Choosing the right Power BI license can feel overwhelming as Power BI is a powerful business analytics platform that comes in multiple versions. It includes three models; Free, Pro, and Premium, each with its own features and costs.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll compare Power BI Free vs Power BI Pro vs Premium to help you understand the differences and decide which option best fits your needs. We’ll break down the capabilities, costs (Power BI Pro cost vs Power BI Premium cost), sharing limitations, and use cases for each license type.
Whether you’re a business analyst, a decision-maker evaluating BI tools, or a small business owner planning your data strategy, this article will give you clear, user-centric insights in a conversational yet professional tone.
Power BI and Its License Types
Microsoft Power BI is a leading business intelligence (BI) platform used for data visualization, reporting, and analytics. It’s widely adopted due to its intuitive interface and integration with other Microsoft tools like Excel. But is Power BI free? The core Power BI Desktop application is free to download and use for creating reports. However, to share reports and collaborate in the cloud-based Power BI Service, you need to consider Power BI’s license types. Microsoft currently offers several licensing options:
- Power BI Free (Desktop) – a free license ideal for personal use and learning.
- Power BI Pro – a paid per-user license for collaboration and sharing.
- Power BI Premium – an enterprise-grade offering with advanced features. Premium itself comes in two forms: Premium Per User (PPU) (a per-user premium license) and Premium Capacity (a capacity license for your organization’s dedicated resources).
Each tier builds on the previous, adding more features and removing limitations. Let’s dive into each in detail.
Power BI Free – Features and Limitations
Power BI Free (also known as Power BI Desktop) is Microsoft’s entry-level offering that allows users to build reports and dashboards on their local machine. It’s a standalone desktop tool that provides most of the data modeling and visualization features available in the Power BI ecosystem. This makes it great for individual learning, personal data analysis, or evaluating the tool’s capabilities. In fact, you can do 90% of Power BI’s core functions with the free version: connect to hundreds of data sources, transform data, and design rich visualizations.
Features:
- Connect to 70+ data sources
- Design reports with drag-and-drop interface
- Build dashboards using built-in visuals
- Use Power Query for data transformation
- Save reports locally or publish to Power BI Service (My Workspace only)
Limitations:
- No content sharing; reports remain private in “My Workspace”
- Designed strictly for individual use with no team collaboration
- Reports can’t be accessed by others unless placed in a Premium workspace
- No support for app workspaces or shared environments
- Same technical limits as Pro (10 GB/user, 1 GB/model), but restricted to personal use
- Supports 8 scheduled refreshes/day, but setup may be limited without Pro or Premium
- Advanced features and refresh control require Premium workspace deployment
Use Case:
Ideal for individual data analysts, freelancers, or beginners wanting to explore Power BI capabilities without any cost. Best suited for personal projects, learning, or report prototyping. Many online resources, such as a step-by-step Power BI tutorial for beginners, use the free desktop tool so you can follow along without a paid license.
Power BI Pro – Collaboration and Full Cloud Use
Power BI Pro is Microsoft’s standard per-user license that enables full use of the Power BI Service, including publishing, sharing, and collaboration. It’s designed for professionals and teams that need to work on data-driven projects together. It is a paid per-user license that unlocks all the capabilities of the Power BI Service for that user.
Key Capabilities:
With Power BI Pro you can:
- Share dashboards and reports privately with other users inside or outside your organization, as long as those users also have Pro (or PPU) licenses.
- Create and participate in App Workspaces (team collaboration workspaces) to build content collaboratively with colleagues. This is crucial for version control, co-development of dashboards, and publishing apps for distribution.
- As a Pro user, you can view and interact with reports and dashboards that other Pro users share with you on the Power BI service. Free users cannot consume content shared by Pro users (unless a Premium capacity is used).
- Pro allows exporting reports to formats like PowerPoint, PDF, and Excel, embedding reports in SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, or other apps (with some limitations).
- Both Free and Pro can use the same Power BI Desktop capabilities, but Pro users can leverage gateways to connect to on-premises data sources and set up scheduled refresh (up to 8x/day) on the Power BI service for their datasets.
