Power Platform · Environments

Free Power Apps developer environments end: 15 November, 15 December, 15 January

Published 22 October 2026 · 7 min read · Dates and rules from Microsoft Learn, read on 22 October 2026

Microsoft is deprecating unmanaged developer environments, including the one that the free Power Apps Developer Plan creates when someone signs up. There are three dates. Nothing happens to existing environments on the first. On the second they are suspended, and on the third they are deleted. A tenant where makers have been building on free developer environments for years has until mid-December to find them and decide.

The three dates

DateWhat happens
15 November 2026Creation ends. Signing up for the Developer Plan no longer creates an environment, and nobody can create a new unmanaged developer environment from Power Apps, the admin center, PowerShell or the CLI. Each user can create only one managed developer environment.
15 December 2026Existing unmanaged developer environments are suspended. Their apps, flows, agents, Power Pages developer sites and data are unavailable.
15 January 2027Suspended unmanaged developer environments are deleted.

The developer environment type itself stays. It becomes managed-only. Developer environments that are already managed environments are not affected, and neither are the personal developer environments that environment routing creates, which are managed by default. Existing managed developer environments are left alone even if a user already has more than one.

Where the licence bill comes in

Learn says that the Developer Plan does not include Managed Environments use rights. A user who runs an app or flow in a managed developer environment needs a premium licence, makers running their own assets included. The free sandbox that did not need one is the thing being removed.

That connects this change to the dates in our earlier article on the four Power Platform licensing dates. It is a fifth. Converting an environment is a licensing decision for everyone who uses it, so the question to answer for each environment is whether it is worth licensing at all.

What Learn tells admins to do

  1. In the Power Platform admin center go to Manage, Environments, and filter where Type is Developer and Managed is No. Use the Last activity column to see which ones are still in use.
  2. For each one you still need, before 15 December, either enable Managed Environments on it (it keeps its apps, flows, agents and data) or move its solutions to a sandbox or another supported environment.
  3. Turn on environment routing if makers need a personal space. It creates a managed developer environment per maker.
  4. Review the Developer environment assignments tenant setting. From 15 November it controls who can create managed developer environments, and there is a PowerShell setting, disableDeveloperEnvironmentCreationByNonAdminUsers, for the same control.

For makers, the advice is shorter: export your solutions, and ask your admin for a managed environment or a sandbox. Standard trial environments remain available if all you want is to try premium features.

Inactive ones go sooner. Learn's Developer Plan FAQ says developer environments with no activity in the last 30 days are automatically disabled, separate from this deprecation. The Last activity column is the quickest way to tell which environments are alive.

Which route costs what

Convert only what has real users. The cost depends on who opens the apps afterwards, so count them first. Learn lists Managed Environments as an entitlement of standalone Power Apps, Power Automate, Copilot Studio, Power Pages and Dynamics 365 licences. As an illustration at list prices, a managed developer environment shared by 10 testers who all need Power Apps Premium is 10 × $20 = $200 a month today, and $220 a month for seats bought or renewed after 1 January. Moving the solutions to a sandbox that your organisation already runs costs no extra licence in this change. Check your own agreement; these are US list prices.

The other half is the audit you can do now. If premium seats are assigned to people who never launch an app, those seats are the cheapest source of licences for the environments you decide to keep.

Free: premium seats assigned to nobody, and disabled accounts that still hold one

PowerScout Lite is a read-only PowerShell audit of Power Platform premium licences. It does not inventory developer environments or tell you who needs a licence in a managed environment. The admin center filter above and Microsoft's own report do that. It finds the seats you could reuse before you buy more.

Download PowerScout Lite — free See what Solo adds

Disclosure: PowerScout is our product. Prices are Microsoft's public US list prices at the time of writing; your agreement, region and currency may differ. The worked example is arithmetic on those list prices, not a quote. PowerScout is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft.

Sources