Read from Microsoft’s own pages
What is Power Automate? Why it’s on your Windows PC, and whether it’s free (UK, 2026)
Power Automate is Microsoft’s tool for automating repetitive jobs, like copying the same details from one place to another or filling in the same form every week. It comes preinstalled on Windows 11, which is why many people find it on their computer without having asked for it. You don’t need it. Basic use is free, and the paid Premium licence costs £11.50 a user a month in the UK, paid yearly, plus VAT.
The short version
- It’s Microsoft’s automation tool. You build “flows” that do repetitive steps for you: in Microsoft 365, on websites, or in programs on your PC.
- It’s on your PC because Windows 11 comes with it. The Power Automate for desktop app is preinstalled.
- You don’t need it. It’s a tool for building automations. If you have nothing you want automated, leave it unopened.
- Free on a home PC: with a personal Microsoft account you can build desktop flows at no extra cost. They’re saved to your OneDrive.
- Free with a work account: Microsoft’s Free licence covers flows you build and run yourself, with standard connectors only and no sharing.
- In Microsoft 365: Business Basic and Business Standard include limited rights to cloud flows. Business Premium adds desktop flows. That’s from Microsoft’s own licensing guide.
- What costs money: Premium is £11.50 a user a month, paid yearly, plus VAT (£13.80 with VAT). Desktop flows that run without you there need a Process licence (£115.30 a month plus VAT) or Microsoft’s pay-as-you-go option.
- The small print: Microsoft’s licensing guide calls the free Windows desktop app “a free application not for business-critical functions, with no SLA or Microsoft support”.
What is Power Automate?
It’s Microsoft’s automation tool. Microsoft’s overview puts it like this: "With its automation capabilities, Power Automate helps you streamline your business processes and automate repetitive tasks." Each automation you build is called a flow. Microsoft describes three kinds, and two of them matter for most small businesses:
- Cloud flows run online and connect services together. Microsoft says to create one "when you want your automation to be triggered either automatically, instantly, or via a schedule". Its documentation has sections on using flows with Outlook, SharePoint, Teams and Forms.
- Desktop flows run on your computer and do the clicking and typing for you. Microsoft’s line is "Use desktop flows to automate tasks on the web or the desktop."
The third kind, generative actions, is marked as a preview, so we’ve left it out. The app you found on Windows 11 is the desktop half, called Power Automate for desktop.
Why is Power Automate on my computer?
Because Windows 11 comes with it. Microsoft’s Windows 11 page says: "Windows 11 allows you to create automations through the preinstalled Power Automate for desktop app." Microsoft pitches it broadly. The same page calls Power Automate "a low-code platform that enables home and business users to optimize their workflows and automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks", and adds: "Any Windows user can build flows with little-to-no coding experience."
So finding it in your Start menu only means it came with Windows. You didn’t download it by accident. If you’ve seen Power Automate inside Teams or Outlook on a work computer, that’s the cloud side, which comes with many Microsoft 365 business plans (see below).
Do I need Power Automate?
No. It’s an optional tool. If you have nothing you want automated, you can leave it unopened. Where it earns its place is a job you do the same way every week. These are Microsoft’s own examples:
- "extract product prices from websites, save them in Excel spreadsheets, and then email them as attachments" (Microsoft account guide)
- "Fill in web forms by supplying information dynamically from your files" (the same guide)
- "organizing or backing up your files and folders" (the same guide)
- "a self-employed businessperson extracting information from vendors' invoices" (introduction to desktop flows)
All four are re-typing jobs. Our post on how to automate data entry covers the same kind of work without assuming any one tool. It’s worth reading first if you’re not yet sure what you’d automate.
Is Power Automate free?
Partly. What you get for free depends on how you sign in.
