Custom Pages and Canvas Apps: What’s the Difference, Really?

If you’ve worked with Power Apps for at least the past few years, you’ve probably heard the term Custom Page and wondered how it fits alongside Canvas Apps. Custom pages and Canvas apps both use the same drag-and-drop designer, Power Fx, and data connectors. So what’s the real difference? In short, Custom Pages bring the flexibility of Canvas Apps into Model-driven Apps, giving makers a way to modernise forms, dashboards, and navigation without leaving the structured environment of Dynamics 365 or Dataverse. Now custom pages are not new, and people have been writing about them since 2021 when they were first announced by Microsoft. But I’ve been working with custom pages more and more and love doing so, but I am surprised by how few clients are aware of them. I’ve been wanting to start a new series focusing on Custom Pages for some time, so to get it started, in this post I will look at the similarities and the key differences between Custom Pages and Canvas Apps, and help you decide when to use each one.

The short answer: they share the same DNA, but they’re built for very different roles. If you understand both, you can design experiences that fit together seamlessly.

The shared foundation

Both Canvas Apps and Custom Pages live inside the Power Apps ecosystem and use the same low-code designer. You’ll work with the same familiar elements such as screens, controls, Power Fx, modern components, and connectors. At their core, both give you flexibility to design the user experience exactly how you want it. Whether you’re building a mobile inspection app or a tailored screen inside Dynamics 365, the foundation is the same.

They share:

• The same drag-and-drop designer
• Power Fx for logic and formulas
• Access to Dataverse and external connectors
• Reusable components and responsive layouts
• A design-first mindset focused on user experience

If you can build a Canvas App, you can build a Custom Page. The key difference lies in where and why you use them.

Where they diverge

The similarities stop once you consider deployment, context, and control.

1. Deployment and context

• Canvas Apps are standalone applications. They can be pinned in Teams, embedded in a dashboard, or opened directly on mobile.
• Custom Pages live inside a Model-driven App. They enhance or replace parts of that app like creating a modern home screen, a tailored record view, or a guided process page.

2. Navigation and flow

• Canvas Apps give you complete control over navigation. You design the flow and logic that determines what happens next.
• Custom Pages usually fit into a predefined flow. They might appear when a user clicks a button in a model-driven form or navigates from the sitemap.

3. Data integration

• Canvas Apps can connect to just about anything: Dataverse, SharePoint, SQL, APIs, Excel, and more.
• Custom Pages are typically tied to Dataverse and the record context of the app they live in. That context awareness makes them powerful for model-driven experiences but less suited for multi-system scenarios.

4. Security

• Canvas Apps rely on app sharing and connector permissions.
• Custom Pages inherit Dataverse security and app permissions automatically. If a user can access the model-driven app, they can access its Custom Pages.

Choosing the right approach

Here’s a quick way to decide which route makes sense:

Think of Canvas Apps as your “blank canvas” for standalone apps, and Custom Pages as your tool for modernising or extending model-driven apps without breaking the structured experience users already rely on.

There are some differences

When starting out with custom pages, I was frustrated with the documentation and also search results in Google (sorry Bing!). All roads seemed to end up back at documentation or blog posts about Canvas Apps, and while identical or very similar in some aspects, there were also times when components just didn’t exist in Custom Pages or the settings available were not the same.

What to expect in my series

I want a place that focuses on Custom Pages only. Any future posts will only be about Custom Pages in this series. I’ll show how to get started, common features and functionality you might want to use, how to add your page to a Model Driven App, and a whole lot more. I hope you find the series useful! Some great resources that might be helpful for you, especially if you’ve never worked on Canvas Apps:

• Matthew Devaney – one of the best and a go to site for all things Canvas Apps – No Ads, No Fluff, Just Power Platform Stuff
• Shane Young – the OG for Canvas Apps – Shane Young – YouTube
• Scott Durow – creator of the Ribbon Workbench, giving credit here because it was this page where I learned how to create my first Custom Page – Custom page dialogs inside model-driven apps using a Ribbon Workbench smart button
• Diana Birkelbach – she has written some great posts about Custom Pages, including this one that also shows how you can add it to your model-driven app – How To Make Dialogs For Model-Driven Apps Using Custom Pages
• Official Microsoft Documentation – Converge model-driven and canvas apps using the custom page

Original Post http://meganvwalker.com/custom-pages-and-canvas-apps-what-is-the-difference/