How much will Power BI cost to my organization? A list of all different licenses

An accurate Power BI reporting is extremely valuable for your company. It enables you to critically observe the real time situation at any given moment and take appropriate actions when necessary.

This allows you to timely respond to identified opportunities or mitigate risks as they arise.

A Power BI reporting requires a Power BI license. But which licenses are available, what are the differences between these licenses, and which license is best suited for your company?

Power BI Free: a try-out for Power BI.

By using Power BI Desktop, it is possible to explore what Power BI has to offer and experiment with various visuals. This free desktop version allows you to connect to your different data sources and easily turn them into charts.

However, it is not possible to share your created reports online with others. Therefore, the free desktop version is intended for building reports or dashboards by your external consultant, internal analyst or IT professional.

Power BI Pro: to share reports within your organization.

After setting up your reporting in Power BI Desktop, you wish to publish your dashboards in Power BI Service (Power BI Online). This makes your data report accessible to various stakeholders in your organization. The availability of these indicators is the basis for informed decision-making.

To share dashboards within your organization, you need to have a Power BI Pro license. This applies to all persons who wish to access the report. A 60-day trial period offered by Microsoft allows you to try out these functionalities for free. The cost of this license is € 9.40/month per user. If your company has Microsoft 365 E5, a Power BI Pro license is included.

Power BI Premium per user: to make your reports perform better.

Power BI Premium per user is a new license since begin 2021. In addition to Premium licenses per capacity (see below), Microsoft now also offers user licenses. As a result, it is now possible to purchase a Premium license for just a few users.

This license allows individual users to make optimal use of premium features. This includes enjoying a better response time of reporting in Power BI through the use of advanced artificial intelligence. In addition, you can set up reports with your own company layout using the Power BI Report Builder and share them within your organization. The license cost is €18.70/month per user. You can once again enjoy a 60-day trial period.

Whether or not to purchase a Premium per user license depends on the size of your organization and the underlying datasets from your IT system.

For the average SME, a Power BI Pro license is sufficient to share a high-performing report on Power BI Service.

Power BI Premium per capacity: for large enterprises with extensive analysis needs.

As a large enterprise with extensive datasets, you may wish to purchase your own server space from Microsoft Power BI so that the entire organization, not just users, has access to accelerated reporting in Power BI. The data capacity or "computing power" is managed by Microsoft.

You do this by purchasing the "Power BI Premium per capacity" license. This license comes with a cost of approximately €4,675.60 per month. Microsoft's pricing calculator will determine how much this formula would cost for your enterprise.

The possibilities of Power BI Premium per capacity are endless (even more than Power BI Premium per user). Your enterprise can work with Power BI both on-premises and in the cloud using massive datasets. In addition, it is possible to share Power BI reports outside the organization.

Setting up Power BI reporting requires not only a license but also the right expertise. It is crucial that your data model is correctly designed and your reporting produces accurate KPIs. If this is not the case, you run the risk of making decisions based on incomplete information or faulty analyses.

If you would like more information on the possibilities of Power BI for your business, or if you are interested in gaining insight into your figures for a fixed price, please contact us for an informative conversation.

Justine Rousseeuw - 13 april 2021

The article has been edited in July 2023.