SPFx or Power Apps? Choosing how to build a business app on Microsoft 365
Both run inside Microsoft 365 and both can use SharePoint data. A practical comparison of the SharePoint Framework and Power Apps — who builds it, where data lives, licensing, limits and long-term ownership.
Brillienta team·Published ·7 min readWhen a team asks for “an app in SharePoint”, there are two common ways to build it: the SharePoint Framework (SPFx), which is code written by developers, and Power Apps, Microsoft's low-code platform. We use both — our six products are SPFx solutions, and many client projects use Power Apps and Power Automate. This is how we decide.
What each one is
- SPFx is Microsoft's development model for SharePoint Online and Teams. Web parts and extensions are written in TypeScript (usually with React), packaged as an
.sppkg, deployed through the tenant app catalog, and run in the browser as the signed-in user. - Power Apps builds canvas apps (screen-by-screen, formula-driven) and model-driven apps (generated from a Dataverse data model). Apps are made in the browser by makers, connect to data through connectors, and are shared like documents.
The questions that decide it
| Question | Leans to SPFx | Leans to Power Apps |
|---|---|---|
| Who will maintain it? | A development team or partner | Business makers with IT oversight |
| Where should it appear? | Inside SharePoint pages, Teams tabs, list forms and site navigation | As a standalone app, embedded where needed |
| How complex is the interface? | Rich, interactive, branded experiences | Forms, approvals and data entry screens |
| Licensing | Included with SharePoint Online | Standard connectors are included with most Microsoft 365 plans; premium connectors and Dataverse need Power Apps licences |
| Data volume on SharePoint lists | Can page and index queries in code | Watch delegation: non-delegable queries only see the first 500 rows by default (2,000 maximum) |
Where the data lives
Both can store data in SharePoint lists, which keeps it in your tenant under SharePoint permissions and retention. Lists hold up to 30 million items, but views and queries over 5,000 items need indexed columns — design for that from day one. Power Apps can also use Dataverse, a relational database with row-level security roles, which suits complex relational data but adds licensing. SPFx solutions usually use SharePoint lists or, through Microsoft Graph or your own API, other services.
Security model
Both act with the user's identity. An SPFx solution that calls Microsoft Graph requests permissions that an administrator approves once for the tenant; they are delegated, so a user can only reach what they already could. Power Apps uses connectors with the user's credentials, and data-loss-prevention policies in the Power Platform admin center control which connectors may be combined.
Our rule of thumb
- Choose Power Apps and Power Automate for departmental forms, approvals and workflows that business teams should be able to change themselves.
- Choose SPFx when the experience must live inside SharePoint or Teams pages, needs a polished interface, will be used across the organisation, or must be versioned, tested and deployed like software.
- Combine them freely: an SPFx web part can sit on the page while Power Automate sends the emails, as our Helpdesk does.