In July, I wrote a preview assessment of Logic Apps Automation. One row in my reality-check table read: “Pricing: not finalised.” I declined to quote meters, because third-party posts were running ahead of Microsoft.
That row is now closed. On October 7, the Logic Apps team announced pricing together with a monthly free grant. This post covers what the numbers say, and which parts of my July advice they confirm or correct.
One note on terms first. In July I described the hierarchy as Project, Application, Workflow. The documentation now says Environment, App, Workflow. I use the new names here.
What you get for free
Every Azure subscription receives the following:
| Component | Free grant |
|---|---|
| Managed environment | One environment, free for the first 60 days only |
| Workflow runtime | 108,000 execution-seconds per month (about 30 hours) |
| Data retention | 1 GB per month |
| Managed connector calls | 1,000 Standard and 500 Enterprise per month |
| Knowledge storage | 1 GB per month |
| AI usage | 1,100 Azure Agent Credits (AACs) per month |
| Isolated code execution | 18,000 seconds per month (about 5 hours) |
What you pay beyond it
The pricing documentation lists these rates for East US:
| Meter | Rate |
|---|---|
| Managed environment | $0.042 per hour |
| Workflow runtime | $0.00008 per execution-second |
| Data retention | $0.12 per GB per month |
| Standard connector action | $0.000125 |
| Enterprise connector action | $0.001 |
| Knowledge storage | 33 AACs per GB per month ($0.33) |
| Sandbox | $0.000024 per vCPU-second, $0.000003 per GiB-second |
The runtime meter counts execution-seconds on a baseline of 1 vCPU and 2 GiB of memory. Consumption, in contrast, counts actions. Standard charges for reserved capacity. As a result, a slow workflow now costs more than a fast one, regardless of its action count.
AI usage is billed in AACs, converted from tokens based on the model you select. In July, I called the agent iteration bound “your cost fuse”. That fuse now protects a number: 1,100 AACs per month. Moreover, if you bring your own model, Automation does not charge the token usage at all.
What happens on day 61
The environment fee is the part that matters most. At $0.042 per hour, an environment costs about $30.66 per month, whether or not anything runs.
Compare that with the grant. By my arithmetic, the monthly usage grants are worth roughly $21 at list rates: $8.64 of runtime, about $11 of AI usage, and under $2 for everything else. The AI figure assumes one AAC equals one cent, which I derive from the knowledge storage line. Microsoft does not state it.
So from day 61, the fixed fee exceeds the value of everything the grant gives you. The grant lowers the bill. It does not make the platform free.
One correction to my July post
My decision table placed “long idle periods with traffic spikes” on Automation, because the runtime scales from 0 to N. The compute still does. However, the environment fee does not scale to zero.
Therefore, I would now move very sporadic, low-volume work back to Consumption, which has no fixed fee. Automation remains the better fit for bursty AI and agent workloads that justify roughly $30 a month as a baseline.
The grant has an owner problem
My main concern in July was governance: who owns a workflow, and what happens when that person leaves. The grant adds a billing version of the same question.
The grant applies to the first environment you create in a subscription. Delete that environment and you lose the grant for good. A new environment does not restore it. In addition, existing preview users must create a new environment to receive it.
Consequently, the first person to click “create” decides where the subscription’s free grant lives. The documentation itself names “billing context” as a reason to separate environments. My July advice was a named owner and a named deputy. Apply the same rule here.
Where this is the wrong answer
Sustained load. Running the baseline continuously consumes about 2.6 million execution-seconds, or roughly $210 per month, plus the environment. A Logic Apps Standard WS1 plan costs about $175. So my July claim holds: predictable 24×7 load belongs on Standard.
EU data residency. The preview runs in Australia East, East Asia, North Central US, Southeast Asia, Sweden Central, UK South, and West US. West Europe and North Europe are missing. Inside the EU, Sweden Central is the only option.
Note: How my list compares with the announcement
| Region | Announcement and docs | MY portal |
|---|---|---|
| Australia East, East Asia, North Central US, Southeast Asia, UK South, West US | Yes | Yes |
| Sweden Central | Yes | No |
| Brazil South, West Central US | No | Yes |
| Central US EUAP, East US 2 EUAP | No | Yes |
Budgets that need certainty. The published rates are East US estimates, and East US is not a preview region. Furthermore, Microsoft says the new pricing rolls out in phases and may change before general availability.
Anyone counting on 30 free hours of production. The documentation states that the runtime host also runs during portal authoring. Designing in the portal draws on the same grant.
What stays open
Pricing closes one item. The others from July remain: CI/CD and environment-as-code, an audit read role, ownership transfer, a model support matrix, and a clear statement on VNet and private endpoints. Knowledge bases and sandboxes are still labelled preview, although the grant already covers both.
What I would do on Monday
My July advice to decision makers was: fund one team, one environment, one non-regulated workflow. That advice now costs close to nothing for 60 days. Three additions follow from the pricing.
First, create the free environment deliberately, in the subscription and region you intend to keep. Second, check the Free Grants tab under Settings weekly during the first month. Third, put day 61 in the calendar, and decide before that date whether the workload is worth $30 a month.
The technology is still further along than the operating model. Now the bill is, too.