Technical Limits:
- 10 GB of cloud storage per user
- 1 GB per dataset size
- 8 scheduled refreshes per day
- Requires Pro licenses for both creators and consumers
- Content creators must have Pro (or PPU) in any scenario unless the organization has a special arrangement
Cost:
Approximately $13.70 – $14 per user per month (may vary by region). Sometimes included in Microsoft 365 E5 subscriptions. Power BI Pro is a flat fee per user. Power BI Pro license cost is relatively low, it is about the price of other Office 365 services per user. Each collaborating user needs a Pro license.
When to Use:
Recommended for small to medium-sized businesses or teams where multiple users need to collaborate, view, and share reports securely and professionally. It’s ideal for:
- Small and medium-sized businesses and teams
- Business analysts and report developers
- Organizations that require ad-hoc collaboration
- External sharing on a limited basis
Power BI Premium (Capacity-Based)
Power BI Premium offers advanced enterprise-grade features with high capacity and scalability. It comes in two models: Premium Per User (PPU) and Premium Per Capacity. It is designed for large organizations with advanced needs around big data, AI, paginated reports, and large user bases.
The term “Premium” can be a bit confusing because it comes in two flavors: Premium Per User (PPU) and Premium Per Capacity. When people refer to “Power BI Premium” in general, they often mean the capacity-based license (the original Premium offering). This is an organizational subscription rather than a per-user subscription. You purchase a certain SKU (for example, P1, P2, and P3 correspond to increasing levels of dedicated performance and memory).
Premium Per User (PPU)
Premium Per User is a higher-tier per-user license that unlocks nearly all the Premium features without the upfront investment in dedicated capacity. Microsoft positioned PPU as a “middle ground” to democratize Premium features. It is essentially an “upgrade” beyond Pro for an individual.
Price:
Approximately $20–$24 per user/month. PPU gives one person all the capabilities of Pro plus almost all the benefits of Premium. PPU content is siloed to PPU users only.
Features:
All Power BI Pro features include:
- PPU users get advanced AI capabilities, such as AI visuals and text analytics, use of dataflows and Datamarts, deployment pipelines, paginated reports (Pixel Perfect reporting), and other features that were historically only for enterprise Premium users.
- 100 GB dataset model size
- Up to 48 scheduled refreshes per day
- Enhanced refresh rates: PPU allows up to 48 refreshes per day for a dataset (essentially every 30 minutes)
- Better performance: PPU workspaces run on premium backend capacity, meaning potentially faster load times for reports
- Only PPU users can view content created in PPU workspaces
PPU is great for smaller organizations or specific teams that need Premium features but don’t have enough users to justify a full Premium capacity.
Premium Per Capacity
Premium Per Capacity is a fixed monthly plan purchased at the tenant level. It provides dedicated resources for hosting reports, enabling large-scale distribution and performance. You purchase a certain capacity SKU (P1, P2, P3) or Fabric F SKU for your organization’s dedicated use. It provides a block of computing power (virtual cores, memory) exclusively for your Power BI content, and allows unlimited distribution of content to users (including those without Pro licenses).
Price:
Starts at $4,995/month for P1 SKU (8 v-cores). Higher capacities (P2, P3, etc.) cost more (roughly double each level).
Features:
All features of PPU, plus:
- Dedicated cloud computing and storage
- Up to 400 GB dataset size
- Up to 100 TB storage
- Unlimited sharing with free users
- On-prem Power BI Report Server
- Multi-geo and BYOK (Bring Your Own Key)
- Supports Power BI Embedded
- XMLA endpoints for advanced dataset access
- Auto scale and performance enhancements
Premium capacity supports very large data volumes. You get up to 100 TB of total storage for your Power BI content in the cloud (at P1 SKU). Premium capacity storage and PPU storage are not additive; PPU leverages the underlying premium capacity infrastructure.
Who Should Use Premium:
Recommended for:
- Enterprises with 500+ report consumers
- Organizations needing centralized data models and large storage
- Businesses requiring enterprise governance, AI, and scalability
- Scenarios where many users consume reports but only a few create them
Microsoft is transitioning Power BI Premium capacities to the new Microsoft Fabric platform. As of 2024–2025, Premium Per Capacity (P SKUs) are being succeeded by Fabric Capacity (F SKUs). Just be aware that going forward, Premium is part of the broader Fabric offering (so you might see Fabric F64, F128, etc., which correspond to similar pricing levels as P1 and P2). The bottom line: capacity licensing (whether P SKU or Fabric) grants the same core benefit of enterprise scale and free user access for Power BI.
