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Fabric Apps pricing, worked out: a 40-user app needs F4, not F2, because the SQL database floor alone uses 87% of an F2. UAE North rates included.
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Quick answer: Fabric Apps pricing has two parts. Microsoft has announced that Power BI Pro and Premium Per User will cover building an app at no extra cost up to 1 GB per app, while running it draws capacity units (CUs) from a Fabric capacity through four meters: SQL database, GraphQL API, User Data Functions and OneLake. The capacity side is where the money goes.
Fabric Apps is still in preview. Microsoft Learn's overview page, updated 29 September 2026, says "This feature is in preview." Every figure below is a list price or published rate for a preview service, and may change before general availability.
This post covers cost only. For what Fabric Apps is, read Microsoft Fabric Apps and Rayfin. For whether it can host your application, read Fabric Apps vs a custom web app. For F-SKU sizing across a whole Fabric estate, read Which Microsoft Fabric capacity do you need. The finding that matters most for a budget: in a small internal app, the SQL database floor costs more than all the API traffic combined.
Quick answer: Microsoft has announced that Power BI Pro and Premium Per User customers will get Fabric Apps and Fabric Database capabilities at no additional cost, up to 1 GB per app. As of 18 October 2026 no Learn page documents how that works, and the Learn pricing page still says the workspace must have Fabric capacity assigned.
The primary source is a post on the Azure blog by Arun Ulag, Executive Vice President of Azure Data, dated 28 September 2026 and published for FabCon and SQLCon in Barcelona. The post says:
"Apps in Power BI will be available in preview in the coming weeks to Power BI Pro and Power BI Premium Per User customers as well as Microsoft Fabric capacity customers."
It goes on to say that Pro and PPU customers, "at no additional cost, will also have access to Fabric Apps and Fabric Database capabilities," with a limit of "up to 1 GB per app." It adds that "this experience isn't limited to Microsoft Fabric capacity customers," and describes an app builder in Power BI Desktop that gives each app a SQL database in Fabric. The Register reported the same terms on 29 September 2026.
Set that against the documentation. The Learn Fabric Apps pricing page, updated the day after the announcement, says: "Fabric apps run on Fabric capacity" and "Your workspace must have Fabric capacity assigned." Both can be true if the Pro and PPU route is a separate, undocumented path. Until it is documented, budget as though production apps need capacity.
Microsoft states two things: Pro and PPU customers get Fabric Apps and Fabric Database at no extra cost, as a future preview, and the allowance is "up to 1 GB per app." It does not state:
The 1 GB figure deserves a second look. If it refers to database storage, it is worth very little at list price: SQL database storage in Fabric is $0.25 per GB per month in East US and about $0.24 in UAE North, according to the Azure Retail Prices API on 18 October 2026. Any real value in the bundle sits in the compute that Microsoft has not yet described. Treat it as a way to prototype at no cost, not as a hosting budget.
Pro lists at $14.00 and PPU at $24.00 per user per month, paid yearly, on Microsoft's Power BI pricing page. Choosing between them is covered in the Power BI Pro vs PPU vs Fabric decision tree.
Quick answer: A Fabric App consumes CUs through SQL database compute and storage, the GraphQL API at 10 CUs per hour of processing time, User Data Functions execution, and OneLake reads, writes and storage for the frontend. SQL and GraphQL run on the interactive meter, which is the one that throttles first.
Microsoft's Fabric Apps pricing page names the four services. The rates come from each service's own billing page.
| Service | What it bills | Rate | Meter type |
|---|---|---|---|
| SQL database | Compute for every query, including the queries GraphQL sends | 1 vCore = 2.611 CUs; 2 GB memory floor while online | Interactive |
| SQL database | Allocated storage | $0.25 per GB per month (East US), outside CUs | Background |
| GraphQL API | Request and response processing time | 10 CUs per hour of processing, so 10 CU-seconds per second | Interactive |
| User Data Functions | Execution and portal test sessions | CU-per-second meter, no published rate; test sessions bill a 15-minute minimum | Interactive |
| User Data Functions | Function metadata in OneLake | Billed "even if you don't use the item" | Background |
| OneLake | Serving static content to users | 104 CU-seconds per 10,000 reads of up to 4 MB (hot tier) | Background |
| OneLake | Deploying the frontend with rayfin up | 1,626 CU-seconds per 10,000 writes of up to 4 MB | Background |
Every API call bills twice. The pricing page says SQL usage "includes queries from your application's GraphQL API." A GraphQL request is charged once on the GraphQL meter for its processing time and again on the SQL meter for the query it runs.
