Power Apps lets Microsoft 365 teams build internal apps on SharePoint, Dataverse and hundreds of connectors. pylo gives you the backend underneath with the admin UI on top: data model, typed API, permissions, flows, forms and analytics, with unlimited users, hosted in Germany.

TL;DR

Microsoft Power Apps is the default way for Microsoft 365 companies to build internal apps: canvas apps on SharePoint lists and Excel, model-driven apps on Dataverse, Power Automate for the logic and Copilot to generate screens from a prompt. It is deeply integrated with Teams, Outlook and Entra ID, and the standard connectors come with the Microsoft 365 licence you already have. The catch is the line between standard and premium: as soon as an app uses Dataverse, SQL Server, an on-premises gateway or a custom connector, every user of that app needs a Power Apps Premium licence paid per user and month, and external users need Power Pages capacity on top. pylo is a backend platform: your own data model with a typed GraphQL API, permissions down to the record, flows, forms, admin views and analytics, with unlimited users on every plan and data hosted in Germany. If your apps belong inside Microsoft 365 and the licence maths works, Power Apps is a solid choice. If the licence per user is what stops you from giving the whole company, your suppliers or your customers access to the data, pylo removes that line.

What is pylo?

pylo is a Backend-as-a-Service platform from Germany that you can use to build the operating system for your company. You model entities, fields and relations in the admin panel or through the API, and pylo generates a typed GraphQL API immediately. The same permission model governs data, the admin UI, forms, flows, dashboards and the MCP server. With pylo flows you build automations on top of your own data model and connect the tools you already use. The admin UI, forms and document templates mean operations teams work with the data without a developer in between, and the Next.js, React, Node and Expo SDKs are there for the apps you build yourself.

What is Microsoft Power Apps?

Power Apps is Microsoft's low-code app platform and part of the Power Platform, together with Power Automate, Power BI and Power Pages. Canvas apps are built screen by screen in a designer and connect to data through connectors; model-driven apps are generated from tables in Dataverse, Microsoft's relational business database with security roles and row- and column-level security. More than a thousand connectors reach Microsoft 365, Dynamics, SQL Server and many SaaS tools. Copilot generates apps and tables from a description, and the apps run in the browser, in Teams and in the Power Apps mobile app. Licensing is per user: standard connectors such as SharePoint, Excel and Teams are included with Microsoft 365, premium connectors, Dataverse and custom connectors require Power Apps Premium.

At a glance

A backend with unlimited users instead of a licence per app user

Power Apps starts cheap because the standard connectors ride on the Microsoft 365 licence. Many teams build their first app on a SharePoint list for exactly that reason, and then hit the list's limits: no real relations, weak permissions per item and performance that drops past a few thousand rows. The step up is Dataverse, which is a proper database with relations and security roles. It is also premium, so from that day every person who opens the app needs a Power Apps Premium licence at $20 per user and month, paid yearly, and the same applies to a SQL Server connection, an on-premises gateway or a custom connector to your own API. Fifty people in operations become $12,000 a year before the first Dataverse capacity add-on, and that is why so many Power Apps stay on SharePoint lists longer than they should.

pylo has no standard and premium tier. Every plan, including the free one, has entities with relations, a typed GraphQL API with unlimited requests, permissions down to the record and field, flows, forms and the admin UI. Users are unlimited, so the warehouse, the field technicians, a supplier and a client's team can all work with the data without changing the bill. Add an entity, a field or a relation in the admin panel and the API and views update at once, without migrations or redeployments.

Dataverse, SharePoint lists or your own data model

Dataverse is a good relational database, and we will not pretend a SharePoint list is one. In pylo the data model is the product: field types include relations, enums, JSON, public or private files, rich text, dates, booleans and number and text formatters, with validation built in. Relations work across your whole workspace, you filter across them and group aggregations by any field, and the schema is generated per user so a connected system sees exactly the fields it may see. There is no capacity add-on per gigabyte of database; records are billed per 10,000 and files live in object storage.

Permissions that follow the data everywhere

On Dataverse, security roles with row- and column-level security are solid, but they require Premium for everyone and they stop at Dataverse: a canvas app on a SharePoint list filters rows in the app, and a flow that reads the same data has its own connection with its own rights. pylo separates tenants at the row level. Inside a tenant, any entity can act as the requester (ARO) and any entity as the requested object (ACO), with hierarchies and field-level rules. Every path into the data is GraphQL, so the same rules apply to the API, the admin panel, forms, flows, dashboards and MCP, on every plan.

pylo flows instead of Power Automate

Power Automate is a capable workflow engine with triggers for almost every Microsoft service, and flows inside an app share the app's licence. Premium connectors need a premium licence, desktop automation is licensed separately and run limits depend on the plan. In pylo you build automations in a visual workflow engine called pylo flows. Any event on your data can start a flow, and so can a cron schedule or an incoming webhook. Flows include retries, custom rate limiting, error handling and full event logs, everything is statically typed, and pylo ships integrations for email sending and a range of third-party systems. For anything else you write a flow action in TypeScript, which is also how you call Microsoft services through their APIs when you need them.

