AppSheet vs Power Apps (2026): Real Cost, Lock-In & Which to Pick

If you are choosing between Google AppSheet and Microsoft Power Apps, the answer is usually decided before you compare a single feature: run your business on Google Workspace, pick AppSheet; run it on Microsoft 365, pick Power Apps. Fighting your own identity, file storage, and permission stack to save on app-builder licences almost never pays off.

The cost gap is real — AppSheet starts at $5/user/month against Power Apps Premium at $20/user/month billed annually — but it is the smaller half of the decision. The bigger half is what happens to your data, and what the bill looks like when the app succeeds and 50 people start using it.

This is the detailed comparison. If you are still deciding whether you need an app builder at all, start with AppSheet vs Apps Script instead — for a lot of internal tools the honest answer is neither.

The short version

	AppSheet	Power Apps
Data home	Google Sheets / Drive (yours)	Dataverse or SharePoint
Entry price	$5/user/mo (Starter)	$20/user/mo (Premium, annual)
Bundled with your suite?	Core is in most paid Workspace editions	No — add-on above Microsoft 365
Free tier	Build and test, 10 users	Developer plan, non-production only
Expression language	AppSheet expressions	Power Fx
Code escape hatch	Apps Script — free, JavaScript	Power Fx + Azure Functions, often paid
Offline mobile	Yes	Yes
Cheapest at scale	No — Apps Script is	Roughly $12/user/mo at 2,000+ seats

Where your data actually lives

This is the difference that outlasts every pricing change.

AppSheet's system of record is a Google Sheet you already own. You can open it, sort it, export it, hand it to an accountant, or drive it with Apps Script — with or without AppSheet. If you stop paying for AppSheet tomorrow, your data is still sitting in a file in your Drive, in a format anything can read. The app goes away; the data does not.

Power Apps' supported production path is Dataverse. It is genuinely the more capable store — a real relational database with typed columns, relationships, row-level security, and auditing, which a spreadsheet is not. But it is Microsoft's database, not a file you own. Getting data out means an export process, not opening a file. That is a reasonable trade for a system with real relational complexity, and a bad one for a tracker that could live in a spreadsheet.

Power Apps can connect to Google Sheets through a standard connector, and people try it. Do not build production on it: the connector is rate-limited, has no meaningful transactional integrity, and you would be paying Microsoft prices for second-class access to Google data. If your data is in Sheets, that fact alone decides this comparison.

The pricing, honestly

As of mid-2026:

Plan	Price	What you get
AppSheet Starter	$5/user/mo	5 databases, 2,500 rows each, basic automation
AppSheet Core	$10/user/mo	10 databases, 2,500 rows each — included in most paid Workspace editions
AppSheet Enterprise Plus	$20/user/mo	200 databases, 200,000 rows each, governance, ML
Power Apps Premium	$20/user/mo (annual)	Unlimited apps, Dataverse, premium connectors
Power Apps pay-as-you-go	Per active user, per app	Billed through Azure, no commitment
Apps Script	$0	Unlimited users, standard Workspace quotas

Two details matter more than the headline numbers.

Core is often already paid for. AppSheet Core is bundled into most paid Google Workspace editions. A team on Business Standard frequently discovers it has AppSheet sitting unused in a licence it already bought — which makes the real comparison $0 versus $20, not $10 versus $20.

The cheap Power Apps on-ramp is gone. Microsoft retired the Per-App plan from its standard licensing guide in early 2026. That plan was how small teams got started affordably — one app, a few users, a modest bill. What is left is Premium at $20/user/month or pay-as-you-go billed per active user per app. Pay-as-you-go is flexible, but a month where more staff happen to open the app costs more, which makes budgeting genuinely difficult.

Vendor pricing moves. Confirm current figures on AppSheet's pricing page and Microsoft's Power Apps licensing guide before you commit budget — never off a blog post, including this one.

What it costs when the app succeeds

Per-seat pricing is cheap at 5 users and punishing at 100. The trap is that internal tools spread: you build it for the warehouse, then dispatch wants it, then the drivers.

Team size	AppSheet Core	Power Apps Premium	Owned Apps Script build
10 users	$1,200/yr	$2,400/yr	$0/yr after build
30 users	$3,600/yr	$7,200/yr	$0/yr after build
100 users	$12,000/yr	$24,000/yr	$0/yr after build

Those subscription columns repeat every year, forever. A 30-person warehouse team on Power Apps spends $7,200 annually — well past what a well-scoped custom build costs once. This is why the interesting question is often not "which builder" but "at what team size does renting stop making sense", and the answer is usually somewhere between 20 and 30 users.

Power Fx vs Apps Script: the escape hatch

Every no-code tool hits a wall. What matters is what is on the other side of it.

