Dataverse file storage cost in 2026: what’s included, what you pay for, and how to estimate it
Where attachments and notes land in Dataverse, how much file capacity your licences already give you, what Microsoft charges for the rest, and a small estimator to put a number on it.
Dataverse file capacity is a tenant-wide pool: a one-time default of 20 GB (Power Apps Premium) or 40 GB (Dynamics 365 Sales, Customer Service or Field Service Enterprise), plus 2 GB for each eligible user licence. Anything above that is bought in 1 GB add-ons at a list price of $2 per GB per month, billed annually.
Three kinds of Dataverse capacity
Dataverse does not bill storage as one number. Since 2019 it has been split into relational data (database), attachments (file) and audit logs (log), each with its own entitlement and its own add-on. The Power Platform Licensing Guide (September 2026, p. 20) defines them like this:
- Database stores table definitions and data — the rows themselves.
- File stores attachments to notes and emails: documents, images, videos, PDFs.
- Log records changes to tables and columns over time, for auditing and compliance.
Microsoft’s capacity-based storage page lists what counts towards file capacity: the Attachment and AnnotationBase tables (email attachments and notes), any table with a file or full-size image column, tables ending in “– Analytics” used by Insights apps, and the WebResourceBase and RibbonClientMetadataBase system tables. The file itself goes to file storage; the database keeps the attributes needed to find it. Audit and plug-in trace logs go to log; everything else is database.
The list moves. Microsoft’s storage change log records that in April 2026 solution-aware tables and metadata started being reported in file storage rather than the database tier. Microsoft says overall usage is unchanged, but if your file figure jumped this spring while database fell, that is probably why. The same page notes that attachments and notes have been moving from database to file for some time.
What is included
File capacity is not per environment. It is a tenant entitlement, pooled across every production and sandbox environment, built from three parts that the admin center labels “Storage capacity, by source”: the org (tenant) default, more for every user licence, and anything you bought.
The tenant default
The first qualifying subscription gives the tenant a one-time default. Buying more licences does not raise it: the Power Platform Licensing Guide says additional subscriptions “do not add to the tenant’s default capacity”, and the Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide (September 2026, p. 63) says default capacity “is not cumulative”. The file figures in the current guides are:
| First subscription | Default | Per licence |
|---|---|---|
| Power Apps Premium | 20 GB | 2 GB |
| Power Automate Premium | 20 GB | 2 GB |
| Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise, Customer Service Enterprise, Field Service | 40 GB | 2 GB |
| Dynamics 365 Sales Premium | 60 GB | 2 GB |
| Dynamics 365 Sales Professional, Customer Service Professional | 40 GB | none |
Sources: Power Platform Licensing Guide pp. 20–21 and Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide p. 63, both September 2026. Microsoft Learn’s Power Platform licensing FAQ gives the same accruals: 2 GB of file per Power Apps per-user licence and 400 MB per per-app licence.
Per-licence accrual
On top of the default, each eligible user licence adds capacity to the pool. The Licensing Guide’s worked example: a new tenant with 10 Power Apps Premium and 20 Power Automate Premium licences has 20 GB of default file capacity plus 30 × 2 GB accrued, so 80 GB in total. Not every licence accrues. Microsoft’s capacity page notes that the Team Member licence gives no per-user database, file or log entitlement, and the Dynamics 365 guide says attach licences don’t add capacity (Customer Insights is the exception).
Where the documents disagree, and the default environment
Two details are worth knowing before you plan around a number. First, the September 2026 Power Platform guide is inconsistent about database: its table lists a 20 GB database default for Power Apps Premium, while the worked example on the next page, and Microsoft Learn’s Power Automate licensing FAQ, still say 10 GB. The file figure (20 GB) is the same in both places. Second, the default environment comes with its own allowance of 3 GB database, 3 GB file and 1 GB log. The admin center shows only what that environment uses above the allowance. Trial, developer, preview, support and Teams environments don’t count towards capacity at all.
