You need an app — an inspection form, a request tracker, an inventory tool — and you’ve heard two very different prices. A custom development shop quoted tens of thousands of dollars and months of work. Someone else said “just build it in Power Apps in a week.” Who’s right?
Both, depending on the app. Here’s the honest breakdown.
The headline numbers
For a typical internal business app (forms, lists, approvals, dashboards over business data):
| Power Apps | Custom development | |
|---|---|---|
| Build cost | $3K–$15K typical | $30K–$150K+ typical |
| Timeline | 2–6 weeks | 3–9 months |
| Licensing | $5–$20/user/month* | None (but see hosting) |
| Hosting & infrastructure | Included in Microsoft 365 | $100–$1,000+/month |
| Security & authentication | Inherited from Microsoft 365 | Built and audited from scratch |
| Ongoing maintenance | Low — platform updates itself | 15–25% of build cost per year |
| Changes after launch | Hours to days | Weeks, at developer rates |
*Many internal apps fall under licensing your organization already owns; more on that below, because licensing is where Power Apps quotes go wrong most often.
The pattern: custom development has a 5–10× higher entry cost and meaningful ongoing engineering cost, while Power Apps shifts a small, predictable cost onto per-user licensing.
Why Power Apps is so much cheaper to build
It’s not magic and it’s not corner-cutting. Power Apps is cheaper because most of every internal app is the same app: a login screen, a form, a list, a search box, an approval step, a notification. Custom developers build those from parts; Power Apps has them pre-built, tested, and integrated with the Microsoft 365 identity and security you already run.
The build work that remains — and where a good Power Apps consultant earns their fee — is the thinking: modeling your data correctly, designing screens people actually use in the field, and wiring in the automated workflows around the app.
The licensing fine print (read this before deciding)
This is the part that surprises people, so let’s be precise:
- Apps built on SharePoint or standard connectors are covered by most Microsoft 365 business licences — effectively $0 extra for many organizations.
- Apps using Dataverse or premium connectors (SQL Server included) need Power Apps Premium at roughly $20/user/month, or per-app licensing at about $5/user/app/month.
- 50 field workers on a premium app is ~$1,000/month, ~$12K/year. Over five years that’s $60K — suddenly comparable to custom development.
So the honest math depends on headcount: Power Apps’ advantage is strongest for apps with modest user counts or standard-connector data. At hundreds of users on premium licensing, run the five-year comparison before assuming Power Apps wins. A consultant who doesn’t bring this up isn’t doing the math for you.
When custom development is the right answer
Power Apps is the wrong tool — and we tell prospects this — when:
- The app is customer-facing. Power Apps is licensed and designed for internal users. Public-facing products need real web development.
- You’re building a product to sell. Your margins can’t include per-user Microsoft licensing for your customers.
- The UX is the product. Power Apps interfaces are functional, not pixel-perfect. If polish drives adoption or revenue, go custom.
- Heavy custom logic or extreme scale. Complex algorithms, sub-second latency requirements, or massive concurrent usage outgrow the platform.
When Power Apps wins clearly
- Internal tools replacing paper forms, email chains, or shared spreadsheets
- Field data collection (inspections, audits, site checks) with photos and offline capture
- Request-and-approval workflows with audit trails
- Asset, inventory, and job tracking
- Anything where “working in 4 weeks” beats “perfect in 8 months”
For this category — which covers the large majority of internal app needs in small and mid-sized businesses — custom development means paying a 5–10× premium to rebuild capabilities Microsoft already ships.
The hidden option: doing nothing
The real competitor to both is usually the status quo: the paper form, the spreadsheet, the email chain. That option has costs too — lost data, no audit trail, hours of retyping — they’re just spread thin enough to feel free. When we scope an app project, we start by pricing the current process; it’s often the most expensive of the three options.
How to decide
Count your users, name your data source, and be honest about whether the app is internal. Those three facts decide 90% of the Power Apps vs custom question, and you can settle them in one conversation.
That conversation is what our free 30-minute consultation is for. We build Power Apps — but we’ll run the licensing math in front of you and tell you plainly if your app is one of the cases where custom development, or a $30 off-the-shelf tool, is the better buy.