Power Platform has four licensing dates between now and February 2027

Four changes to Power Platform licensing land in the next five months. Each was announced on a different page, and read one at a time none of them looks urgent. Read together they change who needs a premium licence, what that licence costs and what it includes. The reaction among makers this month has been that pipelines now force premium licences on everyone. The requirement is older than that. What is new is that Microsoft has started enforcing it, with dates. This article puts the four on one calendar, works out what each costs, and gives an order to deal with them in.

The calendar

Update 22 October 2026: there is a fifth date. Free unmanaged developer environments stop being creatable on 15 November, are suspended on 15 December and deleted on 15 January 2027. What it means and what to do.

The first and the last are one story told three months apart. October pushes environments into managed status. February is when being in a managed environment without a licence stops working.

October 2026: pipelines and managed environments

Microsoft's FAQ on the admin deployment page is direct about the rule: all target environments used in Power Platform deployment pipelines "have always been required to be managed environments for compliant usage". Until now nothing checked. From October 2026 the Deployment page in the Power Platform admin center notifies admins when a pipeline deploys to an unmanaged target, and a countdown starts:

• Admins have 30 days from the notification to approve enabling managed environments for that target.
• They can request one additional 30-day extension for each environment.
• After that, the system blocks pipeline deployments to the unmanaged target.

A target first flagged in mid-October is blocked from mid-November, or mid-December with the extension. The check blocks new deployments only. Learn says it does not disable anything already deployed.

Not every environment in a pipeline has to be managed. The pipelines FAQ lists the exceptions: developer environments do not have to be managed, and the pipelines host does not either. Its example setup has a production host, developer environments for development and QA, and one production target, and only that last one needs standalone licences.

Who can act matters here. Enabling managed environments takes the Power Platform Administrator or Dynamics 365 Administrator role. Makers can see the affected targets, keep deploying during the allowed period and acknowledge the one-time extension, but they cannot enable anything. Environment admins cannot either. The list to work from is in the admin center under Deployment: select a pipelines host, then Environments to convert. Each host has its own list, so check them all.

What "managed" costs: every active user needs a premium licence

The licensing page for managed environments says that once you activate managed environments in an environment, all active usage there needs a standalone licence or a pay-as-you-go meter. Its FAQ removes the usual escape route: "Every user who runs an app in a managed environment is in scope, including users who run standard apps. The requirement applies to active usage in the environment rather than to the type of app."

This is the part that surprises people. An app built only on standard connectors, a canvas app over SharePoint lists for example, normally runs on the Power Apps rights that come with Microsoft 365. Put the same app in a managed environment and each person who opens it needs one of the following:

• Power Apps Premium or Power Automate Premium. Either one covers a user who both runs apps and runs flows.
• A Dynamics 365 licence that carries premium Power Apps rights. Learn lists them by name, from Sales Enterprise to Team Members.
• Capacity instead of per-user licences: Power Apps per app passes allocated to that environment, or the Power Apps per app pay-as-you-go meter. The meter covers Power Apps only. Flows in the environment still need Power Automate licences or per-flow plans.

The Developer Plan does not qualify when users run the apps. Trial licences do, for their 30 days.

The arithmetic is short. A leave-request app used by 400 people sits in a production environment that becomes managed in November. At list price that is 400 × $20 = $8,000 a month, $96,000 a year. For seats bought after 1 January it is 400 × $22 = $8,800 a month, $105,600 a year. These are US list prices. Your agreement will differ, and app passes or the meter may suit occasional users better.

What users see, and when

Microsoft calls this managed environments licensing compliance and says the requirement is not new. Admin notifications started in March 2026 in Message center and the admin center. In-app notifications for unlicensed users started in June 2026 and move through three states, a week apart: an informational banner, then a warning with the same wording, then an error that reads "Action required". Each offers a Request license button, and the requests arrive in the Power Platform admin center under Actions, Recommendations and in the Microsoft 365 admin center under Billing, Licenses, Requests.

From February 2027 the app does not open for a user without a qualifying licence. Learn gives the month and no day. The user gets the standard "You need a Power Apps license to use this app" message. Apps are not removed, and access comes back once a licence is detected.

