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Licensing of Dataverse for Dynamics 365

Wednesday, March 19, 2025
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Understanding the licensing of Microsoft Dataverse for Dynamics 365 is crucial for partners and customers looking to maximize their investment in Microsoft’s business applications. This article will provide an overview of the licensing options available for Dataverse, helping you make informed decisions to help drive business growth.

Dataverse or Dataverse for Teams?

To confuse matters initially, Microsoft offer two different flavours of Dataverse. One which stems from the Common Data Service (CDS,) and is known simply as Dataverse, and one which is known as Dataverse for Teams. For a full introduction to Dataverse, refer to the article Understanding Microsoft Dataverse: A Simplified Guide.

Dataverse for Teams, whilst operating on the same underlying platform, has many limitations, including the lack of advanced data types, non-relational storage (such as logs,) and no mobile offline access. The majority of standard tables provided with a Power Platform environment, such as the account and currency tables also won’t be present as part of Dataverse for Teams. In addition, the maximum database size is limited to 2GB (or 1 million rows of data) and only one Dataverse environment is permitted per Team, which means that any application developed on Dataverse for Teams can be the only Dataverse application that a Team can use.

When considering business transformation scenarios, these limitations, together with the inability to access Dataverse for Teams via an API or implement the capabilities of the PowerApps Component Framework (PCF,) which empowers developers and app makers to create custom code components for model-driven and canvas apps, often come to the fore very quickly meaning that Dataverse for Teams is rarely, if ever, suitable for large scall business transformation projects.

Licensing Options for Dataverse

For organizations that require Dataverse, it needs to be understood that it cannot be procured via standalone means, it is included in a variety of qualifying Microsoft product and platform SKUs which provide a base level of capacity. Once a base level of capacity is procured, additional capacity add-on SKUs can be purchased for database, file and log storage needs.

Dynamics 365 Applications
Dataverse is included as part of the licensing for various Dynamics 365 applications, such as Dynamics 365 Sales and Customer Service. This means that users of these applications automatically have access to Dataverse without needing a separate license. For complete, up to date details of included capacity, refer to the individual application sections of the Licensing Guide for Dynamics 365.

Copilot Studio, Power Apps, Power Pages and Power Automate
For businesses looking to build custom agents, applications, web portals or automate workflows using Dataverse, Microsoft provides licensing options through their Power Platform products. These licenses allow users to create and run AI agents or applications that leverage Dataverse as the underlying data platform. For complete, up to date details of included capacity, refer to the Dataverse section in the Licensing Guide for Power Platform.

Dynamics 365 Business Central
The underlying database for Dynamics 365 Business Central is not Dataverse, and no Dataverse storage is included with Business Central SKUs as standard.

Pay-as-you-go Plan
Microsoft also offer a pay-as-you-go plan for Power Platform environments that contain Dataverse. The use cases for pay-as-you-go revolve around widely distributed applications with infrequent usage. To turn on pay-as-you-go billing, an environment must first be linked to an Azure subscription using a billing policy.

It’s important to note that it is not possible to use pay-as-you-go to extend capacity capabilities in an existing environment. The whole environment runs on an either/or basis when it comes to pay-as-you-go, it operates as a mutually exclusive option to the shared Dataverse capacity that is provided as part of any Dynamics 365 and Power Platform User Subscription Licenses (USLs.)

Conclusion

The licensing options for Microsoft Dataverse vary across Dynamics 365 and Power Platform applications. For partners to make the most of the commercial opportunities presented by Dataverse, a deeper understanding of the capabilities of Dynamics 365 Sales, Customer Service, Copilot Studio, Power Apps, Power Automate or Power Pages is needed to help customers make informed choices that align with organizational needs and goals.

Explore the services Companial offers as an Indirect CSP provider, from Power Platform Learning Journeys to developments for Power Apps, and licensing.

Companial members can participate in Special Interest Group sessions to learn more about Power Platform and Dynamics 365 in general, across both technical deep dives and licensing requirements. If you are not yet a member, check out Companial membership to find out more about what you are missing!

Chris Parkes
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