Admin views and forms built on the same permissions

Power Apps' designers are more flexible than pylo's admin UI, and Copilot-generated screens are a real time saver for Microsoft 365 teams. Every screen is still something someone builds and maintains, and when a table changes, the app changes with it. pylo's admin UI is there from the moment you create an entity. You compose list and detail views from predefined components, decide who sees what and show or hide fields depending on a record's state. pylo forms are public or authenticated web forms with hidden fields, conditional rendering, validation rules and direct mapping to your entities, including relations. For the screens your team uses all day, you build your own app on the Next.js SDK with the same permissions.

External users and customer portals

Giving a supplier or a customer access to a Power App means Power Pages, with authenticated and anonymous user capacity priced separately, or a licence in your tenant. pylo's auth handles your own users from the start: email and password, Microsoft and Google SSO and API keys, with record-level permissions deciding what each of them sees. A customer portal or a supplier form is a normal use of the free plan, not a licensing project.

Events and dashboards built in with pylo analytics

Reporting on Power Apps data usually means Power BI, which is licensed separately, and Dataverse auditing has to be switched on per table and column. Every create, update and delete in pylo emits an event with the full before and after state, stored on every plan, which you can combine with external events you bring in through the API. You build dashboards on records and events together, with the same permissions as the rest of pylo.

AI and MCP with guardrails

Microsoft puts Copilot into Power Apps for building screens and tables, and AI Builder and Copilot Studio for agents, with their own credits. pylo's MCP server is ready to connect, for developers who use agentic coding and for team members who want to ask questions about their records from Claude, ChatGPT or any other client. The AI gets exactly the connected user's read permissions, nothing else. pylo never applies an AI's writes directly: they arrive as proposals that a human accepts or declines inside pylo.

Pricing

Power Apps is inexpensive as long as the data stays in SharePoint lists and Excel. The moment it moves to a real database, the price is per user: fifty people on Premium cost $1,000 a month, and a supplier portal adds Power Pages capacity. Microsoft is also retiring the cheaper per-app plan, so check the current licensing guide before you budget. pylo bills per workspace with unlimited users, and every plan includes the backend, flows, the admin UI, forms, analytics and personal onboarding. Plans differ only in included usage. Prices on this page were taken from microsoft.com in October 2026.

Hosting, compliance and reliability

All pylo content data, data models and databases live in data centres in Germany. Our subprocessor list is public and names every non-EU parent company openly. A GDPR data processing agreement is part of the terms, and we never use customer data to train AI models. Paid plans come with a 99.5% availability SLA, hourly encrypted backups kept for 30 days at a separate German location, and support from the team that builds the product.

Power Platform environments can be created in European regions, including Germany, and Microsoft holds the full set of certifications and offers a DPA. Data residency depends on the environment region your admin chooses and on which connectors an app uses.

Where Power Apps is the better choice

We would rather tell you than have you find out later:

• Your company lives in Microsoft 365 and the apps should run inside Teams, use Entra ID and talk to SharePoint, Outlook and Dynamics without any integration work.

• More than a thousand connectors, Copilot-generated apps and native mobile apps on every plan.

• Model-driven apps on Dataverse give you a full business application UI with very little building.

• Enterprise governance, data loss prevention policies and Microsoft's certifications.

• Microsoft has a far larger partner ecosystem and community than pylo.

If the licence maths works and the apps belong inside Microsoft 365, Power Apps is a good choice. pylo is for teams that need the backend and want everyone to use it.

Where pylo is a great Power Apps alternative

We think these are the main reasons to pick pylo over Power Apps:

• No premium line. Relations, a typed API, record-level permissions and flows are on every plan, including the free one.

• Unlimited users. The whole company, suppliers and customers work with the data without a licence per user or Power Pages capacity.

• The backend comes with the admin UI. Data model, API, permissions, flows, admin views, forms, events and MCP are one product.

• Schema changes without a rebuild. Add an entity or field and the API and views are live immediately.

• Permissions in the data layer, down to the field. One rule set for API, admin UI, forms, flows, dashboards and MCP.

• Login for your own users. Email/password, Microsoft and Google SSO and API keys, for internal and external users alike.

• Flows on your own data. Event, cron and webhook triggers with retries, rate limiting, typed actions and full logs, and custom actions in plain TypeScript.

• Analytics you don't have to instrument. Every change is an event with before and after state, and dashboards sit next to the data.

• AI access that's safe for production. MCP runs with the connected user's exact read permissions, and every write goes through human approval as a proposal.

• German hosting from a German company. pylo hosts user data in Germany on every plan and the DPA is part of the terms. You get a 99.5% SLA from the first paid plan, hourly backups with 30-day retention and personal support from the people who build the product.

FAQs - Questions and answers about pylo

• Can I use Power Apps on top of pylo? Yes, a custom connector can call pylo's GraphQL API with an API key whose permissions you define in pylo. Note that custom connectors are a premium feature in Power Apps.

• Does pylo work with Microsoft 365? Users can sign in with their Microsoft account, and flows can call Microsoft services through their APIs with custom actions. pylo does not run inside Teams and is not affiliated with Microsoft.

• Do my users need a Microsoft account? No, pylo has its own login with email and password, and Microsoft or Google SSO are optional.

• Is pylo open source? No, but you can export all data at any time as CSV or JSON or through the API. The data models, flow definitions and generated SDK code are yours to keep, even after you leave.

• Where exactly is my data? Content data is in data centres in Germany and backups are kept at a different German location.

• Can I get access now? pylo is currently in private beta. Request access and we will set up your first entities with you on a call and onboard you personally for your first project.