Are Logic Apps cheaper than Power Automate?

Many Developers assume Logic Apps are cheaper than Power Automate because...that's what we've been told. What they're not telling you is certain Power Automate licenses provide you A LOT of processing power than can be much cheaper than Logic Apps.

Power Automate Licensing

With Power Automate you pay a fixed monthly price with a generous amount of Requests/Actions you can make per day. You are billed regardless if you use them.

Logic Apps Licensing

With Logic Apps you pay per Action and price depends on if it makes an API request or not.

Costs Compared

If you have a Power Automate Flow with 4 "standard actions"

If you crank the usage to the limit and run it 10K times a day (4 Actions x 10K = 40K) here is how much that would cost in Logic Apps for 1 day:

Cost Calculation: 40K x $.000125 = $5 per day

If you add up $50 over 30 days you get monthly cost of $150.

Cumulative costs
Day 1	$5
Day 2	$10
Day 10	$50
Day 20	$100
Day 30	$150	$20

Imagine you do the same calculation but using the Power Automate Process License, which has a 250K limit. If you made 250K calls per day in Logic Apps:

Cost Calculation: 250K x $.000125 = $31.25 per day

Now if you add this up over 30 days the final cost is $31.25 x 30 Days = $937.50

Important: If you are using the $20 Premium Power Automate license to do heavy autonomous processing, all the users in your system must also have Premium licensing, otherwise it's multiplexing. If you don't want to buy them all premium licensing, you can buy a Process license.

Realistic Example

Marcel Broschk, a Power Platform Specialist who uses both of these tools heavily, reminds us that Logic Apps has a few pricing models and running 250K action or even 40K ... is uncommon :)

A more realistic example:

Workflow has 100 Actions and runs every minute of every day

60 minutes x 24 hours x 30 Days = 43,200 Runs

43,200 x $0.000125 = $540 a month.

Slow down - do you really need to run all 100 actions every time? Marcel advises if you put in a trigger condition, then your workflow will only run under certain circumstances. If for the whole month the condition isn't met, you end up paying only for the trigger (43,200 x $.000125 = $17.90).

Built-in Actions

Our examples showed the costs of Standard Actions, however, Built-in actions only cost around $0.000025. If your Logic App runs 40K in one day using Built-In Actions, you only pay $1.

Consumption vs. Standard

Consumption plan operates on a pay-as-you-go model (pay per action like previous examples), making it a cost-effective choice for infrequent workflows. It’s ideal for freelancers or small projects with unpredictable usage patterns.

Standard plan charges a fixed monthly fee based on the resources you allocate (such as the number of vCPUs and RAM). This plan is more suitable for workflows that need continuous availability or are run at predictable intervals.

Standard Plan Explained

Stephen Thomas, an Azure expert has a terrific video cost comparing the Consumption versus Standard Plan. The main different being on the Standard Plan, Built-in connectors cost nothing!

Not paying extra for operations like SQL Server and Azure functions is a tremendous benefit.

In fact, the HTTP action is included as well so go crazy on API calls! You won’t run into daily limits like in Power Automate. Not bad for $150/month right?

If you love Standard Actions, don't worry, your first 4K Standard Actions on the Standard plan are free too!

Too good to be true?

There’s a reason you can buy more vCPUs and RAM on the Standard Plan, because if you’re doing too many operations, it might not be fast enough to process your workload in the time you want.

When to choose which?

• Using a lot of Standard Connectors? If you’re using a lot of Connectors like Outlook, SharePoint, Dataverse then Power Automate may be a better fit.

• Is Power Automate already a big part of your business? Especially if you already have Premium licensing, then just stick with it.

• Are you using a lot of Azure resources? If a lot of your business lives in Azure via Azure functions or SQL, then Logic Apps is probably better.

Are you still unsure? Use the Azure pricing calculator comparing your Built-in to Standard Connectors and then how much processing power you want.