8 of 10 low-code platforms print a price; only 2 print every tier

01Eight print a price, two print every tier

Start with whether you can find out the price without a sales call. Microsoft lists Power Apps Premium at US$20 a user a month paid yearly, falling to US$12 only with a 2,000-seat minimum, plus a free developer plan.¹ Salesforce lists Platform Starter at US$25 a user a month and Platform Plus at US$100, billed annually.² Those two are the only vendors of the ten that publish their whole ladder.

Six more print an entry price and then stop. Quickbase shows Team from US$35 and Business from US$55 a user a month, priced annually, with a footnote that the figure “does not include platform minimum”, a fee its page never states.³ Zoho Creator shows its plans with prices set for the visitor’s country, plus a free edition for one app.⁴ Mendix lists Basic from US$60 to US$75 a month and Standard from US$1,090, with Premium on quote.⁷ Bubble prices per app, metered in workload units, with Enterprise on request.⁸ Betty Blocks lists Create at €1,500 a month and Scale at €3,500, plus €7,500 for onboarding.⁹ Caspio lists Team at US$270 a month on an annual term and Business at US$540, with Enterprise through sales.¹⁰

Appian says only that it is “priced per user, per month, per app” and offers a free Community Edition.⁵ OutSystems describes its Developer Cloud as “priced per application, user, and advanced add-ons” and asks you to contact the team for a custom quote; its Personal Edition is free.⁶

02What ten people pay at the entry plan

Take the case most small businesses start with: one internal app, ten staff using it. Four of the platforms print a number that can be multiplied out for that case without guessing. Power Apps Premium is US$200 a month.¹ Salesforce Platform Starter is US$250.² Caspio Team is US$270, and its app users are unlimited.¹⁰ Quickbase Team is US$350 before the unstated platform minimum, so it is the floor of that bill, not the bill.³

The ones left off the chart are not necessarily dearer; they simply do not let you do this sum. Mendix’s page says the price per user falls as volume grows but does not print the user count behind “starting at”.⁷ Betty Blocks’ Create plan at €1,500 a month, before €7,500 of onboarding, is priced for an app bundle, not a team of ten, which tells you who it is built for.⁹

03The meter decides the bill when the app works

A low-code app that works spreads. The order tracker built for the sales desk ends up used by the warehouse, the accounts team and the field staff. That is the moment the pricing unit matters more than the starting price. Power Apps, Salesforce Platform and Quickbase charge for every person who uses the app.¹²³ Caspio charges for the account and limits the people who build, five app authors on Team, while app users are unlimited on every plan.¹⁰

There is a third meter, and it is the hardest to forecast: usage. Bubble prices each app by plan and meters it in workload units, the server work the app does, so a busy app moves up a tier whatever its headcount.⁸ Quickbase offers a usage-based option under each plan, priced on the collective usage of all users rather than on seats.³ Usage pricing suits an app with many occasional users, a supplier portal or a field form opened twice a month, and punishes one with a few heavy users. Neither vendor publishes a calculator you can run against your own forecast on the page, so ask for one in writing before the build.

That does not make the flat meter the right answer. Power Apps sits next to the Microsoft 365 data many small businesses already hold, and it is one of only two platforms here whose full price list is public. Per-user pricing is fair when every user gets real value from the app every day. The point is to choose the meter on purpose: if the app will be opened by the whole company or by customers, a per-user platform needs a second look before the first app is built, not at the first renewal, when the data and the habits are already inside it and moving costs more than the licence.

04A shortlist in four questions

The 2023 list ended by telling readers to “carefully assess their needs”. Here is what that means in practice, in the order that removes the most platforms fastest. Each question uses only what the vendors print, so a small business can run it in an afternoon before any demo.

For most ten-to-fifty-person businesses that sequence ends in one of two places: Power Apps if the company already lives in Microsoft 365 and every user is staff, or a flat or usage-metered platform if the app will reach suppliers or customers. Zoho Creator belongs on the shortlist for any business already paying for Zoho, because it works on the same Zoho data and is sold by an Indian company.