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The Power BI has four types of license per user, which are Free, Pro, Premium per user and Premium per capacity.
The license that the user will choose depends on where the content can be stored, how it interacts with the applications and the need to use certain features. The location where the content can be stored is determined by your organisation's license type.
Note: The service always provides the same features as the previous licenses you have, but with more permissions and resources. In addition, it is also possible to have more than one license at the same time.
How to choose the right Power BI license without compromising your management?
Choose from Power BI Free, Pro and Premium goes far beyond comparing prices or features. It is to understand your company's analytical maturity level, how much reports need to be shared between teams and what resources are essential for your management model. Making this decision based only on cost can lead to technical restrictions, difficulty in accessing strategic reports and waste of time in the operation.
Connect Power BI to Project Online and make safer decisions
Power BI becomes even more strategic when connected to Project Online , transforming timeline, delivery and performance data into dynamic dashboards that help PMO make evidence-based decisions. Here at MLPro, we support our customers in building custom panels that cross data from various sources focusing on predictability, productivity and result.
What are the license types of Power BI?
In all type of licence , you need to register with a corporate or student account to start enjoying Power BI. These being:
1. Power BI Desktop (free)
A user with a free license can only use the Power BI service to connect to data and create reports and dashboards on My Workspace. In other words, you cannot share your reports with other people in a private and secure way.
It allows:
- Post in the Service (door): It is possible to publish your desktop posts on the services.
- Update rate: Performs up to 8 automatic updates of your reports per day.
- Publish on the web: You can generate a public link to your report, which can be sent to anyone. However, when published the data end up being exposed, because anyone who gets the link can access.
- Graphics: Allows you to create graphics and visuals that represent the data.
- Connect data: It allows connecting and importing data from more than 70 local and cloud-based sources.
- Power BI Desktop and Power Query Editor: Allows you to use the local Power BI to connect your sources, data and transform them.
- Reports and Dashboards: Allows the creation of interactive reports and Dashboards.
However, this license eventually requires an update because it is very limited. Because it does not allow reporting (only by generating a link on the web, where anyone can access), it does not offer applications in workspace, API incorporation, among others.
2. Power BI Pro
It has all the features of the free license, but with some differences:
- Applications: The apps are where people can access their reports. The Premium license offers more applications if you have many users in the company, simplifying reporting sharing with the application library.
- Publish + workspaces: In addition to publishing your reports, it is possible to store and organize them in other workspaces, which would be the desktops. This way, you can share your reports in a way that is not public and expose your data.
- Shares: It allows you to share and sign reports and dashboards with users who own the Pro license.
- Access to Dataflows (Power Query Online): You can capture database on the Power BI service itself, not necessarily on the Desktop but on the cloud.
- Integration: It allows integration with other applications such as Teams, PowerApps, SharePoint, and other Microsoft (Azure Data Services) solutions.
- Update rate: Performs up to 8 automatic updates of your reports per day.
The amount of this monthly license is R$64.00 per user.
3. Power BI Premium
There are two types of Power BI Premium, being them:
Power BI Premium per user
Premium license per user allows user-generated content Premium can only be shared with other users who also have a Premium license, unless this content is specifically placed in a workspace hosted in a Premium capacity.
It offers the same features as Power BI Pro, however, has 100TB of storage per user (which in Pro is 10GB).
In addition, his differences to the Pro include:
- Data flows (direct consultation, linked and computed entities, improved computing mechanism).
- Accelerates access to insights with advanced AI (text analysis, image detection, automated machine learning).
- Paged reports (RDL).
- Read/write end point connectivity XMLA.
- Management of the application life cycle.
- Performs up to 48 updates per day.
The amount of this monthly license is R$128.00 per user.
Power BI per capacity
The big difference from it to the other licenses is that it allows the consumption and sharing of reports and dashboards without the need for a license per user.
Other differences:
- Local reports with Power BI Report Server.
- Implementation management in various regions.
- BYOK (Bring your own key), i.e. control of the keys used in the cloud to keep your data safe.
- Automatic dimensioning complement availability.
The amount of this monthly license is R$31,960.20 per capacity.
For you to understand better as Power BI Premium acts and its differential, see the comparison table of license types other than Premium capacity and Premium capacity:
| Type of licence | Not in Premium capacity | Premium Capacity |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Use it as a personal restricted area where you create content for yourself and interact with this content. Free license is a great way to experience Power BI service. You cannot consume content from another person or share your content with other people. | Interact with content attributed to Premium capacity and shared with you. Free users, Premium per user and Pro can collaborate without requiring free users to have Pro accounts. Collaborate with free users, Premium per user and Pro, creating and sharing content. |
| Pro | Collaborate with users Premium per user and Pro, creating and sharing content. | Collaborate with free users, Premium per user and Pro, creating and sharing content. |
In other words, a user with a free license, for example, can only share content with other people and publish content on other workspaces if they are with the Premium capacity. And, users of Power BI Pro, for example, can distribute content to users who do not have a Power BI Pro license.
Talk to those who understand Power BI for projects
Do you need to choose the most suitable Power BI license for your scenario and ensure that your PMO data is well represented? Talk to an expert from MLPro and see how our custom dashboards can transform your decision making.
Original content from the MLPro editorial library, fully preserved and translated for the English website.