Microsoft's own report tells you who

You do not need a third-party tool for this list, ours included. In the Power Platform admin center go to Licensing, Power Apps, the Summary tab, Download report. Choose the usage type Users requiring licenses in Managed Environments, pick a month, and download. It lists the users, the environments they work in and the apps they open. Three limits, all from Learn:

• It covers one month at a time, and only people who launched an app in that month. An app used at quarter-end or once a year will not appear in October's file. Download every month you can and merge them.
• A user who has since been given a licence stays on the list until they next launch an app.
• The page it sits on is marked as a preview.

The report covers environments that are already managed. For a target on the "Environments to convert" list, the question is how many people use it today, and that is the number to find before converting it.

To see which environments are managed already, read back the property that Learn's own enable and disable scripts set: protection level Standard means managed, Basic means not.

Install-Module Microsoft.PowerApps.Administration.PowerShell -Scope CurrentUser
Add-PowerAppsAccount

Get-AdminPowerAppEnvironment |
  Select-Object DisplayName, EnvironmentName, EnvironmentType,
    @{ n = 'Managed'; e = { $_.Internal.properties.governanceConfiguration.protectionLevel -eq 'Standard' } } |
  Sort-Object Managed -Descending

Nothing is written. Compare the result with the environments list in the admin center before you rely on it; we derived the property from those scripts, and Learn does not document it as a report.

1 November 2026: the AI Builder credits inside premium licences

Premium licences have carried a monthly allowance of AI Builder credits, pooled at tenant level:

Learn's AI Builder licensing overview states the change: starting 1 November 2026, no new or renewed Power Platform or Dynamics 365 licences receive seeded AI Builder credits. Customers who bought or renewed eligible licences before that date keep their seeded credits through the end of the contract term. The feature itself is not going away. AI Builder in apps and flows uses AI Builder credits first and Copilot Credits when those are absent or used up.

The practical risk is a flow that stops. When an environment has no AI Builder credits left and no Copilot Credits, Learn says AI Builder runs are blocked, with EntitlementNotAvailable or QuotaExceeded errors. For a tenant that has been processing invoices on seeded credits, the first renewal after 1 November is the date that can happen.

What replacing the credits costs depends on the workload. Learn's rate table gives both currencies, with one Copilot Credit at $0.01 on pay-as-you-go:

Worked through: a flow that reads 1,000 invoice pages a month uses 32,000 AI Builder credits. Seven Power Automate Premium licences cover that today (7 × 5,000 = 35,000). After those licences renew without seeded credits, the same work is 1,000 × 8 = 8,000 Copilot Credits, $80 a month on pay-as-you-go. That is small next to the licence bill and large next to zero, and it has to exist in the environment before the renewal or the flow fails.

Two more points from the same pages. AI Builder capacity add-ons have been closed to new customers since 1 November 2025 and reach end of life on 1 November 2026: existing customers keep using the credits until those licences expire, and Learn tells them to turn off auto-renew. And unused credits never roll over. Consumption resets on the first of each month in both currencies.

1 January 2027: Power Apps Premium goes from $20 to $22

Microsoft's licensing news page, dated 9 September 2026, announces the first list price increase for the product in more than five years. Both Premium offers go up by $2 per user per month on 1 January 2027: Power Apps Premium from $20 to $22, and the 2,000-seat-minimum offer from $12 to $14. The page says:

• Existing subscriptions keep their current price through the end of their subscription term.
• The new list price applies to new purchases, renewals and co-terminations.
• All other Power Apps and Power Platform products stay at their current prices.
• US Government increases are capped at 10% a year, and nonprofit and education pricing moves in line with commercial.

The other way to read the table: a Power Apps Premium seat that nobody uses costs $240 a year today and $264 after your renewal. Seat counts are normally lowered at renewal, so the audit belongs before it.

How the four dates stack

Taken together they pull in two directions, and both need a list of names.

People who need a licence and do not have one. These are the active users of managed environments, including the environments that pipelines enforcement is about to convert. Microsoft's report gives you the names for environments that are already managed.

People who have a licence and do not use it. The same Licensing page has what you need for app usage: the summary shows, per licence, how many assigned users launched an app in the last 90 days, and the Active users and All licensed users downloads let you find users who hold a licence and launch nothing. The directory side is a separate check: premium seats assigned to nobody, and seats still sitting on disabled accounts.

