Is the "power automate desktop" version free?

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Posted on by DAEUN

Is the "power automate desktop" version free?

Is the "power automate desktop" version a business/individual free use program, not a trial version?

It is not clearly marked in the official website license description.

When you search on the Internet, some people say it's free, and some people say it's not.

When you search Google, it says that it is free as below, but when you enter the link, there is no detailed information about the license.

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Power Automate Desktop

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Agnius Bartninkas Most Valuable Professional on at

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Power Automate Desktop is free to use on Windows 10/11. There is a paid premium license that enables additional features, but you can use the free version if you don't need them, and there is no expiration or trial period for that.

The limitations that come with the free version are:
You cannot use the actions that are marked as premium (have a little diamond icon next to them):
The SharePoint actions group
The OneDrive actions group
The Logging actions group
The Office 365 Outlook actions group
You cannot have any schedules or event triggers for your flows.
With a premium account, you gain access to the Power Automate cloud portal, where you can also create cloud flows (automated flows for cases when you don't need to automate the user interface), and you can set up triggers and schedules for your flows. Also, when you have a premium license, you can also use the Windows Task Scheduler to schedule your flows.

But other than that, you are perfectly fine with building desktop flows for free. It is just that whenever you want to run them, you will need to start them manually by clicking a button.
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mdb 30 on at

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What constitutes a "Premium Account"? Would an E3 account with access to the Power Automate service be a "Premium Account", or would you need a Power Automate per User license?
Also - Is the software version the same for both? Does the Pre-installed Windows 11 Free Power Automate desktop have the cloud capabilities installed but not available unless you have the "Premium Account"?

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Agnius Bartninkas Most Valuable Professional on at

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E3 is not a premium account. E3 contains some cloud flow capabilities, but does not include desktop flows, so you cannot really use Power Automate Desktop with E3. Using cloud capabilities with Power Automate Desktop requires the Power Automate Premium plan ($15/user/month).

The version that is pre-installed with Windows is the same. You just need to login to it with a different account, or add the license to the account you use for logging into Power Automate Desktop in order to enable those capabilities.

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AL-16100634-0 on at

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What does O365 E3 & E5 offer from power automate point of view for both cloud and Desktop flows? Can i develop bot using these licenses with full capabilities?

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Agnius Bartninkas Most Valuable Professional on at

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No. You can use Power Automate cloud flows excluding Premium connectors. Premium capabilities (including desktop flows) require a Premium Power Automate license.

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AL-16100634-0 on at

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Thank you @Agnius for your valuable feedback. One more query whether I can schedule or trigger my flows on some event basis and run the flow in production using O365 E5 suit?

For instance: I need to download attachment from emails Upload the data from attachments to SharePoint. Apply some VLOOKUP's in excel file and perform data manipulations and consolidate the data to another excel and send over the mail. Should i go for desktop flow or cloud flow?

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Agnius Bartninkas Most Valuable Professional on at

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This can likely be done via a cloud flow, but applying VLOOKUPs and similar data manipulation actions in Excel would require the use of Office Scripts if you did that via cloud flows. It would be easier to do that with desktop flows. However, if you managed to do it via cloud flows, an O365 E5 license should generally be enough to cover that, as the connectors you need are not premium (they all come with the E5 license). But if you used desktop flows, this would require an extra Power Automate Premium license.

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If I have answered your question, please mark it as the preferred solution. If you like my response, please give it a Thumbs Up.

I also provide paid consultancy and development services using Power Automate. If you're interested, DM me and we can discuss it.

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