Pricing snapshot
Scroll sideways to see all columns. With a keyboard, focus this table and use the arrow keys.
| Plan | Published price | Terms Microsoft states |
|---|---|---|
Free account | Free | No credit card required. Upgrade to Pro or Premium to share reports. |
Power BI Pro | $14.00 user/month, paid yearly | Publish and share Power BI reports. Included in Microsoft 365 E5 and Office 365 E5. Available to buy now with a credit card. |
Power BI Premium Per User | $24.00 user/month, paid yearly | Includes all the features available with Power BI Pro, plus larger model sizes and more frequent refreshes. Available to buy now with a credit card. |
Premium Per User add-on | $14.00 per user/month, paid yearly | Add-on for users with Power BI Pro, Microsoft 365 E5 or Office 365 E5 licenses, to step up to Premium Per User. |
Power BI Embedded | Variable; contact sales | A pay-as-you-go platform as a service; the product page says it "costs as little as $1 per hour for analytics, with no requirement for end-user licensing." |
Fabric Capacity Reservation | Variable; see Fabric pricing | Annual purchase; Microsoft states it saves 40.5% over pay-as-you-go prices. Eligible for the Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC). Per-user licenses required for certain activities. |
Fabric Capacity Pay-As-You-Go | Variable; see Fabric pricing or contact sales | Dynamically scale up or down and pause capacity. Eligible for MACC. Per-user licenses required for certain activities. |
Which plan fits
Building reports for yourself. The free account is enough. Power BI Desktop, the report authoring tool, is a free download.
Publishing and sharing reports. Power BI Pro.
Data professionals with large models. Premium Per User licenses data professionals with access to enterprise-scale features.
Many viewers without paid licenses. The pricing page says report viewers can review and interact with reports without additional paid per-user licenses at P1 and above and F64 and above. Its Embedded comparison limits this to the App Owns Data scenario only.
Analytics inside your own product. Power BI Embedded lets you brand Power BI reports as your own.
Limits by plan
Show full plan details
Scroll sideways to see all columns. With a keyboard, focus this table and use the arrow keys.
| Plan | Listed limits and features |
|---|---|
Power BI Pro | Model memory size limit 1 GB; refresh rate 8/day; maximum native storage 10 GB/license. |
Power BI Premium Per User | Model memory size limit 100 GB; refresh rate 48/day; maximum native storage 100 TB. |
Power BI Embedded | Model memory size limit and storage vary. Automate monitoring, management, and deployment; reduce developer overhead. |
Fabric Capacity (Reservation and Pay-As-You-Go) | Model memory size limit varies; refresh rate 48/day; 100 TB of Power BI storage. Publishing reports needs an additional Power BI Pro license, which Microsoft requires on all Premium (P) and Fabric Capacity (F) SKUs to publish Power BI content to Microsoft Fabric. |
Fabric free account | Free, no credit card required; use trial capacity on any Fabric tool. |
- Vendor source · Observed · Stored official pricing capture for power-bi.
- Vendor source · Observed · Stored official pricing capture for power-bi.
How the bill is built
Power BI is bought as per-user licenses (Pro, Premium Per User), Fabric or Premium capacity, or Embedded, and Microsoft says licenses can be mixed: for example, Premium (P-SKU) or Fabric (F-SKU) capacity to host the most popular reports, then Pro licenses (or Microsoft 365 E5) for the users who create and publish reports.
What moves the bill
Number of licensed users. Pro and Premium Per User are priced per user, so the bill grows with each licensed person.
Import model size. An Import model must be fully loaded into the memory of the Power BI capacity when it is queried or refreshed, which can pressure capacity resources as the number and size of models grow.
Data freshness. Scheduled refresh limits depend on capacity type. DirectQuery models don't require scheduled refresh, but their queries can use significant processor resources, which can affect throughput when many users query the model.
Hybrid tables. Power BI supports hybrid tables only when the semantic model is hosted in workspaces on Premium capacities.
Terms that are easy to miss
Fabric access from Pro. Power BI Pro customers can access Fabric workloads only through the Microsoft Fabric trial experience.
Where you buy. Pro and Premium Per User are sold self-service and through the Microsoft 365 admin center. Buying Microsoft Fabric requires access to the Microsoft 365 admin center.
Checkout price can differ. Prices shown are for marketing purposes; the actual price, which can vary by currency, country and region, appears at checkout. Academic, government and nonprofit pricing is available.
Shared storage cap. Native storage counts Power BI data sets only, and the 100 TB cap applies to the total used by workspaces with a Pro license, including combinations of Pro, Premium Per User and Fabric Capacity.
Features follow the SKU. Feature availability depends on both SKU and capacity level.
Our take
If most of your people only read reports, price F64 or P1 capacity first and give Pro licenses only to report creators; if most of them build and share their own reports, per-user Pro is the simpler fit, with Premium Per User only for people whose models outgrow Pro.