Feature and Capability Comparison
Now that we’ve detailed each license type, let’s summarize the key differences between Power BI Free, Pro, and Premium (PPU and Capacity) in a comparison format. The table below highlights major features and limitations:
| Capability | Power BI Free | Power BI Pro | Power BI Premium Per User (PPU) | Power BI Premium Capacity |
| Create and save reports/dashboards | Yes (Desktop & personal workspace) | Yes | Yes | Yes (Pro user publishes to Premium workspace) |
| View own content in Power BI Service | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Share content with others | No1 | Yes (with other Pro users) | Yes (with other PPU users) | Yes (with any user, free or Pro) |
| Collaborate in workspaces (app workspaces) | No | Yes | Yes | Yes (Premium workspaces allow all viewer roles) |
| Maximum dataset (model) size | 1 GB2 | 1 GB | 100 GB | Up to 400 GB |
| Total cloud storage | 10 GB per user | 10 GB per user | 100 TB total3 | 100 TB total (per capacity)3 |
| Scheduled data refreshes | 8 per day2 | 8 per day | 48 per day | 48 per day (per dataset) |
| AI and advanced analytics features | No (limited) | Limited (standard AI visuals) | Yes (Advanced AI, Auto ML, etc.) | Yes (Advanced AI, etc.) |
| Dataflows, Datamarts, deployment pipelines | No | No | Yes (included with PPU) | Yes |
| Paginated reports (Pixel-perfect RDL) | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| On-premises Power BI Report Server | No | No | No (PPU doesn’t include PBIRS) | Yes (included with Premium capacity) |
| External sharing (outside organization) | No (except publish to the web) | Yes (Pro license required for external users) | Possibly (PPU license required for external users) | Yes (capacity supports content embedding for external users via Power BI Embedded)4 |
| License cost | Free | $14 per user/month | $24 per user/month | $4,995 per capacity/month (P1 level) |
Power BI Free vs Pro: Key Differences
- Sharing & Collaboration: Pro enables sharing with other users and the use of app workspaces; Free does not.
- Content Publishing: Only Pro users can publish to the Power BI service and share dashboards internally/externally. Free users can publish to the web (public) but not securely share.
- Storage & Data: Both Free and Pro have a 1 GB per dataset limit and 10 GB per user storage.
- Cost: Free is $0. Pro is a paid per-user license (≈$10/month).
- Who Needs Pro: Teams or small businesses where report collaboration is required. Free suits solo analysts or those learning.
Power BI Pro vs Premium: Key Differences
- Scale & Performance: Premium provides dedicated capacity, enabling much larger data volumes and faster processing. For example, Premium (PPU) allows 100 GB model sizes vs 1 GB in Pro, and 48 vs 8 refreshes/day.
- Licensing Model: Pro licenses are per-user only. Premium per capacity lets any number of free-viewer users consume reports without individual licenses.
- Advanced Features: Premium unlocks advanced capabilities like AI visuals, dataflows, paginated reports, and large-scale distribution. Pro has a smaller feature set.
- Cost: Pro is ~$10/user, whereas Premium PPU is $20/user. Premium capacity ($4,995/month) is a large upfront cost but can be cost-effective at scale.
- Use Case: Pro is for smaller teams needing full features per person. Premium suits enterprises with hundreds of users and massive datasets.
Pricing and Cost Considerations (Pro vs Premium)
When comparing Power BI Pro vs Premium cost, it’s important to consider the number of users and the needs of your organization. Power BI Pro is a flat fee per user. Power BI Premium Per User is a higher fee per user. Power BI Premium (Capacity) is a large fixed cost, regardless of user count (up to the capacity’s practical limits).
- Power BI Pro cost: $13.70 – $14 per user/month (roughly $10 in some earlier pricing, increased in some regions to $14 as of 2025). For N users, cost = $14 * N per month.
- Power BI PPU cost: $20 – $24 per user/month. For N PPU users, the cost = $24 * N per month.
