Power Pages vs Power Apps comes down to who signs in. Power Apps builds apps for people inside your organisation who log in with a work account. Power Pages builds websites and portals for people outside your organisation, who sign in with an external identity or do not sign in at all. Pick by audience first. Then check licensing, security and interface. The answer is usually clear within a minute.
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What is the difference between Power Pages and Power Apps?
Power Apps is Microsoft’s low-code tool for building internal business applications, run by staff who sign in with the organisation’s Microsoft Entra ID. Power Pages is Microsoft’s low-code platform for external-facing business websites, where customers, suppliers or the public interact with data held in Dataverse. Same platform underneath, opposite side of the front door.
Both belong to the Power Platform and both can sit on the same Dataverse tables, which is why people assume they are interchangeable. They are not. Microsoft describes Power Pages as a low-code platform for modern external-facing business websites. Power Apps has two app types, canvas apps and model-driven apps. Both expect an authenticated user from your tenant or a guest you have invited into it. If you want the wider picture of where apps fit in a business before choosing, the guide to Power Apps for business covers the types, data options and licensing at a summary level. This post stays on one question: which one your users should be in.
The honest version of the audience rule has three answers, not two. A handful of known contractors who need the same screens your staff use is a Power Apps question with guest access. A customer base, a supplier network or the public is a Power Pages question. A portal that needs a bespoke interface the platform cannot draw is a custom web app question. Pretending otherwise is how portal projects go over budget. The rest of this post works through each.
Who can sign in to each one?
Power Apps requires every user to authenticate with Microsoft Entra ID, as a member of your tenant or as a guest invited through Entra B2B. It has no anonymous access. Power Pages supports sign-in through external identity providers such as Microsoft Entra External ID, Microsoft accounts and LinkedIn. It can also serve pages to anonymous visitors who never sign in.
That guest detail is the one the standard comparison leaves out. It changes the answer for small external groups. Microsoft’s guidance on sharing a canvas app with guest users states that canvas apps can be shared with guest users of a Microsoft Entra tenant. It adds that a guest running an app connected to Dataverse needs a licence with Power Apps use rights that matches the app, unless the app lives in a Dataverse for Teams environment. So three external auditors or a subcontractor’s site supervisors can use your internal app. Who pays is the catch. The same page sets out which licences are recognised across tenants and notes that a guest using a Dataverse app should be licensed from the tenant that holds the data. Expect the premium seats for those supervisors to be your cost. A guest whose own organisation holds Microsoft 365 can run an app on standard connectors at no extra cost, since that entitlement is recognised across tenants. At list prices a Power Pages authenticated user costs a fraction of a premium seat, which is why guest access is for the handful who need the app itself rather than a website. Your tenant administrator will want a say either way, because guests land in your directory and under your conditional access policies. What no guest can do is arrive from a public link without an account. You cannot give a thousand customers guest accounts and call it a portal.
Power Pages works the other way around. Microsoft’s Power Pages security documentation describes users as Dataverse contact records, assigned web roles that link to table permissions and page permissions. It puts all authenticated users in the Authenticated Users web role and covers unauthenticated visitors with the Anonymous Users web role. Security is designed for strangers by default, which is exactly what an internal app never has to be.
Anonymous pages deserve care. The ABS Characteristics of Australian Business release for 2024-25, published 25 June 2026, reported that 21% of businesses experienced a cyber security incident during the year and 28% had no measures in place to prevent one. A public form that writes straight into your Dataverse tables is a business system with a door open to the internet. The table permission granted to the Anonymous Users role decides how wide.
When should you use Power Apps?
Use Power Apps when the people using the app work for you or work alongside you closely enough that a guest account in your tenant is reasonable. Field inspections, approvals, job sheets and anything that runs on a phone in a van are Power Apps work. It also gives you a richer interface and far more connectors than Power Pages.
A sharper version of the same comparison is Power Pages vs canvas apps. Microsoft’s own table in the guest-sharing documentation puts it plainly. Power Pages is a browser-only experience that works on Dataverse and allows both anonymous and authenticated access. Canvas apps run in the browser and in the mobile apps, require authentication through Microsoft Entra ID and reach approximately 150 out-of-the-box connectors plus custom connectors. If your process touches SharePoint, Outlook, SQL, Xero or an in-house API, a canvas app connects to it directly through its connectors, while a Power Pages site gets there through a virtual table or a cloud flow.
