Microcanonical thermodynamics studies the operations that can be performed on systems with welldefined energy. So far, this approach has been applied to classical and quantum systems. Here we extend it to arbitrary physical theories, proposing two requirements for the development of a general microcanonical framework. We then formulate three resource theories, corresponding to three different sets of basic operations: (i) random reversible operations, resulting from reversible dynamics with fluctuating parameters, (ii) noisy operations, generated by the interaction with ancillas in the microcanonical state, and (iii) unital operations, defined as the operations that preserve the microcanonical state. We focus our attention on a class of physical theories, called sharp theories with purification, where these three sets of operations exhibit remarkable properties. Firstly, each set is contained into the next. Secondly, the convertibility of states by unital operations is completely characterised by a majorisation criterion. Thirdly, the three sets are equivalent in terms of state convertibility if and only if the dynamics allowed by theory satisfy a suitable condition, which we call unrestricted reversibility. Under this condition, we derive a duality between the resource theories of microcanonical thermodynamics and the resource theory of pure bipartite entanglement.1. random unitary channels [43][44][45], arising from unitary dynamics with randomly fluctuating parameters;2. noisy operations [46][47][48], generated by preparing ancillas in the microcanonical state, turning on a unitary dynamics, and discarding the ancillas;3. unital channels [49,50], defined as the quantum processes that preserve the microcanonical state.These three sets are strictly different: the set of random unitary channels is strictly contained in the set of noisy operations [51], and the latter is strictly contained in the set of unital channels [52]. In spite of this, the three sets are equivalent in terms of state convertibility [48]. This means that all the natural candidates for the sets of free operations induce the same notion of resource. This resource is generally called purity, and plays a fundamental role in many quantum protocols [53].In this paper we extend the paradigm of microcanonical thermodynamics from quantum theory to arbitrary physical theories [54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61]. We propose two minimal requirements a probabilistic theory must satisfy in order to support a microcanonical description, and, when these requirements are satisfied, we provide a general operational definition of random reversible, noisy, and unital operations. We then focus on a special class of theories, called sharp theories with purification, which are appealing for the foundations of thermodynamics [62], and have also been studied for their computational power [63, 64] and interference properties [65]. In sharp theories with purification, we show that the three sets of operations satisfy the same inclusion relations as in quantum theory, with...