What is the difference between Dynamics 365 and Power Apps?
By Emil Björk · Microsoft business apps consultant, Gothenburg
Dynamics 365 is a set of first-party applications Microsoft builds on the Power Platform — Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, Business Central, Finance, Supply Chain, Customer Insights. Power Apps is the tool anyone can use to build their own applications on the same underlying Dataverse. Every Dynamics 365 app is technically a Power App; not every Power App is a Dynamics 365 app.
The practical difference is what you get out of the box. Buy Dynamics 365 Sales and you receive a fully built application with Accounts, Contacts, Leads, Opportunities, security roles, dashboards, and Microsoft-shipped business logic. Buy Power Apps per-user and you get a blank canvas — the Dataverse database and the tools to build in it, but the app itself is your job.
The licence boundary follows this: a Dynamics 365 licence grants use rights to the Dynamics 365 tables in that environment; a Power Apps licence grants rights to build against new tables you create. Building 'a small CRM' on Power Apps to avoid Dynamics 365 licensing is a well-worn path that almost always costs more once the app grows.
Go deeper
- Power Apps vs Dynamics 365 CRMPower Apps vs Dynamics 365 CRM: both run on Dataverse — when to buy the packaged Sales or Service app and when to build a custom model-driven app instead.
- Dynamics 365 and the Power PlatformHow the Power Platform extends, automates, analyses, and surfaces AI on top of every Dynamics 365 app.
- Dynamics 365 licensing explainedThe whole Dynamics 365 licensing model in one place — base and attach licences, per-user tiers, Team Members, device licences.