Power Automate reaches any REST API through the HTTP action (or a Custom Connector). It fits the Microsoft ecosystem — Power Apps, Excel, Teams, SharePoint — but it is more manual than n8n for this kind of work, and a few things are impractical.
Read this first — the caveats
- The HTTP action and custom connectors are PREMIUM features (licensing cost).
- Signature auth — HMAC, Digest, OAuth 1.0a — is not practical (needs custom code / Azure Functions).
- Pagination is not automatic with the HTTP action (our next link is not OData) — use a Do Until loop, or the custom connector.
- Group-by, pivot, and running totals are weak natively — do those in Power Query/Excel.
Auth with the HTTP action
| Type | How |
|---|---|
| API key (header) | Add header x-api-key = your key |
| Basic | Authentication = Basic; user = App ID, password = App Secret |
| Bearer | Header Authorization = Bearer <token> |
| OAuth2 client credentials | HTTP POST to /oauth/token, Parse JSON, use access_token as a Bearer header |
# The request the HTTP action makes for API-key auth:
GET https://api.ifsjaipur.cloud/playground/data/stocks/candles?shape=flat&page_size=50
x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEYTip · The cleanest option is the Custom Connector (next lesson) — it wraps auth + pagination once and works in Power Apps too.