On a home PC, with a personal Microsoft account. Microsoft’s guide for Microsoft accounts says: "Using Power Automate with a Microsoft account is available at no extra cost." It also notes: "Desktop flows built with Power Automate using a Microsoft account are stored automatically on your OneDrive." Microsoft’s account comparison table shows what a personal account gets. It has the recorder, the drag-and-drop designer and the 400-plus prebuilt actions. It can’t connect desktop flows to cloud flows, share them with anyone, or use the premium and custom connectors.
With a work or school account. Microsoft’s licence types page says: "Using basic Power Automate capabilities is included at no cost for work or school accounts in a Microsoft Entra tenant." (Microsoft Entra is the sign-in system behind Microsoft 365 work accounts.) It spells out what that Free licence covers: "The Power Automate Free license includes creating and running cloud flows (without sharing), as well as authoring and running desktop flows locally (attended). Connector usage is limited to standard connectors only."
In plain English, free means flows you build and run for yourself, connected to Microsoft’s standard services. You pay for sharing a flow with a colleague, for premium connectors, and for desktop flows that run on their own without you.
Is Power Automate included in Office 365 (Microsoft 365)?
In part. Microsoft’s Power Platform Licensing Guide (the October 2026 edition) calls these rights "Power Automate Basic (Power Automate use rights included with select Microsoft 365/Office 365 licenses)". It says they let users "customize and extend Microsoft 365/Office 365 for productivity scenarios". Its Appendix B lists which plans carry them. These are the business plans a small firm is likely to have:
| Plan | Cloud flows | Desktop flows |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Business Basic | Yes (limited) | Not from this plan |
| Microsoft 365 Business Standard | Yes (limited) | Not from this plan |
| Microsoft 365 Business Premium | Yes (limited) | Yes (limited) |
| Windows 10 Pro, Windows Enterprise and Education | Not from this licence | Yes (limited) |
“Not from this plan” doesn’t mean you can’t use desktop flows. Windows carries its own rights to them, which is why the app is on your PC. The guide puts it this way: "Limited Power Automate use rights are included with select Windows licenses to create and execute personal desktop automation for attended RPA capabilities in Power Automate Desktop." Attended means you start the flow and it runs while you’re there. RPA, robotic process automation, is the industry’s name for software that clicks and types like a person.
We read the plan-by-plan marks from the guide’s table by their position on the page, because the columns don’t survive copying as plain text. The guide also says it "does not supersede or replace any of the legal documentation covering use rights", so treat it as Microsoft’s summary, not the contract.
How much does Power Automate cost in the UK?
These are the figures from Microsoft’s UK pricing page, read on 22 and 24 October 2026:
| Plan | Price | Microsoft’s description |
|---|---|---|
| Power Automate Premium | £11.50 user/month, paid yearly | "Experience the power of automation with cloud flows, attended desktop flows, and process mining for individual users." |
| Power Automate Process | £115.30 bot/month, paid yearly | "Automate core enterprise processes and run unattended automation." |
| Power Automate Hosted Process | £165.30 bot/month, paid yearly | Unattended automation "with a virtual machine managed by Microsoft and hosted on Azure infrastructure" |
Every one of those carries the same line: "Price does not include VAT." With VAT at 20%, Premium works out at £13.80 a user a month, which is £165.60 a year.
Microsoft’s licence page describes what Premium adds: "the full set of capabilities for cloud and desktop automation including premium connectors, process and task mining, AI Builder, use of managed environments, and Microsoft Dataverse storage".
Why you may have seen both a 30-day and a 90-day trial. The pricing page offers one: "Start automating for free with a 30-day trial." Microsoft’s licence deep dive describes two different trials. One is a trial a user starts from inside Power Automate: "This trial lasts for 90 days." The other is a trial an administrator starts, which has a 30-day lifetime: "They bear the same entitlements but have a 30 days lifetime." It adds that an admin-managed trial "can be extended once (another 30 days)". Both numbers are right, because they’re different trials.
The small print on the free desktop app
The most useful line in Microsoft’s licensing guide is a footnote. It’s attached to desktop flows under the Windows rights, and it describes Power Automate desktop as "a free application not for business-critical functions, with no SLA or Microsoft support". (An SLA is a service-level agreement: a promise about uptime and support.)