The SQL database has a floor. Microsoft's SQL database billing page says the database "provisions a minimum of 2 GB memory, billed as compute while the database is online," and that compute is released only "after 15 minutes of inactivity." Memory is converted at 3 GB per vCore, so the floor is 0.667 vCores, or 1.74 CUs. An F2 has 2 CUs. A database that stays online during the working day uses 87% of an F2 before it answers a single query.
User Data Functions has no published rate. The meter is named "User Data Function Execution (CU/s)" and Learn gives no number, so it has to be measured.
Three things "don't incur separate CU charges at this time": the Fabric App hosting service, Entra sign-in, and deployment beyond the SQL and OneLake work it triggers. "At this time" means the list can change.
Two costs sit outside the table. A data app that reads a Power BI semantic model sends DAX queries to it; the pricing page does not list them, so expect Power BI query load on the model's capacity. And the Azure Retail Prices API lists new "OD On-Demand Usage CU" meters for GraphQL and User Data Functions, effective 1 October 2026, at twice the standard rate. As of 18 October 2026 no Learn page says when they apply. Ask your Microsoft account team before signing a budget that assumes the standard rate.
Quick answer: Fabric capacity costs $0.22 per CU-hour pay-as-you-go in UAE North and $0.18 in East US, so an F4 runs $642 a month in UAE North and an F64 runs $10,278. A one-year reservation cuts both by about 40%.
These prices come from the Azure Retail Prices API on 18 October 2026, the source Microsoft's Azure billing guide for Fabric points to for current meters. Monthly figures use 730 hours. AED figures use the 3.6725 peg.
| SKU | CUs | CU-hours per day | UAE North PAYG / month | UAE North 1-yr reserved / month | East US PAYG / month |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F2 | 2 | 48 | $321 (AED 1,180) | $191 (AED 701) | $263 |
| F4 | 4 | 96 | $642 (AED 2,359) | $382 (AED 1,403) | $526 |
| F8 | 8 | 192 | $1,285 (AED 4,718) | $764 (AED 2,806) | $1,051 |
| F16 | 16 | 384 | $2,570 (AED 9,437) | $1,528 (AED 5,612) | $2,102 |
| F32 | 32 | 768 | $5,139 (AED 18,874) | $3,056 (AED 11,223) | $4,205 |
| F64 | 64 | 1,536 | $10,278 (AED 37,747) | $6,112 (AED 22,446) | $8,410 |
The API lists reservations at $1,146 per CU per year in UAE North and $938 in East US. The three-year price is exactly three times the one-year price, so it buys a longer commitment, not a larger discount. The CU-hours column is the daily budget a Fabric App spends from.
Quick answer: A 40-user approvals app uses about 19 CU-hours a day and needs F4, because the SQL database floor alone pushes an F2 past 100% during the working day. A 400-user department app uses about 104 CU-hours a day and fits an F16.
The rates are published. The traffic figures are assumptions, because Microsoft publishes no typical GraphQL processing time; replace them with pilot data before they go into a budget.
An internal app where a finance team submits and approves requests during a 9-hour working day, 22 days a month.
| Item | Assumption | Calculation | CU-hours per day |
|---|---|---|---|
| GraphQL API | 40 users × 150 requests, 0.2 s processing each | 6,000 × 0.2 s × 10 CU ÷ 3,600 | 3.3 |
| SQL database | Online 9.25 hours at the 2 GB floor | 0.667 vCore × 2.611 × 9.25 h | 16.1 |
| OneLake static content | 1,920 file reads under 4 MB | 1,920 ÷ 10,000 × 104 ÷ 3,600 | 0.01 |
| Total | 19.4 |
That is about 428 CU-hours a month, worth $94 at the UAE North rate, but the working-hours draw decides the SKU: 19.4 CU-hours over 9.25 hours averages 2.1 CUs. An F2 has 2. The app runs above 100% of an F2 for the whole working day, and smoothing cannot absorb a load that never drops.
Result: F4. The app uses about 53% of an F4 during working hours, which leaves room for peaks. In UAE North that is $642 a month pay-as-you-go or $382 reserved.
