In this blog post, we will discuss Power BI licenses confusion. We’ll help you understand which license you should go for, which one is better for your organization, and how to choose them.

Power BI Licenses

Understanding Power BI licenses is essential to implementing Power BI licenses or adoption plans in your organization. It’s important to know about Power BI licenses and their features to implement them effectively. We will discuss everything in this post, so let’s get started.

Type of Power BI Licenses

There are three main types of Power BI licenses, which cover the rest of the licenses as well:

  1. Microsoft Power BI Pro
  2. Power BI Premium Per User
  3. Power BI Premium (Capacity-based)

Power BI

Microsoft Power BI Pro and Power BI Premium Per User are per-user per-month licenses, meaning Microsoft charges you on a per month per user basis. Power BI Premium, on the other hand, is a per capacity per month license, charged based on capacity.

Which Power BI License is Best for You?

Choosing the best Power BI license for your organization can be confusing. We’ve broken down the process into two steps to help you make the right decision:

  1. Features: Choose your Power BI license based on the features your organization requires.
  2. Number of Users: Your decision will also depend on the number of active Power BI users in your organization.

First, let’s discuss the features and how they differ between Microsoft Power BI Pro, Power BI Premium Per User, and Power BI Premium.

Power BI Features Comparison

We will compare the features based on:

  • Collaboration and Analytics,
  • Data Prep Modeling and Visualization
  • Governance and Administration.

Collaboration and analytics

Some features are exclusive to Power BI Premium, such as paginated reports, consuming content without a per-user license, and on-premise reporting with Power BI Report Server. Other features, like XML endpoint connectivity and Data Flow, are only available in Power BI Premium Per User and Power BI Premium.

Data prep, modeling, and visualization

Another significant difference between the three licenses is the maximum storage and maximum model size. Power BI Pro offers 10 GB of storage per user and a 1 GB data model size, while Power BI Premium Per User and Power BI Premium offer 100 GB of storage and up to 100 GB and 400 GB of model size, respectively.

Power BI License Cost

To determine the best license for your organization based on the number of users, we’ll consider two use cases:

  1. The total number of active Power BI users is less than 500
  2. The total number of active Power BI users is greater than 500

For organizations with less than 500 active users, Power BI Pro is the most cost-effective choice. However, if your organization requires advanced analytics features or multi-geo location features, you may need to consider Power BI Premium Per User.

For organizations with more than 500 active users, Power BI Premium (Capacity-based) is the most cost-effective choice. With Power BI Premium, you don’t need to provide individual licenses; you only need a single capacity-based license and an admin to add any number of free users within the same domain.

Conclusion

Hope this blog post helps you understand which license is best suited for your organization. By considering the features and the number of users, you can make an informed decision on the most appropriate Power BI license for your organization’s needs.

You can visit the rest of our blog posts for more insightful information on everything related to Power BI.

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