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Understanding Power BI Licensing

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Overview

Power BI, a powerful business analytics service by Microsoft, offers various licensing options to cater to different user needs and organizational requirements. Understanding the nuances of these licenses is crucial for businesses looking to leverage Power BI for data analytics, reporting, and collaboration.

This article explores the Power BI licenses – covering the key features, the cost and the ideal users.

Types of Power BI Licenses

1. Power BI FREE License

The Power BI Free license is ideal for individual professionals, startups, and clients who want to build reports for personal use and do not need to share the contents with others through a cloud service.

Key Features

  • Access to Power BI Desktop for report creation.

  • Connection to over 70 on-premises and cloud-based data sources.

  • Access to a personal workspace, My Workspace, on Power BI Service for storing and viewing reports in the cloud (storage capacity - up to 1 GB per user).

  • Exporting data and reports to Excel, PowerPoint, CSV or PDF file.

  • Python and R support for advanced analytics.

2. Power BI Pro License

The Power BI Pro license is designed for users who need to share reports and collaborate with others more efficiently through the Power BI Service. Its ideal for mid sized businesses that require robust data analysis and collaboration capabilities.

Key Features

  • Share Power BI content within and outside your organization.

  • Collaborate with other Pro-licensed users in shared workspaces.

  • Schedule up to 8 automatic data refreshes daily for the datasets underpinning each report.

  • Create data models up to 1 GB per report, with a total storage capacity of 10 GB per user.

  • Embed Power BI visuals in apps like PowerApps, SharePoint, and Teams.

  • Access to AI visuals etc.

Cost: Power BI Pro is licensed per individual user. For example, if you are an organisation of 15 employees who all require the full capabilities of Power BI, you will need 15 licences. Each license costs $9.99 per user/month.

3. Power BI Premium per User (PPU) License

The Power BI premium per user license provides the license holders with all of the capabilities of Power BI Pro plus access to most Premium capacity-based features. The Power BI PPU license unlocks access to extra features, capabilities, and types of content that are only available with a paid license. This access is limited to the PPU license holder and other colleagues who also have a PPU license. For example, in order to collaborate and share content in a PPU workspace, all users must have a PPU license.

Note; when you use a PPU license, content created by you can only be shared with other users who also have a PPU license. The exception is when that content is saved in a workspace hosted in Premium capacity.

Premium capacity

This is a capacity-based Premium license (often referred to as a Premium subscription) which allows Pro or PPU users to create and save content in Premium capacity workspaces. They can then share that workspace with colleagues who have any license type. Only users with a Pro or PPU license can create and save content in Premium capacities, and only if their organization purchased Premium capacity.

This table summarizes the basic capabilities of each license type.

summary table on power bi license capabilities

Key Features

  • 100 GB model size limit.

  • 48 data refreshes daily.

  • 100 TB of storage.

Cost

  • Power BI Premium Per User License: $20/user/month

  • Power BI Premium Per Capacity: $4995/capacity/month

Conclusion

Power BI's licensing structure is designed to accommodate a wide range of users, from individual analysts to large organizations with extensive data needs. By understanding the differences between the available licenses - Free, Pro, PPU and Premium - organizations can make informed decisions that align with their analytical goals and budgetary constraints.

If you like the work we do and would like to work with us, drop us an email on our contacts page and we’ll reach out!

Thank you for reading!

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