What is Dataverse?
Last reviewed September 13, 2026
Dataverse is Microsoft’s data platform, the layer that actually stores the records behind Dynamics 365 and Power Apps. When your team creates a contact, logs a call, or attaches a scan to a note in Dynamics, Dataverse is where that data lives.
What Dataverse actually is
Dataverse organizes data into tables, and it meters storage in three separately priced kinds of capacity. Database capacity holds structured records and is the expensive tier, around $40 per gigabyte per month at list for add-on capacity. File capacity holds file-type data, including note and email attachments, at roughly $2. Log capacity holds audit data. Your tenant gets a base entitlement plus an accrual per user license, and everything beyond that is purchased.
The detail worth knowing: attachments count mostly against the cheaper file tier. Older articles that price attachments at the $40 database rate are working from math Microsoft has since changed.
Why Dataverse storage matters
Capacity is not just a bill. When a tenant tips into overage, admins lose the ability to create, copy, or restore environments until it is resolved, and every tenant admin receives a weekly warning email. On environments that have run Dynamics for years, the tables holding attachments are usually near the top of the consumption report, which is why storage conversations so often turn out to be document conversations: the bytes filling the meter are scanned agreements and signed letters attached to notes.
Related
See how to read your own capacity report, or what it looks like to move note attachments out of Dataverse and into an archive. Related terms: annotation (CRM note), system of record, OCR.
Frequently asked questions
Is Dataverse the same thing as Dynamics 365?
No. Dynamics 365 is the application people work in; Dataverse is the underlying platform that actually stores the data behind it, including Power Apps. When you create a contact or attach a file to a note in Dynamics, Dataverse is where that record physically lives.
Why does my Dataverse capacity report show attachments so high?
Note and email attachments accumulate for years and are billed against Dataverse file capacity, which on a mature environment is often the largest consumer of storage. They are a common reason a tenant approaches its capacity limit even though the structured data looks modest.
What happens if my organization goes over its Dataverse capacity?
Admins lose the ability to create, copy, or restore environments until the overage is resolved, and Microsoft sends the tenant admin a weekly warning email in the meantime. Buying additional capacity or reducing what is stored are the two ways out.