A pay-as-you-go F4 paused outside an 11-hour working day costs about $213 a month in UAE North. Per Microsoft's pause and resume page, pausing stops compute billing, but a paused capacity serves nothing and any smoothed usage still owed is billed at the pause, so the schedule needs an owner.
Note where the cost sits: GraphQL traffic is 17% of the total and the database floor is 83%. More users raise the GraphQL line, but the floor is paid the moment the database wakes up.
An operational app used across a department for 12 hours a day, with heavier queries.
| Item | Assumption | Calculation | CU-hours per day |
|---|---|---|---|
| GraphQL API | 400 users × 200 requests, 0.25 s processing each | 80,000 × 0.25 s × 10 CU ÷ 3,600 | 55.6 |
| SQL database | Online 12.25 hours averaging 1.5 vCores | 1.5 × 2.611 × 12.25 h | 48.0 |
| OneLake static content | 28,800 file reads under 4 MB | 28,800 ÷ 10,000 × 104 ÷ 3,600 | 0.08 |
| User Data Functions | Not modelled | No published rate | Measure |
| Total | 103.6 |
The average draw over the working day is 8.5 CUs, which is 106% of an F8. If the busiest hour runs at 1.5 times the average, the peak is 12.7 CUs, which is 79% of an F16.
Result: F16. In UAE North that is $2,570 a month pay-as-you-go or $1,528 reserved. The capacity sizing post uses sustained use above 80% as the signal to size up, and this peak sits right at that line, so the pilot has to confirm the peak ratio.
The F64 rule governs Power BI content. Microsoft's licensing page says that "on F SKUs smaller than F64, each user viewing Power BI content must have Pro, PPU, or an individual trial," while on F64 or larger a free licence with a viewer role is enough. The same page lets free users create and share non-Power BI Fabric items on F or Trial capacity. The Fabric Apps pages say nothing about what an app user needs; the Fabric Apps vs custom web app post works through that question.
The line matters when the same 400 people also read Power BI reports on the app's capacity. In UAE North, a reserved F16 plus 400 Pro licences costs $7,128 a month. A reserved F64 costs $6,112 and removes the Pro requirement for viewing Power BI content. The reserved crossover in UAE North is about 327 viewers. If those users already hold Pro, for example through Microsoft 365 E5, there is no licence saving to capture. The full crossover method is in Microsoft Fabric vs Power BI.
Quick answer: SQL and GraphQL are interactive operations, smoothed over a minimum of five minutes. When a capacity has used its next 10 minutes of CUs, new interactive work is delayed 20 seconds, and after 60 minutes it is rejected. Capacity overage, which Microsoft says is on by default for new capacities, avoids that by billing the excess at three times the pay-as-you-go rate.
The Fabric throttling policy smooths interactive operations over a minimum of five minutes and up to 64 minutes, and background operations over 24 hours. Throttling then runs in stages:
| Future capacity already used | Stage | What app users see |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 10 minutes | Overage protection | Nothing |
| 10 to 60 minutes | Interactive delay | Each new request waits 20 seconds at submission |
| 60 minutes to 24 hours | Interactive rejection | Requests fail with an error |
| More than 24 hours | Background rejection | All requests fail, interactive and background |
For an app, interactive delay means every screen load and every save waits 20 seconds, which users experience as an outage.
Throttling applies to the capacity, not to the app. A Fabric App on the same capacity as production Power BI reports can push those reports into delay, and a heavy report workload can do the same to the app. Example 2 at 79% of an F16 leaves little room for anything else.
Microsoft's capacity overage page says: "Capacity overage is enabled by default when you create a Fabric capacity." When it activates, it bills the usage that would have caused throttling "at three times the pay-as-you-go rate." In the Retail Prices API that meter is $0.66 per CU-hour in UAE North and $0.54 in East US. The admin sets a rolling 24-hour threshold in CU-hours, and Microsoft states that the threshold "isn't a hard spending cap."
Microsoft advises keeping the threshold below one third of the SKU's daily CU-hours, where overage costs about the same as moving up a size. For an F4 that is 32 CU-hours, about $21 a day in UAE North at the overage rate.
Three controls limit the exposure:
Quick answer: UAE North is not listed as excluding Fabric App (preview), and its CU rate is 22% higher than East US. UAE Central and Qatar Central are Power BI-only regions, and no Saudi region appears in the table.
Microsoft's region availability page, updated 6 October 2026, lists UAE North with all Fabric workloads and no unavailable features. The page lists exceptions only, so an empty entry means not excluded rather than confirmed. The Fabric Apps vs custom web app post covers the Gulf region detail.
