Retool AI vs Microsoft Power Apps Copilot vs Google AppSheet/Gemini: Real Internal App Builder Cost in 2026
The short answer: the cost of an internal app platform is set by how many people use the apps, not by how many apps exist. Retool separates builders from end users and prices them differently. Microsoft prices every user at $20 a month for unlimited apps, $5 per user per app a month for a fixed per-app license, or $10 per active user per app for occasional use. Google AppSheet is priced at $5, $10 and $20 per user per month (Starter, Core and Enterprise Plus), and Gemini-powered automation inside apps is included only with Enterprise Plus. In the model below, a 100-app portfolio serving 1,500 employees costs roughly $91,000–$335,000 a year on Retool, $135,000–$360,000 on Power Apps (depending on the license type), and $90,000–$360,000 on AppSheet (depending on whether Starter, Core or Enterprise Plus is needed), before Retool and Copilot Studio AI credits, database capacity and enterprise security tiers.
What each vendor bills
Retool (REPORTED). Four plans: Free (up to five users, unlimited apps, 500 workflow runs a month, 250 AI credits), Team, Business and Enterprise. Users come in three classes. Team lists builders at $10 a month annual or $12 monthly and internal users at $5 annual or $7 monthly, with 5,000 workflow runs and 1,000 AI credits per builder a month. Business lists builders at $50 annual or $65 monthly and internal users at $15 annual or $18 monthly, adds audit logging, granular permissions, portals and embedded apps, and includes 3,000 AI credits. External users are volume-tiered on Business (roughly $8, $6 and $4 by volume, with the first 50 free). SSO/SAML, source control and self-hosting are Enterprise-only. One source reported a median buyer paying about $65,500 a year. Because the price page localizes currency and billing terms, published sources differ by a few dollars per seat.
Microsoft Power Apps (OFFICIAL, Microsoft licensing guidance). Power Apps Premium at $20 per user per month for unlimited apps, or $12 per user per month with 2,000 or more new licenses. A per-app subscription at $5 per user per app per month entitles an assigned user to one app. A pay-as-you-go meter charges $10 per active user per app per month through an Azure subscription. Dataverse capacity beyond the per-user entitlement (250 MB database and 2 GB file per user) was reported at $40 per GB per month, and Copilot Studio, a separate product, at $200 a month for 25,000 Copilot credits (REPORTED). The native Copilot and agentic capabilities in Power Apps are separate from Copilot Studio capacity: Copilot features in model-driven apps are part of Premium, and canvas-app AI was reported in public preview.
Google AppSheet (OFFICIAL, Google pricing). Three per-user tiers: Starter at $5 per user per month, Core at $10 and Enterprise Plus at $20. AppSheet Core is also included in many paid Google Workspace plans, so the incremental cost of Core for those users can be zero. Gemini comes in two forms. Gemini for App Creation is builder-side AI for creating app structures and is included with paid Starter, Core and Enterprise Plus, with no separate Gemini add-on required. Gemini in AppSheet Solutions runs Gemini-powered AI tasks inside automations and apps, is included only with Enterprise Plus, and needs no separate Gemini Enterprise or Workspace Gemini license. Enterprise Plus includes 1,000 Gemini credits per license per month, pooled across the organization, and unused credits do not roll over.
The scenarios
ILLUSTRATIVE assumptions: one builder per five apps (minimum two) and end users who use more than one app.
| Apps | Builders | Distinct users (including builders) |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | 2 | 100 |
| 25 | 6 | 400 |
| 100 | 20 | 1,500 |
Builder economics versus end-user economics
Builder seats are a small share of the bill on every platform. Retool Business builders at $50–$65 cost only $1,200–$1,560 a year for two, $3,600–$4,680 for six, and $12,000–$15,600 for twenty. End users are where the money is: at 1,500 users, the Business internal-user seats ($15–$18 each, 1,480 of them) cost $266,400–$319,680 of a $278,400–$335,280 total. Power Apps has no builder/end-user split: every licensed person pays the same $20.
Annual cost by scenario
| Scenario | Retool Team (annual–monthly rate) | Retool Business (annual–monthly rate) | Power Apps per-app ($5) at 1.5 apps per user | Power Apps pay-as-you-go ($10) at 1.5 apps per user | Power Apps Premium ($20) | AppSheet Starter–Core ($5–$10) | AppSheet Enterprise Plus ($20) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 apps, 100 users | $6,120–$8,520 | $18,840–$22,728 | $9,000 | $18,000 | $24,000 | $6,000–$12,000 | $24,000 |
| 25 apps, 400 users | $24,360–$33,960 | $74,520–$89,784 | $36,000 | $72,000 | $96,000 | $24,000–$48,000 | $96,000 |
| 100 apps, 1,500 users | $91,200–$127,200 | $278,400–$335,280 | $135,000 | $270,000 | $360,000 | $90,000–$180,000 | $360,000 |
The AppSheet Starter–Core column covers app creation with Gemini for App Creation, and assumes those plans are sufficient. The Enterprise Plus column applies when every app user needs production Gemini automation.
Formulas: Retool = builders × builder price × 12 + (users − builders) × internal price × 12; Power Apps Premium = users × $20 × 12; Power Apps per-app = users × apps per user × $5 × 12; Power Apps pay-as-you-go = users × apps per user × $10 × active months; AppSheet = users × $5, $10 or $20 × 12. At 1,500 users, the 2,000-license volume price of $12 does not apply.
