Offline apps without AppSheet or Power Apps

Last updated 2 November 2026.

If you need a business app that keeps working with no signal, two big names come up first: Google AppSheet and Microsoft Power Apps. Both really do work offline. Both also bring their own company’s accounts, licences and setup along with them.

This page says plainly when each of them is the right answer, and when something else fits better.

AppSheet offline, in short

Google’s help page Offline and Sync: The Essentials sets the rules. Each device has to open the app online once first. Starting the app with no signal is a setting the app maker turns on. Photos and files only stay on the device if another setting is on. Maps do not show offline. And Google says not to go days or weeks with no connection at all.

The data usually lives in Google Sheets or another Google source, and paid plans are priced per user (see AppSheet pricing).

Power Apps offline, in short

Microsoft’s page Mobile offline for canvas apps sets the rules. Offline works in the Power Apps mobile app on iOS, Android and Windows, not in a web browser. The data has to be in Dataverse, Microsoft’s own database. A SharePoint list does not work offline that way.

Dataverse comes with the premium licence, which Microsoft lists at $20 per user per month (checked on 2 November 2026; if it has changed, theirs is the number to trust). For a team of ten, that is $200 a month before anything else.

When they are the right answer

• Your people work from phones. Both run offline on phones today. Bionic Forms does not yet.
• You already live in Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 and someone there can set the offline options up.
• You need the phone camera or GPS inside the app.

When something else fits better

• The work happens on a laptop or a Windows tablet: inspectors, surveyors, office staff on the road, people at a site with no wifi.
• You do not want the app tied to Google or Microsoft, or to a spreadsheet that someone can sort the wrong way.
• You want offline to be how it works, not a setting.
• You do not want to pay per person.

What Bionic Forms does instead

You describe the app in a sentence (“customers, the jobs for each one, the parts used, photos and notes”) and the assistant proposes the collections, fields and views. You look it over and say yes. There are no formulas to write.

The desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux keeps a full, encrypted copy of the database on the computer. Everything works with no connection, for as long as you like: adding and editing records, search, files, printing. When it finds a connection, changes go up and come down by themselves. If two people changed the same record while apart, both versions are kept and a person picks.

Free covers unlimited apps and 10,000 entries per app. Business is $29 a month for the whole team, with unlimited users.

Where this is honest

• No phone app yet. On a phone you use the browser, which needs a signal. If phones are the whole job, AppSheet or Power Apps fit better today.
• Building with the assistant needs a connection. Using the app does not.
• We are small and pre-launch. Google and Microsoft are not going anywhere. We say plainly which parts are not finished, and your data can always be exported.