How much does it cost to connect SAP, Dynamics 365 or a legacy ERP?

• 01Three cost tiers, set by what the source exposes. API-first (Dynamics 365 finance and operations via OData data entities, Dynamics 365 Sales and Business Central via their Dataverse or OData surface, most SaaS systems): a pipeline reads the documented endpoint and the work is configuration. Extractor-based (SAP ECC, SAP S/4HANA): read through an extraction layer, or through CDS-based OData services, rather than hitting production tables. Legacy or no API (older on-premises systems, in-house applications, Oracle EBS): a read replica of the database or a scheduled flat-file drop into a landing location, plus the discovery work of establishing which tables are actually authoritative.
• 02What a connector template removes from the quote is specific, not vague: authentication and secret handling, the entity-to-table mapping, watermark-based incremental refresh, retry and failure alerting, and schema-drift detection. Those five things are where a from-scratch pipeline spends its weeks. 50+ templates ship as Fabric Data Factory pipelines — but check the coverage matrix for your exact system and version before assuming yours is one of them.
• 03The hidden cost is load on the source system, and the conversation that settles it is with your DBA, not your CFO. A full history backfill reads large tables once and should run off-hours or against a replica; after that, watermark-based incremental refresh moves only rows changed since the last run. Two failure modes are worth naming: ERP tables whose last-modified column is not updated on every write, which breaks the watermark silently, and hard deletes that leave no trace, so deletions never propagate downstream. Both get found in discovery or found in production.
• 04Microsoft bills alongside the connection work, and those lines are bought direct. A Fabric capacity from F2 upward runs the pipelines, and each report consumer needs a per-user Power BI licence until the capacity reaches F64. If the ERP is on your network or behind a firewall, add an on-premises data gateway: the software is a Microsoft download rather than a quoted licence, but you provide the host machine, a service account, and a second node if the refresh is business-critical. The gateway makes an outbound connection, so no inbound firewall ports are opened.
• 05Five inputs build the quote: how many source systems and how many entities inside each; the extraction surface each one exposes; whether a gateway and a host machine are needed; how many legal entities or company codes have to be consolidated, and whether a conformed chart of accounts already exists; and whether the KPIs you need sit in the 200+ pre-built library or require new business logic. Multi-entity consolidation without an agreed chart of accounts is the most common reason a connection phase overruns, and it is mapping work, not engineering work.
• 06Honest limit. A heavily customised ECC estate with undocumented Z-tables, no available extractors, no replica on offer and no reliable change-tracking columns cannot be scoped honestly in advance. Fixed-scope delivery is the wrong instrument for it; a time-and-materials data-engineering engagement is the right one, and it runs closer to the three-to-six-month shape of a custom build than to the four to six weeks a first module usually takes. Better said in week one than discovered in week three.

For the full explainer on this topic rather than this specific question, see the detailed guide on the blog.