From Ground to Cloud
Making Sense of Power BI
Licensing
Pujitha Chennupati 23-Sep-2025 17:07:16
Making Sense of Power BI Licensing 4:43
Contents If you're exploring Power BI for your organisation,
understanding its licensing options is key. Microsoft
Power BI Free
offers a few different licence types, each designed
Key Features
Limitations to meet specific needs around reporting,
Power BI Pro collaboration, and scalability. In this blog, we’ll break
Power BI Premium Per down the differences between the main licence
User (PPU) types so you can make an informed decision about
Power BI Premium what’s right for your business.
Capacity (P SKUs / Fabric
Capacity)
Choosing the Right
Licence for Your Needs Power BI Free
Final Thoughts
Power BI Free is the entry-level option, ideal for
personal use or experimentation. It allows users to
build reports using Power BI Desktop and publish
them to their workspace in the Power BI Service.
However, it doesn’t support sharing or collaboration
with others and is limited in terms of scheduling and
connectivity.
Key Features
• Create reports with Power BI Desktop
• Connect to a wide range of data sources
• Use Power Query for data transformation
• Publish reports to the Power BI Service
(personal workspace only)
• Manual refresh in the Power BI Service
Limitations
• No ability to share reports or dashboards with
others
• No collaboration features
• No scheduled data refresh in the Power BI
Service
• Limited access to Microsoft Fabric workloads
and advanced features
Power BI Pro
Power BI Pro is designed for teams and
departments that need to collaborate on analytics. It
unlocks sharing, collaboration, and scheduled
refreshes. Users can publish content to shared
workspaces, consume content created by others,
and participate in team-level analytics initiatives.
Key Features
• Everything in Power BI Free
• Share and collaborate in workspaces
• Scheduled data refresh (up to 8 times daily)
• Connect to both on-premises and Cloud data
sources
• Use dataflows and DirectQuery
• Export reports to Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF
• Access via Power BI Mobile app
Limitations
• Requires all collaborators to also have a Power
BI Pro or PPU licence
• Does not include Premium-only features like
paginated reports or dedicated compute
Power BI Premium Per User
(PPU)
Premium Per User is a step up from Pro, unlocking
many features previously only available with
Premium Capacity. It’s great for individuals or
smaller teams who need advanced analytics but
don’t require large-scale deployment.
Key Features
• Everything in Power BI Pro
• Paginated reports (pixel-perfect formatting
and printing)
• AI capabilities (AutoML, Cognitive Services
integration)
• Larger model sizes (up to 100GB per dataset)
• XMLA endpoint read/write access
• Enhanced refresh frequency (up to 48 times
daily)
• Access to Microsoft Fabric workloads when
supported
Limitations
• All users consuming PPU content must also
have a PPU licence
• No access to dedicated capacity, performance
still shared
Power BI Premium Capacity (P
SKUs / Fabric Capacity)
Premium Capacity provides dedicated cloud
infrastructure, allowing for enterprise-scale
deployments. It’s designed for large organisations
with demanding workloads, complex data
modelling, or the need to serve reports to users
without Pro or PPU licences.
Key Features
• Everything in PPU and Pro
• Dedicated compute and memory resources
• Share content with free users (view-only)
• Larger storage and model limits (up to 400GB+
per dataset)
• Full support for Microsoft Fabric workloads
• On-premises Power BI Report Server included
• Multi-geo deployment and advanced
governance options
• 100TB total storage per capacity
Limitations
• Requires capacity planning and management
• More suited to enterprise-wide adoption or
high-traffic reporting environments
Choosing the Right Licence for
Your Needs
When deciding which Power BI licence is right for
your organisation, ask yourself:
• Who needs access? Are you enabling just a
few analysts or hundreds of users across
departments?
• What kind of reports do you need? Are basic
visuals sufficient, or do you require paginated
reports, AI integration, or large datasets?
• Do users need to collaborate? Sharing and
collaboration require at least Pro or PPU.
• How complex is your data landscape?
Advanced modelling, higher refresh rates, and
data governance features may steer you
toward Premium options.
Final Thoughts
27-Jan-2025 16:36:33
Strategies for Effective Power BI’s flexible licensing model allows
Oracle EBS businesses of all sizes to adopt analytics at a level
Organisational Change that suits them. Whether you’re an individual
Management exploring dashboards or an enterprise looking to
scale reporting across global teams, there’s a
13-Mar-2019 09:30:52
licence that fits.
Data Centre Refresh:
the Dos and Don'ts If you're unsure which option is right for you, a
Power BI consultancy partner (like us) can help
05-Feb-2016 16:46:16 assess your needs and guide you towards the most
Are you fully utilising effective setup. Get in touch today to find out more.
your Microsoft
Enterprise Agreement?
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