A guest-access app has limits worth stating before you build one. Microsoft notes that users accessing web experiences in different Microsoft Entra tenants must use a standalone or private browser session. Guest access suits a small, known group who will tolerate a work-style sign-in. It does not suit anyone who expects a website.
For how an app is actually assembled from screens, connectors and data sources, read how Microsoft Power Apps work. For the build itself, OfficePro Consulting’s Power Apps development page describes what a scoped engagement looks like.
When should you use Power Pages?
Use Power Pages when the audience is outside your organisation and larger than you would ever invite as guests: customers checking job status, suppliers uploading compliance documents, members renewing or the public reading published information. It gives you a website with Dataverse behind it and a security model built for people you have never met.
Serving customers online is ordinary rather than advanced. The same ABS release for 2024-25 reports that 32% of Australian businesses received orders online, a proportion the ABS describes as similar to 2021-22. The portal question for those businesses is rarely whether external users should have a login. It is whether that login should sit on a Microsoft platform or on something built from scratch. The two are compared in the custom web portal section below.
The downsides are real and worth naming, because the “Power Pages is for external” rule skips them. The interface is a website built from lists, forms and templates. Every departure from that pattern is Liquid, JavaScript or a professional developer. On a phone it is a responsive site that can be installed as a progressive web app, not a canvas app running in the Power Apps mobile app. On prepaid capacity a portal that goes quiet still costs the packs assigned to its environment, while pay-as-you-go bills only the users who turned up. The data model also has to sit in Dataverse or be reached through a virtual table or a flow. That means the data planning has to happen before the site is built.
One internal case where Power Pages earns a look is a large deskless workforce who would otherwise each need a paid Power Apps licence for a couple of forms or a status view over Dataverse data. Microsoft’s licensing FAQ lists employees among the authenticated users a capacity subscription can cover. At list prices a pack of 100 authenticated users costs less than 100 premium seats. Power Pages is still a website, so it suits forms and lookups rather than field data capture.
Power Pages replaced Power Apps portals. Microsoft’s Power Platform licensing FAQs still print the former name beside the current one. An older comparison that talks about portal logins and page views is describing a retired licensing model, covered in the FAQ below.
OfficePro Consulting’s client portals page covers what a portal build includes when the audience is customers or partners.
How are Power Pages and Power Apps licensed?
Power Apps is licensed per person. The options are Power Apps Premium per user, pay-as-you-go through an Azure subscription and the per app licence where your buying channel still offers it. Power Pages is licensed by capacity, as unique authenticated users and unique anonymous users per website per month, prepaid or pay-as-you-go. The models differ because the audiences do.
The table below compares the two licensing models as Microsoft documents them, without dollar figures, which change and belong on Microsoft’s pricing page rather than in a blog post.
| Power Apps | Power Pages | |
|---|---|---|
| Unit | A named user (Premium) or a unique user per app per month (pay-as-you-go) | Unique authenticated users per website per month and unique anonymous users per website per month |
| Prepaid option | Power Apps Premium per user. Per app continues through CSP partners and for existing enterprise customers | Authenticated and anonymous capacity packs allocated to an environment, sold in packs of 100 authenticated or 500 anonymous users |
| Pay-as-you-go | Yes, via an Azure subscription, billed per unique user per app per month | Yes, via an Azure subscription, billed per unique authenticated or anonymous user per website per month |
| Who is not counted | A Premium user, a Dynamics 365 user with per-user rights and a Microsoft 365 user running an app on standard connectors are not counted on the pay-as-you-go meter | A user holding Power Apps Premium or a Dynamics 365 enterprise licence is not counted against authenticated capacity, provided they sign in with Entra ID and hold the licence in the site’s tenant. For Dynamics 365 the site must also sit in that application’s environment |
| Internal users on the external product | Not applicable | Employees signing in with Entra ID can use the same authenticated user meter |
Two details in that table carry more weight than the rest. First, Microsoft’s licensing news of 14 January 2026 states that from 2 January 2026 the Power Apps per app SKU is no longer available for purchase by new customers. The same notice says existing enterprise customers can continue to use and renew it. It also says new and existing CSP customers are not impacted and can continue to purchase it. Most Australian small and mid-sized businesses buy Microsoft licences through a CSP partner, so check your channel before assuming per app has gone. Second, the licensing FAQs state that Power Apps Premium entitles the user to access unlimited websites, subject to the table’s condition on who is counted. A staff member who already holds Premium and also uses your portal costs nothing extra on the portal side.
