
Power Pages for 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗮𝗹 projects.

That's right using Power Pages for your internal projects can be a much cheaper alternative than Model-Driven Apps (MDA). However, as Franco Musso, the Power Pages extraordinaire says, we need to be careful.
Pricing
A Model-Driven App license at the cheapest level is $5 per user per month on the "per app" plan. For 95 users, that’s $475 per month.
Power Pages, on the other hand, is $200 per month for up to 100 users.
Are Power Pages harder than Model-Driven Apps?
Yes and No.

Many features, such as forms and views, are built the same way in Power Pages as in MDA, using drag-and-drop tools.

Power Pages also includes out-of-the-box integration with Power BI and SharePoint just like MDA.

The Fine Print
While Power Pages offers many features similar to MDA, some Power Pages drawbacks may increase complexity.

Nice-to-Have UI Elements
Power Pages does not support many low-code UI components available to MDA including Business Process Flows, Business Rules or Advanced find. You can achieve similar functionality, but it would pro-code skills including JavaScript and/or Liquid.
Here's how you would show/hide columns in MDA via Business Rules, compared to their pro-code equivalent in Power Pages
Unfortunately, even commonly used Filters in MDA views are not available without Pro-Code in Power Pages. These features can be "deal breakers" when End Users rely on them for their daily work.

Personal Views are also not available. Users are limited to the views added by the admin to the table in Power Pages.

Application Lifecycle Management
MDA deployments between environments can be as simple as exporting Zip files.
Power Pages requires you to use the CLI or Azure DevOps meaning you have to be comfortable with the command line:
pac powerpages upload --path "C:\portals\starter-portal" --deploymentProfile dev --modelVersion 2
Different Security Model
Although Power Pages offers robust security offerings via Web Roles,

it has nothing to do with your Dataverse security model. Meaning the existing Security Roles you made and business unit hierarchies are not honored.

Limited to Internal Users
There are multiple ways to stop external users for accessing your Power Page. You can block non-company emails from registering and even set up IP restrictions.

You can also build a Power Automate Flow to run whenever a new Contact signs up if you want more nuanced control of site access.
Caching
A common challenge in Power Pages is users complaining the data is not up-to-date. This can be true since Power Pages resets it's cache only every 15 minutes. In MDA, you'll never run into this issue since the view/form always makes requests directly to Dataverse.

Advantages of Power Pages
Although MDA is more feature rich from a low-code perspective, Power Pages does have some OOTB features that MDA does not including
DocuSign and Stripe integration:

Multi-step forms:

Displaying images in Views:

Pixel Perfect
Power Pages leverages a templating language called Liquid allowing you to make pixel perfect applications you could not achieve as easily with the JavaScript in MDA alone, like Franco's Spotify clone.

Conclusion
If the application is simple—like expense logging or equipment tracking—Power Pages can be a great option, especially if you have pro coders on your team.
For large-scale enterprise apps that could benefit from Business Process Flows and View filtering, Model-Driven Apps are often a better choice. What you save on licensing with Power Pages may be offset by additional development and maintenance costs.
If you need pixel-perfect design along with the OOTB features of MDA, consider enhancing the MDA with Custom Pages or embedded Canvas Apps.
Ultimately, it’s about choosing the right tool for the job based on your specific requirements.