Per-app, pay-as-you-go and Premium: which one is cheaper
The three Microsoft options bill differently. The $5 per-app subscription bills the assigned license continuously, every month of the year, whether or not the user opens the app. The $10 pay-as-you-go meter bills only the months in which that user actually opens that app. Premium bills $20 per user every month for unlimited apps.
For one app, the per-app subscription costs $5 × 12 = $60 per user per year, and pay-as-you-go costs $10 × active months. Pay-as-you-go is cheaper if the user is active in that app fewer than 6 months a year, the two are equal at 6 months, and the per-app subscription is cheaper above 6 active months.
Against Premium, which costs $240 per user per year: a set of per-app subscriptions is cheaper when a user needs fewer than $240 ÷ $60 = 4 apps, and equal at 4. Pay-as-you-go at full-year activity ($120 per app per year) is cheaper than Premium when a user needs fewer than 2 apps. At one app per user and twelve active months, the 1,500-user portfolio costs $90,000 on per-app licenses, $180,000 on the meter and $360,000 on Premium.
AI actions
AI is metered differently on each platform. Retool bundles monthly AI credits and agent hours by plan (250 on Free, 1,000 on Team, 3,000 on Business per the reported price grid), with extra packs available on paid plans; the price of an extra pack was not publicly listed at the time of review (QUOTE-ONLY / UNKNOWN). Microsoft prices Copilot Studio credits separately from the native Copilot and agentic capabilities in Power Apps, and not every Power Apps AI action requires a Copilot Studio capacity pack: $200 a month for 25,000 credits, or $0.008 per credit (calculated). For an agent built in Copilot Studio, a workflow that consumes 10 credits per run and executes 100,000 times a month uses 1 million credits, which is 40 blocks of 25,000, or $8,000 a month. AppSheet separates two scenarios. For app creation only, Starter and Core can use Gemini for App Creation, so the cost can stay at $5–$10 per user per month where those plans are sufficient. For production Gemini automation and AI tasks, Enterprise Plus at $20 per user per month is required, and it includes 1,000 pooled credits per license per month. Official task consumption is 10 credits each for Categorize, Extract image/text, Extract rows image and Summarize, and 10 credits per page for Extract PDF and Extract rows PDF.
If every app user needs Enterprise Plus, the included pool is:
| Users | Enterprise Plus cost per year | Included credits per month | Ordinary AI tasks per month at 10 credits | 5-page PDF extractions per month at 50 credits (ILLUSTRATIVE) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 100 | $24,000 | 100,000 | 10,000 | 2,000 |
| 400 | $96,000 | 400,000 | 40,000 | 8,000 |
| 1,500 | $360,000 | 1,500,000 | 150,000 | 30,000 |
Formula: tasks per month = users × 1,000 credits ÷ credits per task. The pool works out to 100 ordinary tasks per license per month, and PDF work consumes it faster because each page costs 10 credits. Unused credits do not roll over. Google does not publish a standalone per-credit overage rate. Additional monthly Gemini capacity is obtained by purchasing additional AppSheet Enterprise Plus licenses, each adding 1,000 credits per month. At the public $20 per month Enterprise Plus price, an extra license bought solely for quota adds 1,000 monthly credits, an effective capacity cost of $0.02 per credit. This is a derived figure, not a Google-listed per-credit price.
Break-even against custom development
An internal-app platform pays back when it replaces engineering time. Formula: break-even apps = annual platform cost ÷ engineering cost per equivalent custom app. If a comparable custom internal tool costs $30,000 to build and maintain for a year, a $91,200 Retool Team portfolio breaks even at about three apps replaced; a $360,000 Premium portfolio breaks even at twelve. The cost per app is ILLUSTRATIVE, so substitute your own.
Sensitivity
1. Apps per user. Moving from 1 to 3 apps per active user changes Power Apps pay-as-you-go from $180,000 to $540,000 for 1,500 users, and the per-app subscription from $90,000 to $270,000. 2. Billing term. Retool's annual versus monthly rates differ by 20–30%. 3. Business versus Team. The jump from Team to Business is about 2.6–3.1 times at every scale, driven by internal-user seats. 4. Volume licensing. Power Apps drops from $20 to $12 per user at 2,000 or more new licenses, a 40% reduction. 5. AppSheet tier. Moving from Core ($10) to Enterprise Plus ($20) doubles the AppSheet bill, from $180,000 to $360,000 at 1,500 users, and Enterprise Plus is the only tier that includes Gemini for AI tasks inside apps. 6. Task mix. Ordinary AppSheet AI tasks cost 10 credits, but a 5-page PDF extraction costs 50, so a PDF-heavy workload uses the same pool five times faster per document.
Budgeting traps
- Free tiers cap at five users. A pilot on the free tier cannot represent a production deployment.
- Seats you do not use. Per-user licenses bill for the seat, not the app opens.
- Capacity add-ons. Dataverse capacity at $40 per GB per month can outweigh licenses for data-heavy apps.
- Security tiers. SSO, source control and self-hosting on Retool sit behind Enterprise pricing.
- Portals and external users. Customer-facing use is priced separately from internal use on every platform.
- Pooled credits do not roll over. AppSheet's Gemini credits are pooled across the organization and reset each month, so a quiet month does not build a reserve.
- Included versus incremental. AppSheet Core is included in many paid Google Workspace plans, so its true incremental cost depends on the Workspace plan already in place.
What to ask before you buy
Ask each vendor for the price per builder, per internal user and per external user in writing; the included AI credits per tier and the price of extra packs; and whether pay-as-you-go or per-user licensing is cheaper for your measured apps-per-user.