Power BI Subscriptions
Choosing the best plan for you
What is Microsoft Power BI?
Power BI is a proprietary data visualisation software offered by Microsoft. It is an essential component of the Microsoft Power Platform.
Power BI falls under the Microsoft Fabric suite of tools and can be used in tandem with all services within this suite, and also with other services and applications apart from those offered by Microsoft.
Power BI is essentially available in two forms:
- Power BI Desktop: Available to everyone with a valid Microsoft Account. It can be downloaded and used directly on the local machine.
- Power BI Service: Available to those who subscribe to a Power BI License with their Microsoft Account. Users may also avail a limited-period trial of the Pro License to learn and get used to the service.
If you want to read about other services which are part of the Microsoft Power Platform, you can refer to this article:
Do I Need a Power BI Subscription?
No, and also Yes. The answer depends on how many features of Power BI you want to use.
Power BI Desktop
No, there is no need to purchase a Power BI License or Subscription if you only want to work with Power BI Desktop. The desktop application can be downloaded directly on your device(PC or Laptop):
- From the Microsoft Store
- From a Browser (might redirect you to Microsoft Store)
All you need is a valid Microsoft Account to Sign In to Power BI Desktop and start exploring.
If creating reports for yourself, or for a handful of people who know how Power BI works, is what you want to do, Power BI Desktop is more than enough for Generating Reports and Exploring Data.
Note: It is worth noting that some advanced features, like AI Tools and Azure ML within the app, may require you to buy a subscription even when using Power BI Desktop.
Power BI Service
Yes, you need a Power BI License to work with the Power BI Service, once your Free Trial expires.
Some features of Power BI, like report sharing, scheduled automatic refreshes, dashboard sharing, data-driven alerts and monitoring metrics, are possible only on the Power BI Service, and different subscriptions allow for varying degrees of advanced uses for each of these features.
Why should I buy a Power BI subscription?
If you want to share your Power BI Reports online with others, you need a Power BI License to do so.
Dashboards and Reports, in most corporate environments, are often prepared by a Data Analyst but used by others who need to make business decisions based on those visualisations, like members of the Product Team, or Board of Directors.
In such cases, you cannot just ask everyone in a meeting to download and load up the Power BI .pbix file on their systems. Neither is this efficient, nor is it a good practice to queue up multiple data fetch requests on the database server like this.
Power BI Service allows for you to publish a report online once, and for others to view the report without having to open the file on their local machines.
This is the fundamental reason why you will need to purchase at least one Power BI License.
Note: I say at least, because Microsoft recommends each individual user to have a license, but you don’t necessarily need to do that: you can create just one Microsoft Account which has one license, and can be shared amongst one team of users. This, of course, has security concerns associated with it, but it is still a good solution for a team where you can trust the members not to meddle with the data and reports or misuse the subscription.
Which Power BI subscription should I buy?
There are quite a few options online, the answer depends largely on the scale on which you are going to use Power BI.
Power BI Pro
This is the simplest subscription tier, priced* at USD 9.99 per month per user.
The Pro license has the following features*:
- Create Reports with Basic Features
- Publish Reports for other Pro Users to view
- 1 GB Storage per Data Model
- Total 10 GB Storage per User
- Up to 8 Refreshes per day
Consider using this license if you need to create and share simple reports amongst a team, individually. Keep in mind that each report viewer must have at least a Pro subscription (or trial) as well.
Power BI Premium Per User (PPU)
This is a more advanced subscription tier priced* at USD 20 per month per user.
The Premium Per User license has the following features*:
- Create Reports with Additional Features
- Publish Reports for other Premium or Pro Users to view
- Build and Maintain Dataflows
- 100 GB Storage per Data Model
- Total 100 TB Storage per User
- Up to 48 Refreshes per day
Consider this license if you need to create more advanced reports, use AI functionality in reports and/or more and faster automatic refreshes per day. Keep in mind that reports published in a Premium Workspace can only be viewed by other Premium users. To share reports with a Pro user, you must publish the reports in a Pro Workspace despite having a Premium subscription.
Power BI Premium Capacity
This is the most advanced subscription tier, priced* at USD 4999 per month.
The Premium Capacity license has the following features*:
- Create Reports with Additional Features
- Publish Reports for anyone to view, even without a license
- Access to Microsoft Fabric
- Build and Maintain Dataflows
- Use Advanced XMLA endpoint refreshes
- 400 GB Storage per Data Model
- Total 100 TB Storage
- Up to 48 Refreshes per day
Consider this subscription if you want to share reports with a huge audience (more than 500 people), or if you want to embed the report on your public website for all your users to see. The most attractive feature of the Premium Capacity is that you can publish and embed Power BI reports to be viewed by virtually anyone, even without a license to view.
It must be noted that this subscription is best used in cases where your audience is very large, and buying (up to 500) individual Pro licenses turns out to be more expensive than the Premium Capacity.
*The prices and features mentioned refer to those offered at the time this article was written. If you need exact figures, please visit the official Power BI pricing web page to learn more:
Conclusion
We can see that purchasing a Power BI Subscription directly depends on what features of Power BI you want to use, and how many people you want to share your reports with.
In general, there are four cases:
- Learners or Individual Users: Can work with just the Power BI Desktop application
- Professionals: Can work with a Power BI Pro license to share reports with other users who have Pro licenses
- Professionals in Data-Intensive Roles: Can work with a Power BI Premium Per User (PPU) license to use more advanced features and less restricted storage for reports
- Large Audience: When more than 500 people need to view reports, the Power BI Premium Capacity is worth investing in.
I hope this helps you out in choosing the kind of license which best suits your requirements!
If you liked this article, you might want to follow me on Medium, here, to read more of my works as I journey through the world of technology.
Here are some more of my articles, feel free to follow through if the topics seem interesting:
