Short answer is because of Standard and Premium connectors.
Premium connectors cannot be utilized without having Premium licenses.
Standard Connectors examples:
- SharePoint
- OneDrive for Business
- Adobe Acrobat Sign
- Approvals
- Dropbox
Premium Connectors examples:
- Dataverse
- Azure Automation
- Salesforce
- SAP
- ServiceNow
Custom connectors allow you to connect to APIs or services that are not available through the built-in standard or premium connectors. This flexibility is powerful but comes with the requirement for premium licensing.
Working with standard connectors are covered under seeded licenses.
To utilize premium connectors, users (Power Apps Editor and Consumer), both would need to have premium licenses.
Microsoft has 3 types of Power Apps Licensing subscription All of these are user based, which means, these licenses needs to be allocated to individual user account by Global Admins.
- Power Apps Premium
- Power Apps Per App
- Power Apps per App pay-as-you-go (PAYG)
Cost: $20 per user/month
Capabilities of this license subscription:
- Users can run multiple Power Apps applications.
- Users can run multiple Power Pages websites.
- 500 AI builder service credits are accrued with each number of license (What is AI Builder and it's capabilities, click here to check).
- Users can use all the Standard connectors.
- Users can use Premium and Custom connectors.
- Users would be able to access On-premise connections via data gateways.
- Users get full Dataverse access, to create and access custom tables.
- 250 MB of Dataverse Database capacity is accrued to the tenant with each license
- 2 GB of Dataverse File Capacity is is accrued to the tenant with each license.
- Users with relevant permissions do get access to admin and govern the managed environments.
Cost: $5 per user/month
Capabilities of this license subscription:
- Users can run either 1 Power Apps application or 1 Power Pages website.
- 250 AI builder service credits are accrued with each number of license (What is AI Builder and it's capabilities, click here to check).
- Users can use all the Standard connectors.
- Users can use Premium and Custom connectors.
- Users would be able to access On-premise connections via data gateways.
- Users get full Dataverse access, to create and access custom tables.
- 50 MB of Dataverse Database capacity is accrued to the tenant with each license
- 400MB of Dataverse File Capacity is is accrued to the tenant with each license.
- Users with relevant permissions do get access to admin and govern the managed environments.
Cost : $10 per active user/month Active user is any unique user who launches the Power App at least once in a given month.
Capabilities of this license subscription:
- Users can run only 1 Power Apps application.
- No AI builder service credits are accrued with each number of license.
- Users can use all the Standard connectors.
- Users can use Premium and Custom connectors.
- Users would be able to access On-premise connections via data gateways.
- Users get full Dataverse access, to create and access custom tables.
- No Dataverse Database capacity is accrued to the tenant with each license
- No Dataverse File Capacity is is accrued to the tenant with each license.