Power Apps gives you Power Fx, an Excel-formula-like language. It is pleasant for what it covers and genuinely accessible to spreadsheet users. When you outgrow it, the next step is Azure Functions or premium connectors — more capability, more Microsoft services, more cost.

AppSheet's escape hatch is Apps Script, running on the same Sheet, in JavaScript, for free. It is not a walled garden: the same script can call any HTTP API, generate a PDF, send mail, or run on a schedule.

Sending a low-stock alert to a webhook, in Apps Script:

function checkLowStock() {
  const sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActive().getSheetByName('Inventory');
  const rows = sheet.getDataRange().getValues().slice(1); // skip header

  const low = rows.filter(([sku, name, qty, reorderAt]) => qty <= reorderAt);
  if (!low.length) return;

  UrlFetchApp.fetch(WEBHOOK_URL, {
    method: 'post',
    contentType: 'application/json',
    payload: JSON.stringify({
      text: low.map(([sku, name, qty]) => `${name} (${sku}): ${qty} left`).join('\n'),
    }),
  });
}

That runs on a time-based trigger, costs nothing, and needs no licence for the people it notifies. The equivalent in the Microsoft stack is a Power Automate flow — workable, but another licence surface. If you want the full picture of what this layer can do, see the complete guide to Apps Script.

Where they genuinely tie

Be sceptical of comparisons that inflate these:

• Offline mobile. Both cache on-device and sync on reconnect. For ordinary field work this is not a differentiator.
• Auto-generated UI. Both produce a competent mobile and web interface from your data without design work. Neither will win an award.
• Approvals and notifications. AppSheet bots and Power Automate both cover the standard cases.

If a comparison article leads with offline capability, it is padding.

Where Power Apps genuinely wins

An honest comparison has to include this.

• Real relational data. If your model has many related tables, referential integrity, and row-level security, Dataverse is a proper database and a Google Sheet is not. Forcing that model into Sheets produces a fragile system.
• Deep Microsoft integration. Dynamics 365, Teams-embedded apps, SharePoint document workflows, and Entra ID group permissions all work with less friction than any cross-cloud arrangement.
• Enterprise governance. Environments, managed solutions, and ALM pipelines are more mature than AppSheet's equivalents for organisations that need staged deployments and formal change control.
• Scale pricing. At 2,000+ seats the per-user cost drops to roughly $12, and enterprise agreements change the maths further.

If you are a Microsoft shop with a relational model and a governance requirement, Power Apps is the right answer and cost is not the deciding factor.

Migration: what it actually takes

Power Apps → AppSheet. The screens do not port; you rebuild them, which is usually days rather than weeks because both tools generate UI from data. The real work is the data: exporting Dataverse tables into Sheets means flattening relationships you may have relied on. If your model is genuinely relational, that flattening is the whole project, and it is a reason to stay.

AppSheet → Power Apps. Easier on data (Sheets export cleanly) and harder on logic — AppSheet expressions and bots have no automatic Power Fx equivalent, so automation gets rewritten by hand.

Either → an owned build. The most common path we see is not a switch between builders at all. A team hits the per-seat wall, and the app becomes a web app on top of the same Sheet, with Apps Script running the logic. Nothing per-user, nothing to migrate, because the data never moved. That is the pattern behind replacing per-seat SaaS with a Workspace stack you own.

Not sure which side of the line your team is on? Get a free feasibility review — send us the app you have in mind and your user count, and we will tell you honestly whether AppSheet, Power Apps, or an owned Apps Script build is cheaper for you over an 18-month horizon. If a subscription is genuinely the right answer, we will say so.

The decision, in one table

Your situation	Pick
Data lives in Google Sheets	AppSheet
Microsoft 365 shop, relational model	Power Apps
Paid Workspace edition, under 20 users	AppSheet (you may already own Core)
Over 30 users on an internal tool	Owned Apps Script build
Field app, offline critical	Either — decide on ecosystem
Mostly automation, few screens	Apps Script (no app builder needed)
Enterprise governance, staged deployments	Power Apps
Cloud-agnostic and cost-sensitive	AppSheet, then Apps Script as you grow

Before you commit

Build the same small app in both. Both have a free path — AppSheet lets you build and test with up to 10 users at no cost, and Power Apps has a non-production Developer plan. Pick one real workflow, build it twice, and time yourself. A week of prototyping is cheaper than a year of the wrong subscription.

And check the licence you already own first. A surprising number of teams pay for a second app builder while AppSheet Core sits unused inside the Workspace edition they are already billed for.

If the maths lands on "this should not be a subscription at all", that is the conversation we have most often — tell us what you are trying to build and we will scope it honestly, including telling you when an off-the-shelf tool is the better buy.