In this Power Apps Tutorial, We will discuss what is the Power Apps Developer Plan and how to use PowerApps for free.
Also, We will cover these below topics:
- How to use Power Apps for FREE
- Benefits of using Power Apps developer plan
- Can I sign up for the Power Apps Developer Plan?
- Sign up for the Power Apps Developer Plan
- Power Apps Developer Plan with Visual Studio Dev Essentials
- Features of Power Apps Developer Plan
- Capacity limits for the developer environment
How to use Power Apps for FREE
There are two ways we can access Power Apps for free.
- Power Apps 30-day trial plan: This way, you can access Power Apps free for 30-days only, after that it will expire.
- Power Apps developer plan: In this way, you can access Power Apps for an unlimited number of days but, you can not use it for production use, only for developments.
Power Apps 30-day trial plan
We can use Power Apps free for 30 days by using the Power Apps 30-day trial plan. You can create and run canvas apps, as well as model-driven apps using this plan. Apart from this, you can connect to Microsoft Dataverse as well as, you can connect to more than 200 other premium connectors and on-premises data.
With this plan, you can create automated workflows with Power Automate. And also, we can work with dataverse databases.
Sign up for Power Apps trial
Follow the below steps to sign up for a 30-day PowerApps trial.
Step-1: Go to this link, Then click on Try free or Start free button like below.
Step-2: In the next screen, it will ask you to provide your work or school email address. Here, you can see, I have entered the work account details.
Can I use personal email for Power Apps? No, you can not use your personal email address to sign up for Power Apps. You have to use your work or school account for this. Power Apps also doesn’t support .gov or .mil addresses.
Step-3: Then it will ask you to provide your mobile number to authenticate. You can do this by text message or by call.
Step-4: Then you can provide account details like First Name, Last Name, Country or region, Email, business phone number, etc. Then click on Next and we are ready.
This is how to sign up Power Apps 30-day trial plan and use it free for 30 days.
Power Apps Developer Plan
By using the Power Apps developer plan, you can access Power Apps free. By using the free environment, we can build and test Power Apps, Power Automate and Microsoft Dataverse also.
Actually, the developer plan in Power Apps is an up-gradation from the earlier Power Apps Community Plan.
The Power Apps Developer plan is a type of plan where it gives the user a free development environment. By using this plan, you can build and test with all Microsoft-based tools like Power Apps, Power Automate, and Microsoft Dataverse.
Note: The plan is available only for development purpose not for production use.
What are the things that the plan permits you to
- By using Power Apps and Power Automate tools, you can build or create the apps and flows without using any formula or code.
- You can easily collaborate and share the app solutions with other users.
- You can easily connect to any data source by creating your own custom connectors or by using 400+ out-of-box connectors.
- By using this, you can export the solutions that you have created in your developer environment, Save, Preview, or Publish them on Microsoft AppSource.
- To practice the application lifecycle management, you can create more environments that will be coming soon.
- You can specify the out-of-box common tables or build your own data schema.
- With the Dataverse, you can usefully manage, scalable data platform including support for common business app actions.
Can I sign up for Power Apps Developer Plan?
Before starting this Power Apps Developer plan, you may think that whether can I sign up for this plan? Coming to the answer is Yes, anyone can sign up for this developer plan using their work or school email address.
Sign up for Power Apps Developer Plan
The next thing that will come to your mind is, Where and how can I sign up for the Power Apps Developer Plan? Refer to the below instructions to do so.
Step-1: At first sign up the PowerApps Developer Plan by clicking the below link:
Step-2: If you’re an existing Power Apps user, you can also create a developer environment.
Step-3: Once you will click on the above link, the below screen will appear. Click on Sign in from the right top of the screen.
Step-4: Enter your email address or email ID and then click on the Next button.
Step-5: Type your Password and then tap on the Sign in button as shown below.
Step-6: Once you will sign up for the PowerApps Developer plan, then it will redirect to the Power Apps page. You can see your developer environment in the top right of the page. You can see the name will appear like “TSInfo Technologies“. This will be a Default environment.