Scale matters for the capacity model because most Australian organisations are small. The ABS Counts of Australian Businesses release of 18 August 2026 put actively trading businesses at 2,814,778 at 30 June 2026, with 996,203 of them employing staff. Portal buyers sit inside that employing minority. A portal for one of them typically serves dozens or hundreds of unique users a month rather than tens of thousands. That is why the crossover between prepaid and pay-as-you-go is the number that matters. Microsoft’s FAQ states that the smallest authenticated subscription pack is 100 users, with a minimum of 25 assigned to any one environment, while the pay-as-you-go meter bills only the unique users who signed in that month. For a portal with a few dozen users, pay-as-you-go is usually what to budget on. At list prices a prepaid pack of 100 authenticated users only becomes the cheaper option once a site has around 50 unique authenticated users a month.
Power Pages or SharePoint for an external portal?
SharePoint is a document and intranet platform that can share files and sites with invited guests. Power Pages is a website platform serving structured data, forms and pages to external users and the public. If outsiders only need to read and upload files, SharePoint guest sharing may do. If they need their own records and forms, that is Power Pages.
Microsoft’s own capabilities page draws the same line. It describes the use of Power Apps with SharePoint for content storage as a popular way to build basic intranet sites. Power Pages, it says, is ideal for websites focused on external audiences that need more secure access to business information. SharePoint’s external sharing settings run from Anyone links, which work without authentication, through new and existing guests who sign in, to no external sharing at all. That is a file-sharing model. It is not built around a customer seeing only the records linked to their own account. Power Pages does that through contact-scoped table permissions.
The practical test is what the external person does. Downloading a safety data sheet or dropping a signed form into a folder is SharePoint. Tracking a job, renewing a membership, submitting a structured application or reading data that differs per customer is Power Pages. Building the intranet side of the same organisation is a separate decision, covered on OfficePro Consulting’s SharePoint services page. Mixing the two questions is a common way to end up with a portal that is really a shared folder.
Power Pages or a custom web portal?
Choose Power Pages when the portal is mostly lists, forms and per-customer data views on Dataverse, and the organisation already lives in Microsoft 365. Choose a custom web app when the interface is the product: bespoke screens or a workflow that does not map to a form. Power Pages is cheaper to stand up and constrained in what it draws.
When OfficePro Consulting scoped a customer portal for a refrigeration and mechanical services company in Melbourne, the brief was a portal integrated with their field service platform, with customers signing in through an external identity provider. Both options were costed and both were mocked up before any build decision. The Power Pages mockup was faithful to the platform: list grids, read-only forms, standard pagination and no custom dashboard components. The custom Azure Web App mockup had sidebar navigation, stat cards, colour-coded condition tags, a lifecycle progress bar and a cost trend chart. Some of that gap closes with a Power BI report embedded in the portal, which Power Pages supports for external users through Power BI Embedded, a separate Azure cost. The navigation and layout gap closes only with developer work, and the cost gap narrows with every hour of it. Seeing the two side by side changed a conversation that a feature list never could. The Power Pages version did the job at lower cost and looked like a Power Pages site. The custom version looked like the product the client had imagined and cost accordingly. Neither answer is wrong. What is wrong is choosing before you have seen both.
A second scoping, a portal for a mental health group in Sydney, taught a different lesson. The portal was scoped for one external audience and then paused, and the audience may change before the project resumes. The platform choice has to survive that. Power Pages handles it well. A web role and a set of table permissions describe an audience, so adding a second audience’s access is configuration, and only the pages they need are new build. A custom app can do the same, but only if it was designed that way from the start.
The trap in the custom direction is not the build, it is everything after it. Hosting, authentication, patching and much of the maintenance are line items Power Pages absorbs into the licence. If you are weighing a bespoke build, OfficePro Consulting’s custom web apps page sets out when that trade is worth making.
Can Power Pages replace Power Apps or do you use both?
Power Pages does not replace Power Apps, and Power Apps does not replace Power Pages. One is a website for outsiders and the other is an app for insiders, apart from two narrow edges covered below. Most organisations that have both use them together, with an external portal collecting the request and an internal app handling what happens next.
