license covers them.
On top of the rules, Microsoft's own recommendation is blunt: most organizations should buy Power Automate Premium for every user. That is the sentence a Microsoft partner will quote in a renewal meeting, and it is where a $15 line item becomes a headcount-sized number.
Is Power Automate included in Office 365?
Part of it is. Microsoft 365 and Office 365 business licenses include cloud flows with standard connectors and a limit of 6,000 actions a day per user. What they do not include is the part most business processes end up needing: premium connectors such as Salesforce, SQL Server and HTTP requests, custom connectors for your own systems, and desktop flows. A flow that syncs your CRM with your ERP is a Premium flow the moment it is built.
Power Automate Premium limits you will actually hit
Each license comes with a daily action allowance, and every trigger and action counts toward it, including simple steps like setting a variable. Microsoft lists the limits by license context:
| License context | Actions per day |
|---|---|
| Microsoft 365, Free, all trials | 6,000 |
| Power Automate Premium, Power Apps Premium, Dynamics 365 Enterprise | 40,000 |
| Power Automate Process, Hosted Process | 250,000 per license |
Two details catch buyers out. First, limits do not pool. Microsoft's example is eight users on Office 365 licenses: each gets 6,000 actions, not a shared 48,000. A scheduled sync owned by one person lives inside that one person's 40,000. Second, only Process licenses stack, up to 10 on a single flow. When a sync that loops over thousands of records outgrows its owner's allowance, the fix Microsoft sells is another $150 a month on that flow.
Power Automate Process license: when Premium is not enough
You need a Process license when a flow runs unattended desktop automation, runs under a service principal, needs more than a user's action allowance, or is an instant premium flow used by many people. Each license covers one unattended bot, and a bot runs one desktop flow at a time, so two bots running in parallel on the same machine means two licenses. Process licenses are also environment specific: a flow in test and the same flow in production are separate flows, each needing its own capacity.
Microsoft removed the older per-flow plan and the unattended RPA add-on from the price list on February 1, 2024. Existing ones still run, but any new capacity is a Process license.
What happens to AI Builder credits on November 1, 2026?
Every Premium and Process license has carried 5,000 AI Builder credits a month, pooled at the tenant. Microsoft's AI Builder documentation states that these seeded credits will be removed on November 1, 2026, and that after that date only credits from the AI Builder add-on remain active. Existing customers can renew or buy more add-on capacity in the Microsoft 365 admin center up to that date.
If you have flows that read invoices, receipts or forms with AI Builder, this is the line to budget for now. You can buy add-on capacity, move the reading to a specialist tool, such as a dedicated document data extraction service that returns the fields to your flow, or have the extraction written into the application that runs the process.
What a 25-person team pays for Power Automate
Take an operations team of 25 in a Microsoft 365 company. Their flows sync Salesforce and NetSuite, and two unattended bots key data into a Windows app. At list price, following Microsoft's advice:
| Line | Per year |
|---|---|
| Premium for 25 users (25 x $15 x 12) | $4,500 |
| 2 Process licenses in production (2 x $150 x 12) | $3,600 |
| Process licenses for a test environment, if used | Up to $3,600 more |
| AI Builder add-on after November 1, 2026 | Quoted separately |
| Total before AI Builder | $8,100 to $11,700 |
That is a fair price for what it does. It is also rent: the flows only run while the licenses do, and every new person who presses a premium button is another $180 a year.
Is Power Automate Premium worth it?
It is worth it when the work lives in Outlook, SharePoint and Teams, when you need attended RPA against Windows apps with no API, or when hundreds of staff each want a few small automations. Per-user pricing suits broad, shallow use.
It is a weaker buy when a handful of business-critical flows move data between systems that all have APIs, which is where premium connectors, Process licenses and action limits pile up. For that shape of work, we built AgentCode: the person who owns the process describes it, the agent writes an application that calls NetSuite, Salesforce or QuickBooks directly, and a person approves every change. The code sits in your repository and stays yours. Plans are per team, from $349 a month billed yearly for 3 live apps and 5 people, with every tier on the pricing page. We compare both sides honestly, including where Microsoft wins, in our Power Automate alternative guide.
If your bots run on UiPath rather than Power Automate Desktop, the same arithmetic applies with bigger numbers; see UiPath pricing and license cost and the UiPath alternative comparison.
Power Automate Premium pricing: quick answers
How much is Power Automate Premium per month?
$15 per user per month, billed as an annual commitment, so $180 a user a year at list price. Microsoft offers a 30-day trial with the same capabilities except AI Builder credits and storage.
What is the difference between Power Automate Premium and Process?
Premium licenses a person: premium connectors, attended RPA and 40,000 actions a day. Process licenses a bot or a flow: unattended RPA or 250,000 actions a day, no matter who runs it. Most programs need both, since the RPA developer still needs Premium.
Do I need Power Automate Premium for premium connectors?
Yes, unless the flow carries a Process license. For automated and scheduled flows only the owner needs Premium; for instant flows every user who runs the flow needs it.
Is the Power Automate per user plan the same as Premium?
Yes. The old "per user" and "per user with attended RPA" plans were folded into Power Automate Premium, which is now the single user license Microsoft sells for Power Automate.