In practice, don’t reconstruct your entitlement from the guides if you can read it. The admin center shows your actual total, and a See Dataverse capacity per license button that breaks it down into default and per-licence parts.
What you pay for above it
Extra file capacity is sold as the Dataverse File capacity add-on. The Power Platform Licensing Guide (September 2026, p. 22) lists it at $2 per GB per month, in 1 GB increments with a minimum of one, billed annually. For comparison, the same table lists the database add-on at $40 and the log add-on at $10 per GB per month. The Power Apps pricing page confirms that add-ons are sold per GB and applied at tenant level, but the page we read only shows the database price, so the file price here comes from the guide.
There is also a pay-as-you-go route. An environment linked to a pay-as-you-go billing plan gets 1 GB of database and 1 GB of file capacity, and the guide lists the file meter at $2.40 per GB per month for use above that, billed through Azure. Those are US-dollar list prices. What you actually pay depends on your agreement, currency and reseller.
What happens when you go over
Going over doesn’t stop your apps, but it isn’t free of consequences. According to Microsoft’s capacity page:
- Borrowing comes first. Spare log capacity, then spare database capacity, is used to cover a file overage before the tenant counts as over. It doesn’t work the other way: spare file capacity can’t cover database or log.
- Notifications go to tenant, Power Platform and Dynamics 365 admins every week when any capacity type has less than 15% left, again below 5%, and when the tenant is over. You can’t opt out. Banners also appear in the admin center, Power Apps and model-driven apps.
- Admin operations are blocked. Creating, copying, restoring or recovering an environment, converting a trial to paid, and adding a Dataverse database all need spare capacity (at least 1 GB for most of these). These checks use each capacity type on its own, so borrowing doesn’t help here.
- The licence terms still apply. If you use more than you’re entitled to, you must buy more, and Microsoft “might suspend use of the online service” after reasonable notice.
If you need time, the capacity extension gives you 45 days to reduce usage or buy capacity. You can request it once you’ve used 80% of capacity, up to three times in any 365 days.
How to see your usage
From Microsoft’s capacity documentation:
- Sign in to the Power Platform admin center.
- Select Licensing, then Dataverse under Products.
- The Usage per storage type tile shows file consumption against your prepaid entitlement. Select File to see which environments and tables use it. The Consumption per table view gives up to three months of daily trend.
- For the tenant view by source (default, user licences, extra storage), go to Licensing > Capacity add-ons > Summary. You need a tenant admin, Power Platform admin or Dynamics 365 admin role to see it.
The table view is what you actually need, because it shows whether your file capacity is going on email attachments, notes, file columns or something unexpected. Microsoft is also rolling out a Dataverse storage advisor (in preview) on the same page, which suggests clean-ups table by table.
Estimate your file capacity cost
Enter your own figures from the admin center. The defaults are an example: a tenant whose first subscription is a Dynamics 365 Enterprise app (40 GB default), 25 licences each accruing 2 GB, 150 GB of file in use and 5 GB of growth a month. The price is Microsoft’s US-dollar list price, so change it if your agreement says otherwise.
File capacity estimator
The formula: included = default + (licences × per-licence) + add-ons you own. Over = used − included − spare log and database, rounded up to whole GB because add-ons come in 1 GB units. Monthly cost = over × price; yearly = monthly × 12. In 12 months, used = today + 12 × growth.
This assumes spare log and database capacity stays the same, and it doesn’t include the default environment’s 3 GB allowance. List prices only, excluding tax.
Ways to reduce file capacity
Buying capacity is the simplest fix and at $2 per GB it’s often the right one. When the number gets large, or keeps growing, these are the options:
Delete or trim what you don’t need
Microsoft’s Free up storage space article gives four file-capacity methods: find and remove large email attachments with Advanced Find, delete old emails with attachments using a recurring bulk-deletion job, and the same two for notes with attachments. Deletion is permanent. Storage figures can take up to 72 hours to update, and removing 10 MB of data doesn’t necessarily free 10 MB, because consumption includes metadata and encryption overhead.