The pattern is simple to describe. A supplier submits documents through a Power Pages form, Dataverse stores the record, a flow notifies the right person and a Power App carries the internal review. The outcome then shows in the supplier’s portal view. The guide to Power Pages and Power Automate covers the mechanics of connecting the portal to that flow, the trigger to use, the licence it needs and what breaks between development and production, so none of that is repeated here.
The replacement question is real in two narrow places. If your external group is small and known, a Power App shared with guests can replace a portal you would otherwise build. A large deskless workforce who need only forms and lookups over Dataverse data can sit on Power Pages authenticated capacity instead of each holding a paid Power Apps licence. Outside those two edges the split holds.
Frequently asked questions
What happened to Power Apps Portals?
Power Apps Portals became Power Pages. Microsoft’s licensing FAQs describe Power Pages as formerly Power Apps portals and state that new customers purchase the Power Pages SKUs after 31 March 2023. The older per-login and per-page-view licensing was retired in favour of unique authenticated and anonymous users per website per month. If a comparison you are reading talks about portal logins, it predates the change.
Is Power Pages included in Microsoft 365?
No. Power Pages is licensed separately by capacity, as authenticated and anonymous user packs or pay-as-you-go meters. An administrator allocates that capacity to a Power Platform environment. A Microsoft 365 licence does not include it. A user holding Power Apps Premium or a Dynamics 365 enterprise licence can use Power Pages websites without being counted in authenticated capacity, provided they sign in with Entra ID and the licence sits in the site’s tenant. Microsoft’s licensing FAQ adds a further environment condition for Dynamics 365.
Is Power Pages free?
No, beyond a trial. A trial site in a trial environment expires after 30 days or when that environment expires, whichever is earlier. One created in a production or sandbox environment expires after 90 days. Either way you then have seven days to convert it to production before it is deleted. Beyond that, a production site needs authenticated or anonymous user capacity assigned to its environment, prepaid or pay-as-you-go. The dollar figures are on Microsoft’s pricing page and change often enough that they are left out here.
Can external users use a Power App?
Yes, as guests. Canvas apps can be shared with guest users of your Microsoft Entra tenant, invited through Entra B2B. A guest using an app that connects to Dataverse needs a licence with matching Power Apps use rights, unless the app is hosted in a Dataverse for Teams environment. What a Power App cannot do is serve anyone anonymously. For a small, known external group, guest access works. For customers or the public it does not scale. Power Pages is the right tool.
Is Power Pages the same as a canvas app for external users?
No. Microsoft’s guest-sharing documentation sets out the difference in a table. Power Pages is browser-only, works on Dataverse and allows both anonymous and authenticated access. A canvas app runs in the browser and mobile apps, requires Microsoft Entra ID authentication and reaches roughly 150 out-of-the-box connectors plus custom connectors. Choose the canvas app for a guest who needs your connectors. Choose Power Pages for anyone who needs a website.
What are the downsides of Power Pages?
The interface is lists, forms and templates, so anything beyond that pattern needs Liquid, JavaScript or a developer. The data has to be in Dataverse or reached through a virtual table or a flow, which forces data planning up front. Prepaid capacity is bought in packs, so a quiet site on a subscription still pays for the pack, though pay-as-you-go bills only actual users. It is also a website, installable as a progressive web app. That suits customers better than it suits a field crew capturing data on the road.
Choosing between Power Pages and Power Apps
Work through these five questions in order and the platform usually names itself.
- Who is the user? Internal staff point to Power Apps, unless they are a large deskless group who need only forms and lookups over Dataverse data. Customers, suppliers or the public point to Power Pages.
- How many external people are there? A handful you know by name, who need the app itself rather than a website, can be guests in a Power App. A larger or unknown audience points to Power Pages, unless question 4 sends you to a custom web app.
- Does anyone need to arrive without signing in? If yes, Power Apps is out, since it has no anonymous access. The choice is then Power Pages or a custom web app, decided by question 4.
- Is the interface the product? If the portal needs screens the platform cannot draw, cost a custom web app alongside Power Pages before deciding. Charts alone do not force the choice, since Power Pages can embed Power BI for external users.
- Where does the data live? Power Pages works on Dataverse and reaches other systems through virtual tables or flows. A Power App can connect to SharePoint, SQL and other sources directly.
If the answer is still unclear after those five, it is usually because the audience has not been decided. That is a business question rather than a platform one. OfficePro Consulting builds custom apps, portals and intranets across all three options and has no stake in which one you pick. Book a free call and bring the audience question. It is the one that decides everything else.
