Power Automate pricing trips up more UK small businesses than the tool itself does. The licence you need depends on which connectors your flows use, and that is the detail most quotes ignore.
A director at a 35-person engineering firm called us after his office manager had built eight useful flows in a week. Approval requests and holiday notifications worked instantly. Then she added a flow that read from the company SQL Server database, and Power Automate stopped running it until someone bought licences. That is the point where most owners discover the difference between standard and premium connectors.
This guide covers what Power Automate costs in the UK in 2026, what you already own through Microsoft 365, where the new flow group feature removes cost, and what we would actually buy for a small business.
What you already get with Microsoft 365
Every Microsoft 365 Business licence includes Power Automate rights. Your staff can build and run cloud flows using standard connectors such as SharePoint, Outlook, Teams, OneDrive and Excel Online, within the included request limits. Microsoft's Power Automate licensing FAQ lists the included entitlement at 6,000 API requests per user per day, rising to 10,000 during the transition period.
For a small business that covers the steady, valuable work. New starter forms and expense approvals run fine on standard connectors, and we have built both for clients without spending a penny on Power Automate licences.
The boundary is the connector class. A premium connector is one that Microsoft charges for, such as SQL Server, Dataverse or Salesforce. The moment a flow touches one, Microsoft asks for either a Premium licence held by the user, or a Process licence attached to the flow.
The misconception we meet most often is that Power Automate is a paid product bolted on to Microsoft 365. If your flows use standard connectors only, you probably already own everything you need.
The three licences that matter in 2026
Microsoft restructured Power Automate licensing a few years ago, and the model has settled into three products. All prices below are UK list prices, exclude VAT and assume a yearly commitment.
| Licence | What it covers | UK list price (ex VAT) |
|---|---|---|
| Power Automate Premium | Per user. Cloud flows, premium and custom connectors, attended desktop flows and process mining. Includes 250 MB of Dataverse database capacity and 2 GB of file capacity per licence. | £11.50 per user per month, paid yearly. |
| Power Automate Process | Per bot. One process capacity unit for a cloud process or unattended desktop automation. Supports one unattended run at a time. | £115.30 per bot per month, paid yearly. |
| Power Automate Hosted Process | Process capacity plus a Microsoft-hosted virtual machine for unattended robotic process automation. | £165.30 per bot per month, paid yearly. |
Microsoft's UK pricing page lists the yearly figures above, and it does not publish separate monthly-commitment prices for these licences. Monthly numbers appear only in the admin centre checkout or in a quote from your reseller. Check the figure you are actually quoted rather than repeating one from memory.
The old per-flow plan survives only as a legacy licence in existing contracts. Microsoft removed it from the price list in 2024 and directs new purchases to Process instead. If a reseller quotes you a per-flow plan in 2026, they are selling you yesterday's model.
What each licence is really for
Power Automate Premium is a person's licence. It covers one user building and running cloud flows with premium and custom connectors, attended desktop flows and process mining, plus 250 MB of Dataverse database capacity and 2 GB of file capacity per licence, all spelled out in the licence types documentation.
Power Automate Process is an automation's licence. One unit covers a single cloud process or one unattended desktop bot, supports one run at a time, and gives every user who runs that flow the rights they need. That last point is the one that saves money.
Power Automate Hosted Process adds a Microsoft-hosted virtual machine on top. You pay more and hand over the hardware, patching and maintenance duties.
When the bill is genuinely worth paying
The rule we use with clients is simple. Licence the handful of people who build and maintain automations, and licence the specific automations that everyone else relies on. Do not licence every member of staff in the hope that they will one day build a flow.
- One or two people building premium flows. An administrator creating an invoice-capture flow with a premium connector only needs one Premium licence. Cheap and simple.
- A shared, business-critical flow. An approval flow with a Dataverse database behind it, used across the company. Assign the flow a Process licence and the whole organisation can run it without individual Premium licences.
- Unattended robotic process automation. A desktop flow that signs into legacy software and processes payroll at night. One Process licence per bot, one run at a time. Extra simultaneous runs need extra Process licences.
