Power Platform Community Forum Thread Details

https://powerautomate.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/

https://powerautomate.microsoft.com/en-us/ai-builder-calculator/

The AI builder pricing is super confusing as a per month pricing in terms of tasks. At the same time governments now require transparent pricing (because we often pay now for service 2-3 years in the future). To be perfectly honest, its very difficult for me with such a confusing price structure to justify the purchase of Power Automate--as this has to be pitched as a yearly cost. It is extremely also difficult to justify the price out power automate when other vendors who offer similar services have a much less confusing pricing structure--even if they may be more expensive or harder to use.

This is why I am hoping a transparent discussion about the pricing would be helpful.

Question I have so far:

Why is their for power automate a per user cost, per flow cost, per bot cost and now this credit hour cost?
What exactly is a AI builder unit and how is a credit priced?
Does the AI Builder calculate the cost of just the AI builder or is for all of power automate: https://powerautomate.microsoft.com/en-us/ai-builder-calculator/
Does testing or development features cost credits?
Is there a cost for government to share flows (or any government code) when required by law due to FIOA requests. How does Microsoft handle these situations?
How is a bot defined by Microsoft Power Automate with regards to AI Builder?
Can you have a on-premise AI builder bot for automate of sensitive government practices? (This way you can automate things beyond of what Microsoft HIPPA agreement such as tax auditing hospitals for example)

P.S. Government require open source line item budgets. Anyone can do a Freedom of Information Act request (especially Google or Amazon) for whatever reasons and we have to give them a cost breakdown of how much we pay a specific vendor--so long as they have citizenship or residence in the county, state, or city in which that Vendor's Service is being provided.

Categories:

AI Builder

Hi @spmofulton ,

I can for sure answer the AI Builder questions. For the Power Automate questions, it's better to ask in the General Power Automate section of this forum.

What exactly is a AI builder unit and how is a credit priced?

AI Builder add-on unit correspond to the minimum package of AI Builder credits you can buy. Each add-on unit contain 1M AI Builder credits. There are also some AI Builder credits included with Power Automate and Power Apps licenses. More details here: AI Builder licensing | Microsoft Learn.

Credits are then consumed per scenario. Each scenario has its own burn rate and it's explained in the Power Automate licensing guide: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=2085130 (Look for AI Builder rate card).

Does the AI Builder calculate the cost of just the AI builder or is for all of power automate: https://powerautomate.microsoft.com/en-us/ai-builder-calculator/

Just AI Builder.

Does testing or development features cost credits?

Each time you run/test an AI Builder model, whether it is in a testing or prod environment, it costs credits as per indicated in the licensing guide above.

How is a bot defined by Microsoft Power Automate with regards to AI Builder?

Not sure I understand this question, can you elaborate? AI Builder doesn't handle bots per say, but AI models that can be run through Power Automate flows (of Power Apps).

Can you have a on-premise AI builder bot for automate of sensitive government practices? (This way you can automate things beyond of what Microsoft HIPPA agreement such as tax auditing hospitals for example)

It's not possible to have AI Builder run as an on-premise service outside or Microsoft cloud. AI Builder features are however available in US gov clouds: Feature availability by region or US Government environment | Microsoft Learn