Prices are in Power BI and Fabric Pricing. To find your likely route, use the Decision Tree. Full feature grids, legacy SKUs, and embedding rules are in the licensing reference.
This page covers what each Power BI licence and capacity option allows, and the rules that decide what you pay. It is part of our Power BI Licensing Guide, which also shows where to start for common situations.
What you buy
- A licence for each person. It controls what that person can do: build reports, publish and share them, or only view them.
- Capacity, which is optional. A pool of computing power rented from Microsoft Azure. It controls how large your data can be, whether you can use Copilot and Fabric's data-engineering tools, and, at one specific size, whether viewers still need a paid licence.
Most small and mid-sized organizations buy per-person licences only. Capacity is usually needed for very large datasets, for Copilot, for a data platform beyond reporting, for embedding reports in your own application, or when a large viewing audience makes it cheaper than paying per person.
Licence and capacity options
| Option | What it is | Who it suits | Main limits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Assigned automatically when someone signs in. Build and view your own reports in a personal workspace. | One person exploring on their own, or viewers on a Fabric capacity of F64 or larger. | Cannot publish to a shared workspace or share with anyone. Datasets up to 1 GB compressed, 8 automatic refreshes a day. |
| Power BI Pro | The standard paid licence. Publish, share, collaborate, produce print-ready documents such as invoices, and connect Excel PivotTables to the Power BI data. Already included in Microsoft 365 E5 and Office 365 E5. | Most report builders and most teams. | In a shared-capacity workspace: datasets up to 1 GB compressed, 8 automatic refreshes a day per dataset including refreshes triggered by automation. A Pro user working on Fabric capacity gets that capacity's limits instead. |
| Premium Per User (PPU) | Everything in Pro plus larger datasets, 48 refreshes a day, and tools for BI developers: test-and-release copies of a workspace, and a connection for external modelling software. | Analyst teams who need those features and can license everyone who will use the content. | Everyone who opens content hosted in a PPU workspace needs PPU. Datasets up to 100 GB. Does not include Copilot on its own. |
| Fabric capacity (F SKU) | Computing power bought from Azure, in sizes starting at F2. Unlocks Copilot, Fabric data tools, and large datasets at any size. | Organizations with a large viewing audience, big data, Copilot, or a data platform. | Publishers still need Pro or PPU. Viewers still need Pro or PPU unless the capacity is F64 or larger. Size has to be confirmed by measuring the workload. |
Licensing rules that affect cost
- Anyone who publishes to or edits in a shared workspace needs Pro or PPU. Buying capacity does not remove this.
- Viewers need Pro or PPU too, unless the reports sit on Fabric capacity of F64 or larger. On F64 and above, viewers need only the Free licence and the Viewer role.
- Content hosted in a PPU workspace is for PPU holders only. If your analysts build in a PPU workspace, everyone who opens that content needs PPU as well, so the whole audience is counted. A PPU holder's reports in an ordinary Pro workspace follow the normal Pro rules.
- Microsoft 365 E5 already includes Pro. Check who holds E5 before buying anything. Those people cost nothing extra for Pro and step up to PPU at a reduced add-on price.
- Copilot needs a Fabric capacity. F2, the smallest, is enough. A capacity can also be designated to bill Copilot for named users on Pro and PPU workspaces.
- Paginated reports do not need an upgrade. Invoices, statements, and other print-ready reports work on Pro.
- Data size means the compressed dataset in memory. Your source database will be larger. Refresh temporarily roughly doubles the in-memory size, and we measure that peak before recommending a capacity.
Premium, Embedded, and Report Server
Power BI Premium capacity (P SKUs) is no longer sold. Existing customers on an Enterprise Agreement can renew until that agreement ends, then must move to Fabric capacity. Power BI Embedded (A SKUs) still exists for embedding reports in your own application, but Microsoft directs new projects to Fabric capacity, which includes the same rights. Power BI Report Server runs reports on your own servers and is licensed through specific entitlements described in the reference.
Related pages
- Plain-language explanations of the terms on this page: Concepts Explained
- Which route fits you: Decision Tree
- What each option costs: Pricing
- Full feature comparison by hosting context, Fabric SKU sizes, embedding models, Report Server entitlements, and Premium retirement dates: licensing reference
- Not sure which applies to you: book a discovery call
Verified against Microsoft Learn and Microsoft pricing pages on 22 September 2026. Microsoft changes licensing terms without long notice, so we re-verify before any quote.