- No server to run RPA on. Hosted Process puts the virtual machine in Microsoft's cloud.
Attended desktop flows, where someone watches the automation run in their own session, are covered by Premium. Unattended runs, with no person present, need Process or Hosted Process.
One more reality check. Microsoft pauses flows that lose their licence entitlement, and teams often notice only when a flow stops mid-month. That silent stop is the most common finding in our licence audits.
Why flow groups changed the maths
Microsoft made flow groups generally available in the 2026 release wave one, and the feature is aimed squarely at the licence waste we see in mid-sized tenants. One Process licence can now be shared across up to 25 solution-aware cloud flows, drawing on a single shared pool of 250,000 actions per day, per Microsoft's flow groups guidance.
Before flow groups, a set of ten premium flows presented an awkward choice. You either bought ten Process licences or a Premium licence for every user who touched them. Both were expensive for one modest piece of automation. One flow group now covers that set with a single Process licence.
| Flow group rule | Microsoft's limit |
|---|---|
| Flows per group | Up to 25 solution-aware cloud flows. |
| Shared capacity | One Process licence provides one shared pool of 250,000 actions per day for the whole group. |
| Child flows | Count as separate members and do not inherit the group capacity automatically. Add them explicitly. |
| Membership | A flow can belong to only one group. |
| Going higher | More than 250,000 actions a day means assigning Process licences directly to individual flows. |
The constraints matter. Only cloud flows stored in a solution qualify, child flows count as separate members, and a flow can sit in only one group. A parent flow with ten children uses eleven of your twenty-five slots, so plan the grouping before you buy.
Licence the automation, not the workforce. That is the principle behind the Process licence, and flow groups finally make it practical for a small team.
What a 25-person business should budget
Take a manufacturer on Microsoft 365 Business Standard that wants three automations: expense approvals, a purchase order flow that reads from its accounting system, and a nightly report that signs into legacy software and exports data. The owner has no IT staff on site, so every automation has to run without supervision.
| Automation | Licence needed | Monthly cost (ex VAT) |
|---|---|---|
| Expense approval flows on standard connectors | Included with Microsoft 365 | £0 |
| Purchase order flow on a premium accounting connector, with related flows | One Process licence shared through a flow group | £115.30 |
| Nightly unattended report | One Process licence per bot | £115.30 |
| Total | £230.60 |
That business budgets around £230 per month before VAT for a genuinely useful stack. The same outcome under the old habit of licensing every user who touched a premium flow could have meant thirty Premium licences at £345 a month. The difference repeats itself every month.
Our position is direct. Most UK SMEs do not need Power Automate licences for their whole workforce, and many need none at all yet. Build the standard-connector flows first, then buy the smallest licence that covers the specific automation that breaks. A reseller who quotes a per-head price before looking at your flows is guessing.
Five checks before you buy
- List every flow in your tenant and note which connectors each one uses.
- Mark which flows are shared or business-critical rather than personal experiments.
- Check whether those flows live in a solution, because flow groups require it.
- Estimate daily action use so you know whether one shared 250,000-action pool fits.
- Try the flow with a single Premium licence first. Most teams discover they need one licence, not thirty.
Do not buy licences before the design exists. Buy when a specific automation needs one, and revisit the count at each renewal. Microsoft has changed this licensing model repeatedly in recent years, and the cheapest arrangement keeps moving.
If you are about to sign a Power Automate quote, send us the list of flows first. We will tell you which automations genuinely need a paid licence, which can stay free, and where a flow group removes a cost you were about to accept. This is exactly the review we run through our Power Automate consultancy service.
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Written by Dan Kennedy
Managing Consultant at EJK Consultancy
Dan is a Microsoft Certified consultant with over 25 years of hands-on IT experience, specialising in Microsoft 365 migrations, SharePoint architecture, Power Automate automation and Microsoft Copilot readiness. He works directly with UK businesses to solve real workplace technology problems.