- Power BI Premium capacity cost: $4,995 per month for a P1 capacity (up to 8 v-cores). P2 is $9,995/month (16 v-cores), P3 is $19,995/month (32 v-cores), etc. But you pay this fixed amount no matter how many users view the content.
But there’s a concerning query that remains confusing among the decision makers: At what point does Premium capacity become cost-effective?
It largely depends on how many users you have who only consume reports. A common rule of thumb was around 500 users. For example, at $10 per Pro (old price), 500 users = $5,000/month, which is equal to a P1. At $14 per Pro, it only takes ~357 users to reach $5,000. However, remember in a Premium capacity scenario, your content creators still each need Pro licenses (or PPU), but your read-only users can be free.
Consider a scenario: You have 600 people in your company who need to view reports and 10 developers who create them.
- If you go Pro for everyone: 610 Pro licenses = 610 * $14 ≈ $8,540/month.
- If you go Premium capacity: You buy one P1 capacity for $4,995, and maybe 10 Pro licenses for the creators = $4,995 + (10 * $14) ≈ $5,135/month. That covers all 600 viewers (they can be free). This is a significant saving and also gives you the higher performance and features of Premium.
To illustrate the cost crossover, see the chart below:
Comparison of monthly licensing costs vs. number of users. Per-user licensing (Pro in blue, Premium Per User in orange) scales linearly with user count, while a Premium capacity license (green) is a fixed cost. The break-even points where the capacity becomes cheaper than per-user licensing are highlighted (around 208 users vs PPU, and ~357 users vs Pro, at the given price points).
As shown above, if you have only, say, 50 users, buying Pro for each is far cheaper ($700) than Premium capacity ($4995). Even PPU for 50 users would be $1200, which is cheaper than the capacity. But as the number of users grows, a point comes where the flat $4995 is less than the equivalent per-user cost. Roughly speaking:
- Compared to Pro: Premium capacity ($4995) becomes cheaper than Pro when you have more than ~357 users (at $14 each). At 500+ users, Premium is clearly cost-effective.
- Compared to PPU: Premium capacity becomes cheaper than PPU when you have more than ~208 users (at $24 each). PPU is good for smaller teams, but it would be very expensive to license, say, 300 people on PPU (300 * $24 = $7200, far above $4995).
Power BI Pro vs Premium: Choosing the Right Plan
Here are some guidelines for choosing between the licenses:
Individual or minimal team (1-2 people):
Use Power BI Free for initial development or concept proofing. If you need to share even between two people regularly, you’ll both need Pro. Free is great to try out Power BI or for a freelancer doing analysis for themselves.
Small to Medium Business (up to 50-100 users):
Power BI Pro is usually the way to go. It’s affordable and allows everyone to collaborate. The administrative overhead is low. If you have specific advanced needs for a few users, you could mix in a few PPU licenses for those users while others remain Pro. Keep in mind that PPU users can’t share content with Pro users directly, so this usually works only if the PPU users are working on their own specialized projects.
Mid-sized Organization (100-500 users):
You will likely still use Pro licenses for most users. But start evaluating the benefits of Premium. Are some users complaining about the 1 GB model limit or needing more refreshes? If yes, you might pilot Premium Per User for those power users. As you approach the higher end of this user count range, do a cost analysis for Premium Capacity.
Large Enterprise (500+ users):
Power BI Premium capacity is often the most logical choice. It provides enterprise-scale BI. With a large user base, you likely have many consumers of reports who don’t create content. Premium allows you to license only the creators (Pro) and let everyone else use the content without additional licenses. Also, large organizations often need the advanced features (AI, big data, on-prem report server integration, etc.) that Premium offers.
Conclusion
By understanding the difference between Power BI Free and Pro, and Power BI Pro vs Premium differences, you can make an informed decision that balances cost with capability. If you’re a small business or team, Pro will likely give you the collaborative analytics you need at a low cost. If you’re dealing with big data or a big audience, Premium might be worth the investment to unlock a truly premium BI experience for your organization.
Finally, whichever path you choose, make sure to invest in user training (plenty of Power BI tutorials for beginners and advanced users are available) and governance. The value of Power BI comes not just from the tool or the license, but from how well your team can leverage data insights in decision-making. With the right license and a data-driven mindset, you’ll be on your way to harnessing the full power of Power BI for your business.