Step-7: Suppose, there is already an existing developer environment with that same name, then the developer environment will be named “TSInfo Technologies (1)”.
This is how we can sign up for Power Apps developer plan and access it free.
Till When Power Apps developer plan subscription will be active?
If you are having question like, till when my developer plan will be active? It will not expire as long as there are active usage. Microsoft will automatically renew it. But you should not use this for production usage or it should not exceed the capacity limits provides by Microsoft. So in one way, it will never expire.
Can I use my personal email id to sign up for Power Apps developer plan?
No, we can not use our personal email id like gmail.com or yahoo.com ids to sign up for Power Apps developer plan. We can use company account or school account.
Power Apps Developer Plan with Visual Studio Dev Essentials
- Suppose you are using the Visual Studio Dev Essential, then all the benefits have been included in this Power Apps Developer plan.
- Click on this My Benefits and sign in it (if not signed in before).
- Next, a confirmation page will come to tap the Confirm button (to accept terms and conditions) as in the below screenshot.
- Here you can select the Power Apps tile to sign up for the Power Apps Developer Plan.
Features of Power Apps Developer Plan
The below table represents all the functionality while working with the Power Apps Developer Plan.
| Features | Developer Environment |
| Create and Test apps | You can create multiple apps for Development and test purposes |
| Share apps | Yes, you can easily share the app with others |
| Use Dataverse | Yes, you can use dataverse |
| Model your data using Dataverse | Yes, you can do this thing |
| Enterprise-grade administration of the environment and user policies | Yes, you can use this |
| CONNECTIVITY | |
| Office 365, Dynamics 365, and other connectors | Yes, you can connect this |
| Connect to cloud-based services like Azure SQL, Dropbox, Twitter, and many more | Yes, you can connect this |
| Use premium connectors like Salesforce, DB2, and many more | Yes, you can connect this |
| Access on‐premises data using an on-premises gateway | Yes, you can connect this |
| Create custom connectors to connect to your own systems | Yes, you can connect this |
| DATAVERSE | |
| Create and run applications In Power Platform, Dynamics 365, Teams, or Standalone using the .Net SDK or OData API. | Yes, you can create these |
| Model your data in Dataverse | Yes |
| Create a database in Dataverse | Yes |
| Create and use dataflows | No, you can not create and use data flows |
| MANAGEMENT | |
| Add coworkers as environment makers and admins | Yes, you can add it |
| Add coworkers to the database roles | Yes, you can add |
| Supports data policies established by the Office 365 administrator | Yes, it supports |
| Establish data policies for the developer environment | Yes |
Capacity limits for the developer environment
The below table represents the capacity limits for the developer environments.
| Capacity | Limits |
| Flow runs/month | 750 |
| Database size | 2GB |
- You can purchase the Power Apps Per User Plan if the capacity limit crosses. You can not expand the capacity by using add-ons to the including quantities.
- You can follow this link to get the idea of Power Apps Pricing.
- It does not contribute to the company’s overall quota whether the capacity of the developer environment used or not.
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- Power Apps Choices Function with Examples
- Power Apps Button OnSelect [Complete Tutorial]
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- PowerApps CountIf Function with Examples
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- PowerApps AddColumns Function with Examples
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In this Power Apps Tutorial, We discussed what is the Power Apps Developer Plan and how we can use PowerApps for free.
Also, We covered these below topics:
- Upgradations from the earlier Power Apps Community Plan
- Can I sign up for the Power Apps Developer Plan?
- Sign up for the Power Apps Developer Plan
- Power Apps Developer Plan with Visual Studio Dev Essentials
- Features of Power Apps Developer Plan
- Capacity limits for the developer environment
I am Bijay a Microsoft MVP (8 times – My MVP Profile) in SharePoint and have more than 15 years of expertise in SharePoint Online Office 365, SharePoint subscription edition, and SharePoint 2019/2016/2013. Currently working in my own venture TSInfo Technologies a SharePoint development, consulting, and training company. I also run the popular SharePoint website EnjoySharePoint.com