Saudi Arabia has no Fabric region today. Microsoft announced on 31 August 2026 that its Saudi Arabia East region will open in November 2026, without naming Fabric among its services, and on 18 October 2026 the Azure Retail Prices API listed no Fabric prices for it.
At $0.22 against $0.18 per CU-hour, the same app costs 22% more to run in UAE North than in East US. For an F16 that is $2,570 against $2,102 a month, a gap of $5,606 a year. Where data must stay in the UAE, that premium is the cost of residency and belongs in the business case as a named line.
Quick answer: Run the app for two weeks on a pay-as-you-go F-SKU of its own, read each meter in the Fabric Capacity Metrics app, and replace every assumption in the worked examples with a measured figure. The four numbers that decide the SKU are CU-seconds per request, database online hours, peak-hour ratio and User Data Functions execution cost.
The Fabric Capacity Metrics app shows usage per item and per operation. Three setup rules make its numbers usable:
Then collect these figures:
| Measure | Where to find it | What it replaces |
|---|---|---|
| GraphQL CU-seconds per request | "Query" operation, divided by request count from the app's own logs | The 0.2 to 0.25 s assumption |
| SQL compute per day and hours online | Item kind SQLDbNative, "SQL Usage" operation | The floor and vCore assumptions |
| What keeps the database awake | SQL Usage timepoints outside working hours | The 9 to 12 hour online window |
| User Data Functions cost per call | User Data Functions execution operations | The unmodelled line |
| Semantic model query load | Power BI operations on the model's capacity | The data app gap |
| Peak 30-second timepoint and interactive delay % | Compute page, throttling tab | The 1.5× peak ratio |
| Billable or preview | The billing type field on each operation | Whether today's cost reflects the future cost |
The last row matters for a preview service. Microsoft's SQL database billing page says the billing type field "is used to determine whether the workload is in preview mode or billable." Any operation flagged as preview means the pilot bill understates the production bill.
A database that never goes idle overnight changes Example 1. At the floor, 24 hours online is 41.8 CU-hours a day, 87% of an F2's daily budget, with no users at all. Find out what touches the database at night, such as health checks or scheduled functions, and whether it needs to.
Beyond The Analytics works with UAE and Saudi enterprises on Fabric capacity planning and Fabric Apps pilots. If you are budgeting a Fabric App and want the meters above measured against your own workload, get in touch.
Microsoft has announced it will be, within limits. An Azure blog post by Arun Ulag dated 28 September 2026 says Pro and PPU customers will get Fabric Apps and Fabric Database at no additional cost, up to 1 GB per app, in a preview arriving "in the coming weeks." As of 18 October 2026 no Learn page documents the terms, and the Learn pricing page still requires Fabric capacity.
Only a very light one. SQL database in Fabric bills a 2 GB memory floor as compute while online, which is 1.74 CUs, or 87% of an F2's 2 CUs. A 40-user app with ordinary GraphQL traffic averages 2.1 CUs during the working day, more than an F2 provides. F4 is the realistic start for an app with daily users.
Microsoft bills API for GraphQL at 10 CUs per hour of request and response processing time, which is 10 CU-seconds for each second of processing. A request that takes 0.2 seconds costs 2 CU-seconds. A million such requests cost about 556 CU-hours, roughly $122 in UAE North or $100 in East US at pay-as-you-go rates as of October 2026, plus the SQL database compute each request triggers.
Microsoft's Fabric Apps documentation does not say. The Fabric licensing page lets free users create and share non-Power BI Fabric items on F or Trial capacity, and requires Pro or PPU for viewing Power BI content below F64. If your app users also read Power BI reports on the same capacity below F64, budget for Pro. Confirm the app-specific answer with Microsoft before rollout.
Yes. As of 18 October 2026 the Azure Retail Prices API lists Fabric capacity at $0.22 per CU-hour in UAE North and $0.18 in East US, a 22% premium. An F4 costs $642 a month pay-as-you-go in UAE North against $526 in East US.
Once a capacity has used its next 10 minutes of CUs, Fabric delays new interactive requests by 20 seconds. Past 60 minutes it rejects them, and past 24 hours it rejects everything. Capacity overage, which Microsoft says is enabled by default on new capacities, prevents that by billing the excess at three times the pay-as-you-go rate, up to a daily threshold the admin sets that is not a hard cap.
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