Power BI Pricing and Licensing: How Does It Work?

Power BI is one of the most popular data analysis tools on the market, which allows entrepreneurs to view complex information sets in the form of clear visualizations. Faced with the growing need to use data in the decision-making process, more and more companies are considering implementing this solution. But before they make an investment, they want to understand exactly how much it will cost them. Let’s have a look at Microsoft Power Bi pricing plans.

Table of Contents

Power BI editions

• 1. Power BI Desktop / Free
• 2. Power BI Pro License Costs
• 3. Power BI Premium Costs
• 4. Power BI Premium Per User Pricing (PPU)
• 5. Power BI Embedded Price

How to choose the right Power BI license?

Final Thoughts

FAQ

Power BI is a powerful data analysis and visualization tool created by Microsoft. It is used by companies around the world to enable better understanding of data and, therefore, support making more informed decisions. However, like many other solutions, Power BI has its own licensing rules and various payment options. In this article we will explain Power BI license costs.

Two notes before we move on:

• The official Power BI price is shown on the website https://powerbi.microsoft.com/pricing/ from 18.09.2023. TTMS as a Microsoft partner may offer lower prices than those presented below – Ask as for a valuation.

• Microsoft introduced Fabric some time ago, so the names Power BI / Fabric may appear interchangeably on the pages – but from the point of view of this article and the simplest approach to licensing, this nuance is not of much importance.

 

Power BI editions

1. Power BI Desktop / Free

It is a free tool for creating reports and visualizations. You can download it and use it on your computer to create reports, but it has very limited online collaboration capabilities. Basically on powerbi.com:

• You can’t view reports posted by someone else.

• You can publish the report so that it is visible to anyone with a link to the report. This can be used to present sample reports or publicly available information, but should absolutely not be used for reports containing internal company data.

Example of a report shared with “everyone”: World Cup 2022  

 

To sum up: The Power BI Desktop / Free edition with the ability to save a report to the powerbi.com website will be a good tool for learning and experimenting with Power BI. Microsoft Bi pricing for this edition is free of charge.

Price: free of charge

2. Power BI Pro License Costs

Power BI Pro is a paid monthly subscription for each user. Power BI Pro users primarily have the ability to share reports unlocked – although it sounds inconspicuous, it is the most important functionality when it comes to the ability to collaborate with other users – only paid licenses (Pro, Premium and PPU) allow you to share reports so that each user had access to specific reports and in them only their own part of data, e.g. in one report, the Headquarters sees everything and the Regions only see the results of their region.

Price: 9,40 € per user/month. 

Note: The Pro license does not distinguish between report readers and creators – everyone, regardless of role, must have a Pro license to share reports.

3. Power BI Premium Costs

Unlike Power BI Pro, in Power BI Premium you pay for computing power, not the number of users. This means you can share reports with an unlimited number of people without having to pay for each user. It is also necessary if you plan to implement Power BI solutions on a large scale – creating advanced data flows (Dataflow), enabling the creation of large data models or ensuring more frequent data refreshes (Pro up to 8 times a day and Premium up to 48 times a day).

Price: from4 675,60 € per capacity (computing power)/month 

Note: Here there is already a distinction between the reader and the report creator. The reader is licensed under the above fee and the report creator must also have a Pro license.

4. Power BI Premium Per User Pricing (PPU)

Power BI Premium Per User is an attempt to respond to the needs of small teams/companies in the area of advanced functionalities known from the Premium license (larger models or unlocked part of the Dataflow functionality) without having to pay for the entire Premium license.

Basically, what I have emphasized is the most important, because products produced under the PPU license can only be shared with people with a PPU license – a reader with a Pro license will not be able to use them – so the audience is limited. Hence, this type of license is not particularly popular, because sooner or later it turns out that there is a need to share such reports with a wider group, which may result in a sudden doubling of the Power BI costs of licensing the analytical solution.

Price: 18,70 € per user/month.  

Note: Deciding to move from Pro to PPU just because the report (or more precisely, the data model) becomes larger and no longer translates to the Pro license often leads to further problems. If the size of the model is the only reason for looking for solutions other than the Pro license, in most cases the model can be optimized so that it still meets the assumptions of the Pro license and can be shared with other users of the same license – contact us and we will propose a better solution than switching to PPU.

5. Power BI Embedded Price

Power BI Embedded is dedicated to companies that want to embed Power BI reports into their own applications or websites (what we call embedding). By embedding the report on the website, we can reach an unlimited number of recipients, both internal and external, but we lose the simple option of identifying them. What does it mean? While in other licenses (apart from Free, of course) the powerbi.com portal realizes, so to speak, who looks at the report and can appropriately limit access to some of the data in the report, in Power BI Embedded this is not the case unambiguous. Additionally, the use of Power BI Embedded licenses for internal purposes often causes users to react negatively to the lack of some functionalities related to the lack of access to the powerbi.com portal (mail subscriptions, notifications, dashboards, etc.).

Microsoft Power Bi price: from 679.58 € per capacity/month  (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/power-bi-embedded/ ) 

Note: The computing power of Power BI Embedded can be turned on and off – if the portal on which we embed reports is used only at specific hours, days of the week or month, then we can make quite significant savings in relation to the above amount.

How to choose the right Power BI license?

Choosing the right option in Power Bi pricing plans, depends on the needs of your company. Here are some tips:

• Companies up to about 500 people: If you do not process a large volume of data and you have fewer than 500 report users, Power BI Pro will be for you. Even if the data volume is large, by constantly adding additional elements to the solution architecture you can “fit” within the Power BI Pro license.

• Large companies and corporations: Power BI Premium provides scalability and cost savings if you have a large number of users. With it, you can share reports with multiple people with no additional user fees.
• Apps and websites: If you plan to embed Power BI reports into your apps or websites, Power BI Embedded is the right option. You pay for the resources you use, which is a more flexible option than a user subscription.

 

Summary

Whether you’re a small business, large corporation, or app developer, there’s a Power BI option to help you get value from data analysis and visualization.

Remember that price for Power Bi may change, so it is always worth contacting us before making a decision so that we can recommend the appropriate Power BI/Fabric Edition.