Building a document processing flow in Microsoft Power Automate is great, until you see the pricing for “AI Builder”.

If you want to extract specific fields from invoices (Total, Invoice Date, Vendor) and save them to a SharePoint List, Microsoft’s native AI credits can cost you upwards of $500/month for moderate volumes.

The Cheaper Alternative (HTTP Request)

You can achieve the same result for a fraction of the cost by using an external API. Here is the architecture:

Step 1: When a file is created (SharePoint/OneDrive) Trigger the flow when a new PDF lands in your folder.

Step 2: HTTP Request Instead of the “Extract information from forms” action, use the generic “HTTP” action.

• Method: POST
• URI: https://api.parserdata.com/upload (Example)
• Body: Send the file content.

Step 3: Parse JSON The API returns a structured JSON object with all the fields: { "invoice_number": "INV-001", "total": 150.00, "date": "2025-01-20" }

Step 4: Create Item (SharePoint) Map the JSON fields to your SharePoint list columns.

Why do this?

• Cost: You avoid the expensive AI Builder capacity add-ons.
• Flexibility: External APIs often handle complex table extraction better than the standard pre-built models.

Has anyone else migrated away from AI Builder recently?