Do the second list first. Every seat you reclaim is one you do not buy for the first list, and the purchase you avoid is the one at the new price.

The dates also say when to buy what you cannot avoid. On Microsoft's stated rules, a Power Apps Premium or Power Automate Premium seat bought before 1 November still carries its seeded AI Builder credits to the end of its term, and a Power Apps Premium seat bought before 1 January keeps the $20 price to the end of its term. After both dates the same seat costs $22 and brings no credits. If you are adding seats to an existing subscription, ask your reseller in writing which price and which entitlement the added seats get. Microsoft's page names co-terminations among the cases that pay the new price from 1 January.

A sequence for the next eight weeks

1. Open Deployment in the Power Platform admin center, go through every pipelines host and write down the "Environments to convert". Note the date each notification arrived; the 30 days run from there.
2. List the environments that are already managed, with the command above.
3. For each managed environment, download "Users requiring licenses in Managed Environments" for every available month and merge the files.
4. For each environment about to be converted, count its active users before anyone enables it or turns on automatic conversion. Leave automatic conversion off until you have the count.
5. Build the reclaim list: unassigned premium seats, premium seats on disabled accounts, licensed users with no app launch in 90 days.
6. Decide per environment: license the active users; cover occasional users with app passes or the per app meter; or ask whether a broad-audience app on standard connectors needs to live in a pipeline target at all. Only managed environments are in scope. Learn also documents turning the property off with PowerShell, after checking that none of the managed environment capabilities are in use.
7. Check AI Builder: which environments consume credits, how many, and when the licences that seed them renew. Put Copilot Credits or a pay-as-you-go plan in place before that renewal, and turn off auto-renew on any AI Builder add-on as Learn instructs.
8. Find your Power Apps Premium renewal date. If it falls after 1 January, the seat count you renew at is the one that pays $22.

For the directory part of step 5, this lists purchased against assigned for every Power Apps and Power Automate licence in the tenant, free and trial ones included. Read-only, Microsoft Graph PowerShell:

Connect-MgGraph -Scopes Organization.Read.All

Get-MgSubscribedSku |
  Where-Object { $_.SkuPartNumber -match 'POWERAPPS|POWERAUTOMATE|FLOW' } |
  Select-Object SkuPartNumber,
    @{ n = 'Purchased';  e = { $_.PrepaidUnits.Enabled } },
    @{ n = 'Assigned';   e = { $_.ConsumedUnits } },
    @{ n = 'Unassigned'; e = { $_.PrepaidUnits.Enabled - $_.ConsumedUnits } }

The two rows that cost money here are POWERAPPS_PER_USER, which is Power Apps Premium, and POWERAUTOMATE_ATTENDED_RPA, which is Power Automate Premium. The identifiers are historical; Learn's product name table has the full mapping.

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

Sources

• Admin deployment page — FAQ — managed environments required for pipeline targets, October 2026 notifications, 30 days plus one 30-day extension, automatic conversion, "Environments to convert", existing deployments not disabled
• Overview of pipelines in Power Platform — FAQ — which pipeline environments must be managed, the example setup, the October 2026 note
• Licensing requirements for managed environments — qualifying licences and meters, standard apps in scope, notification stages since March and June 2026, the February 2027 block, the report steps, auto-claim
• View license consumption for Power Apps (preview) — licences used in the last 90 days, Active users and All licensed users downloads, limits of the managed environments report
• Enable managed environments — roles required, the PowerShell scripts that set and remove the property
• AI Builder: overview of licensing — no seeded credits for new or renewed licences from 1 November 2026, consumption order, the capability rate table, 1 Copilot Credit = $0.01 pay-as-you-go
• End of AI Builder credits — the calendar for add-ons and seeded credits, credits honoured to the end of the contract term, auto-renew note
• Licensing and AI Builder credits — credits per licence and tenant caps, overage behaviour and error codes, the "removed on November 1, 2026" wording
• Microsoft Licensing news: Power Apps Premium price update (9 September 2026) — $20 to $22 and $12 to $14 from 1 January 2027, existing subscriptions, renewals and co-terminations, other products unchanged
• How to check license designation for an app — a standard app runs on a Power Apps for Office 365 plan outside managed environments
• Product names and service plan identifiers for licensing — POWERAPPS_PER_USER and POWERAUTOMATE_ATTENDED_RPA