The same footnote lists what that free route leaves out. That includes cloud flows, connectors, sharing, monitoring, and "scheduled or automatic triggers for desktop flows". In its words, these "are not included". So on the free desktop app, a flow runs when you press run.
That’s fine for a weekly report you’d otherwise copy by hand. It isn’t fine for anything a customer is waiting on.
Where Microsoft’s own pages differ
Two of Microsoft’s pages read differently on personal accounts. The overview says: "Before you can create a workflow, you need to sign up for Power Automate with a Microsoft work or school email address." The licence deep dive says: "If you have a non-business user account (such as an account that ends with @outlook.com or @gmail.com), you can still use Power Automate with the Power Automate Free license." And the Microsoft-account guide says personal accounts can build desktop flows at no extra cost.
Our reading is that a personal account gets the desktop app for free, and the overview is written for business users. We can’t tell from the pages alone exactly how much of the cloud side a personal account can use. If that matters to you, try it before you rely on it.
There’s a smaller difference on Windows too. The Windows 11 page says the app comes preinstalled, while the licensing guide’s table names Windows 10 Pro and the Enterprise and Education editions, but no Windows 11 edition.
Is Power Automate an AI tool?
It’s an automation tool first. Microsoft has added Copilot to it, and its Copilot page says Copilot "uses the instructions you give in natural language to suggest solutions that achieve your goals". In practice, you can describe a flow in plain English and Copilot helps you build it. For what the Copilot licences cost, see our post on whether Copilot is free.
When Power Automate is the wrong tool
- Most of your business runs on non-Microsoft tools. Free and Microsoft 365 rights cover standard connectors. The premium connectors need Premium, at £11.50 a user a month plus VAT.
- The job has to run on its own, overnight. Microsoft’s licence page says running desktop flows unattended means subscribing to "Power Automate Process licenses or enable pay-as-you-go". Process is £115.30 a month plus VAT.
- The job is business-critical and you’re on the free desktop app. Microsoft’s own guide says that app comes with "no SLA or Microsoft support".
A declaration: we build automations for businesses, so we have an interest in this section. We’ve kept it to what Microsoft’s own pages say.
What argues the other way
- We didn’t build a flow for this post. Everything here comes from Microsoft’s pages, read in full. We haven’t tested Power Automate ourselves.
- Microsoft’s licensing changes often. The licensing guide is dated October 2026, the licence deep dive was last updated on 17 October and the licence types page on 22 September. Check the current pages before you buy.
- The guide is a summary. Microsoft says it doesn’t replace the legal terms, and the plan-by-plan marks in our table come from that summary.
- The prices are list prices, paid yearly, before VAT. What you pay through a reseller, or on a different term, may not match.
Sources
- Microsoft Learn: What is Power Automate? (last updated 27 November 2025), Get started with Power Automate in Windows 11 (1 September 2026), Get started with a Microsoft account (24 February 2023), Set up Power Automate for desktop: sign-in account comparison (24 March 2026), Introduction to desktop flows (24 August 2026) and Copilot in Power Automate (18 August 2026).
- Microsoft Learn (Power Platform admin): Types of Power Automate licenses (last updated 22 September 2026) and Power Automate license deep dive (17 October 2026).
- Microsoft Learn: the Power Automate documentation’s table of contents, for its sections on Outlook, SharePoint, Teams and Forms. Microsoft: Power Platform Licensing Guide, October 2026 edition (PDF), pages 3, 14 and 15 and Appendix B (page 29). Microsoft: Power Automate pricing (UK page, prices in pounds, excluding VAT).
- All of the pages above were read on 22 October 2026, and again on 24 October 2026, the morning we published. Nothing we quote had changed, and the licensing guide was the same file, byte for byte.
- Every quotation above was tested automatically against the text of its source before publication.