Internal tools on Power Apps or Retool. When your own code pays off

Low-code platforms like Microsoft Power Apps, Retool, Mendix or Airtable are made for building internal tools fast. A table, a few forms, an approval, done. Often someone from the business team builds it in an afternoon.

Over time a whole department comes to depend on that quick tool. It has run for years, it barely changes anymore, and it costs money every month for every user.

How the platforms bill you

Figures as of October 2026.

Power Apps Premium costs $20 per user per month on annual billing. From 2,000 licences the price drops to $12.
Retool separates builders from internal users. On the Business plan a builder costs €46 and an internal user €14 a month on annual billing. The cheaper Team plan is €9 and €5, with fewer features.
Airtable, Softr, Glide or Knack work similarly, with per-user prices or limits on records and apps.

Current prices are on the pricing pages of Power Apps and Retool.

A worked example

Take an order approval tool used by 80 people. On Power Apps Premium that is $1,600 a month, $19,200 a year and $57,600 over three years. For an application that has looked the same for two years.

On Retool's Business plan with two builders and 78 internal users you end up at €1,184 a month, around €42,600 over three years.

A custom application with tables, forms, roles and approvals costs once to build, then hosting and maintenance. The number of users stops mattering. Whether it pays off depends on the scope. At this scale it is definitely worth running the numbers.

Cost is not the only reason

Platform limits. At some point the tool needs to do something the platform does not support. That is where the workarounds begin.
Limits with lots of data. In Power Apps, queries the data source cannot run itself only process the first 500 records by default, 2,000 at most. With SharePoint lists this shows up quickly.
Data in someone else's environment. The data sits in Dataverse, in SharePoint lists or in the vendor's cloud. Exports work, a clean migration with history is often manual work.
Vendor dependency. Prices and licence models are set by the vendor. You go along or rebuild.

What this looks like in Laravel

Most internal tools are made of the same building blocks. A relational data model, login with roles and permissions, tables with filters, forms, approvals with status and notifications, and a few reports. Laravel has ready building blocks for all of this, Filament for admin interfaces for example. That gets an internal tool running within a few weeks.

The cut matters. What gets rebuilt is the one application that has run stably for years. Nobody rebuilds the platform's construction kit. The data is migrated once, and both systems can run side by side for a transition period.

When low-code stays the right choice

Few users. Ten users on Power Apps cost $200 a month. That is cheap.
New tools all the time. If the business team keeps building small apps itself, that is exactly what the platform is for.
Everything lives in Microsoft 365. If you have the licences anyway and work in Teams and SharePoint, Power Apps often serves you well.

How to approach it

Count users. How many do you pay for, and how many actually use the tool?
Check stability. When was the tool last changed in a meaningful way?
Test the data export. Make sure you can get all your data out, including history and attachments.
Calculate three years. Licences times 36 against development plus operations.

The same calculation works for automations, by the way. We wrote about that in Zapier vs. Laravel.

Paying every month for an internal tool that barely changes? We run the numbers with you on whether your own application pays off. Book a free discovery call →

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does Power Apps cost per user?

Power Apps Premium costs $20 per user per month on annual billing. From 2,000 licences a volume price of $12 per user per month applies (as of October 2026). The free Developer Plan is only meant for building and testing.

How much does Retool cost?

Retool distinguishes builders and internal users. On the Team plan they cost €9 and €5 a month, on the Business plan €46 and €14, both on annual billing (as of October 2026). Up to five users are free.

How many users make a custom application cheaper than Power Apps?

There is no fixed threshold, it depends on the scope of the tool. One example: 80 users on Power Apps Premium cost $57,600 over three years. At that scale it is worth calculating a custom application whose cost does not grow with the number of users.

What is the delegation limit in Power Apps?

When a query cannot be delegated to the data source, Power Apps only processes the first 500 records by default, configurable up to 2,000. With larger SharePoint lists this leads to incomplete results.

Can a Power Apps application be migrated to Laravel?

Yes. What gets rebuilt is the specific application with its data model, forms, roles and approvals. The data from Dataverse or SharePoint is migrated once, and both systems can run side by side for a while.