Move documents to SharePoint
Server-based SharePoint integration stores documents in SharePoint in the context of a Dataverse record, so new documents go to a SharePoint library instead of Dataverse attachments. It is built into model-driven and Dynamics 365 apps. It sets where documents go; it doesn’t move notes and attachments that are already there, so plan that migration separately. Two further points: the files then count towards your SharePoint storage instead, so check that side too, and the document grid inside Dynamics 365 stops at 5,000 rows.
Offload to Azure Blob Storage with a third-party tool
Several third-party attachment-management tools move note and email attachments out to Azure Blob Storage and leave a link in Dataverse. You swap Microsoft’s file-capacity price for Azure storage plus the vendor’s licence, and you now depend on that vendor. Compare their price with the add-on cost your estimate gives you.
Configure image columns for what you actually need
An image column stores full-size images only when Can store full images is on. Otherwise only the 144 × 144 thumbnail is kept, and full-size images are what count as file storage. The same page says to set the maximum image size (default 10 MB, up to 30 MB) to the smallest size you can use.
Don’t expect archiving to help with files
Dataverse long-term retention compresses database data, but Microsoft says that for file and image attachments it doesn’t reduce capacity consumed. It’s the right tool for old records, not old attachments.
Know what the files are, whoever you work with
Disclosure: this part is about our own product. SSS DMS is a document workspace for Dataverse records that shows documents from Dataverse and one SharePoint site with multiple document libraries in one place. It enforces a folder convention you define once in a model-driven app. To be clear about what it doesn’t do: it doesn’t move files, and its product page says so (“nothing is migrated or copied”). It doesn’t reduce file capacity by itself. What it gives you is a record of which files belong to which record, in which library. DMS is in development. It isn’t generally available, and early access will open to a limited number of environments before general release. It is an add-on to SSS DocGen, listed on our pricing page at €4,500 per production environment per year on top of the DocGen licence. Our own guidance is that below roughly 250 GB of file capacity, the out-of-the-box SharePoint integration is the better choice.
Which option fits
- Your estimate shows no overage, or a few GB. Do nothing, or buy the add-on. At the $2 list price, 10 GB costs $240 a year, so it isn’t worth a project.
- The overage is mostly old email attachments or notes nobody opens. Set up a recurring bulk-deletion job, after agreeing a retention rule with whoever owns the records.
- Documents keep arriving and people work on them. Send new documents to SharePoint through server-based integration and plan a one-off migration of existing attachments.
- You need attachments to stay as attachments but cost less. Price an Azure Blob attachment tool against your yearly add-on figure and include the vendor dependency.
- Image-heavy tables are the top consumers. Check which image columns store full images and whether they need to.
- Large estate, and nobody can say what the capacity is being spent on. That is a governance problem, not a storage problem. Our product for it is below.
SSS DMS · early access
Know what your file capacity is being spent on
SSS DMS is a document workspace for the documents attached to your Dataverse records, across Dataverse and SharePoint, with a folder convention you define once. DMS is in development. It isn’t generally available, and early access will open to a limited number of environments before general release. It is an add-on to SSS DocGen. Register your interest to hear when early access opens.
Sources
Microsoft documentation, licensing guides and pricing pages this article relies on (checked 25 September 2026):
- Dataverse capacity-based storage details, Microsoft Learn
- Dataverse capacity-based storage overview (including the storage change log), Microsoft Learn
- Power Platform Licensing Guide, September 2026 (PDF), pp. 20–22, Microsoft
- Dynamics 365 Licensing Guide, September 2026 (PDF), p. 63, Microsoft
- Power Platform licensing FAQs, Microsoft Learn
- Power Automate licensing FAQ, Microsoft Learn
- Power Apps pricing, microsoft.com
- Free up storage space, Microsoft Learn
- Set up SharePoint integration, Microsoft Learn
- Work with image column definitions using code, Microsoft Learn
- Dataverse long term data retention overview, Microsoft Learn