Get the Inside Scoop: Guide to Power BI, Fabric, Copilot Licensing & Pricing Options

Introduction

Microsoft's Power BI platform offers a robust suite of tools for data visualization, AI, data modeling, analysis, and reporting. To cater to diverse user needs, Microsoft provides a range of licensing options, each with distinct features and capabilities. This article serves as a guide to understanding Power BI licensing, with a focus on the future direction of the platform.

Power BI License Portfolio

The Power BI licensing landscape can be broadly categorized into the following:

Select Features available across Licenses for comparison purposes

Power BI Desktop

• Power BI Desktop is a free application that can be installed on a local system for creating Power BI reports.
• It allows users to share PBIX files outside of the Power BI cloud service and consume them without requiring any Power BI license.
• However, publishing content to work-spaces requires a Pro or Premium Per User license.
• Users with a Power BI Free license can publish to their My Workspace only.

Power BI Free

• The Power BI Free license grants users access to the Power BI service in specific scenarios.
• It allows users to access their My Workspace within the Power BI cloud service and to access Power BI content hosted in Fabric capacity.
• However, it does not allow users to consume content outside of their own My Workspace, with the exception of apps hosted in Fabric capacity.
• This license does not include sharing or collaboration capabilities.

Power BI Pro

• The Power BI Pro license is required for sharing, collaborating, and consuming Power BI content within the Power BI cloud service.
• It is available as a standalone SKU for $10 per user per month or is included with Office 365 E5 and Microsoft 365 E5 subscriptions.
• Pro users have unlimited access to create, view, share, and consume reports and dashboards.

Microsoft Fabric: A Unified Analytics Platform

Microsoft Fabric is a comprehensive analytics platform that unifies all the data and analytics tools organizations need to go from data lake to business user. It offers a SaaS product experience and an intelligent data foundation powered by AI with Copilot.

Microsoft Fabric Business Model

The Microsoft Fabric business model is centered around two main components:

Microsoft Fabric Capacity

Microsoft Fabric capacity is measured in capacity units (CUs). A shared capacity provides a set of CUs that power the compute for various workloads, including Data Warehouse, Data Integration, Data Science, Data Engineering, Real-Time Analytics, Power BI, Data Activator, and Copilot.

Benefits of Fabric Capacity

• Simplicity: No need to purchase separate compute for each workload.
• Flexibility: The same set of CUs can be used for any workload without pre-allocation.
• Cost Savings: All CUs are pooled together, allowing for efficient utilization and cost optimization.
• Value Optimization: Compute capacity can be adjusted by scaling up or down as needed.
• Transparent Monitoring: A centralized dashboard provides insights into usage and costs.

Fabric Capacity Pricing

Fabric capacity pricing varies across regions. Refer Fabric pricing page

The pricing table for US West 2 is shown below as an example: (1 CU pay-as-you-go price at US West 2 is $0.18/hour)

Note:

• A Power BI Pro license is required to publish Power BI content to Microsoft Fabric. Content consumers can review and interact with Power BI reports without additional paid per-user licenses at F64 and above.

How Fabric Compute Works

• Capacity units (CUs) represent the compute power needed to run queries, jobs, or tasks.
• CU consumption is correlated to the compute effort required for the tasks performed by the capability during processing time. Each capability, such as Power BI, Spark, and Data Warehouse, has a unique consumption rate.

Copilot in Microsoft Fabric

Copilot in Microsoft Fabric is an AI-powered feature that helps users accelerate productivity, unlock deeper insights, and deliver custom AI experiences for their data.

• Copilot in Fabric is limited to customers who have purchased Fabric capacity (F64 or higher) or Power BI Premium capacity (P1 and above) and is not included in the Fabric free account or trial
• You can simply count Copilot usage against your existing Fabric or Power BI Premium capacity
• Copilot in Fabric usage is charged at a rate of 400 Capacity Units seconds per 1,000 input tokens and 1,200 Capacity Units seconds per 1,000 output tokens.
• See full details here Copilot consumption - Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn

OneLake: Unified Data Lake

OneLake is a unified SaaS data lake that is automatically provisioned with every Microsoft Fabric tenant. It provides a single place to store all organizational data and eliminates the need for additional infrastructure management.

OneLake Pricing

OneLake storage is priced on a pay-as-you-go basis, charged per GB per month. The pricing for West US 2 is as follows: Learn more at the Bandwidth Pricing.

Transitioning Power BI Premium Capacity to Fabric

Microsoft is retiring Power BI Premium per capacity SKUs (P-SKUs) and encouraging customers to transition to Microsoft Fabric SKUs at their next renewal. The Power BI Premium product capabilities will remain the same, and there is no immediate action required. Please refer here for more details https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/important-update-coming-to-power-bi-premium-licensing/?cdn=disable

Translating Microsoft Fabric SKUs

• Fabric SKUs offer several benefits, including MACC eligibility, pay-as-you-go options, and smaller starting SKU options.
• Migrating to Fabric SKUs is a straightforward process that involves reassigning work-spaces to the new F-SKU capacity including bulk re-assign to save time.

Power BI Premium Per User

• Premium Per User licensing provides organizations with the flexibility to license Premium features on a per-user basis.
• It includes all the features of Power BI Pro, along with advanced AI, self-service data preparation for big data, and simplified data management.
• However, capacity-only entitlements, such as the ability to consume content without requiring a per-user license, are not included.
• Premium Per User is available as an add on for users with PowerBI Pro or Microsoft/Office 365 E5 licenses

Target Licensing Scenarios

Premium Per User licensing is ideal for:

• Small and medium deployments that need access to Premium features without requiring capacity.
• Larger organizations seeking to reduce capacity management and utilization monitoring of Premium workloads.
• Departmental scenarios in large organizations where unlimited distribution is not a requirement.

Premium Per User SKUs

• Flexibility to access premium features with a per user license option at $20 user/month.
• Existing Microsoft/Office 365 E5 and Power BI Pro customers can simply purchase the Premium Per User add-on at $10 user/month.
• Premium Per User is available in EA, CSP, and Web Direct channels.

Consuming Shared Content with Fabric and PPU

• Users with a Power BI Pro license can collaborate with other users who have Power BI Pro and Premium Per User licenses in a Pro workspace.
• To view content in a Premium Per User workspace, a user must have a Premium Per User license. The content created by a Premium Per User licensed user can only be shared with other users who have a Premium Per User license, unless that content is specifically put on a workspace hosted on Fabric capacity.
• When Workspaces are in Fabric capacity, users with Power BI Pro or Premium Per User can distribute content to users who don't have a per-user license.

Power BI Premium Licensing Scenarios

The following are a few licensing scenarios to help illustrate how the different Power BI licenses can be used:

• Scenario 1: A customer has 100 BI users, 50 of whom are authoring BI reports, while the rest need to view/access the reports. The customer also needs access to Premium features such as advanced AI and dataflows.

In this scenario 1, the customer would need to purchase Premium Per User for all users.

• Scenario 2: A customer has 200 users who are covered with Power BI Pro standalone licenses. The customer now needs Premium features such as paginated reports and/or a refresh rate of x/day.

In this scenario 2, the customer could purchase the Premium Per User add-on for their existing Pro users.

• Scenario 3: A firm has 5,000 employees across multiple divisions, all covered with M365 E5, which includes Power BI Pro. The HR team wants to publish a report and allow their 100 users to access Premium features.

In this scenario 3, the HR division could purchase the Premium Per User add-on for its 100 employees.

Embedded Power BI

• Embedded licensing is designed for ISVs and developers who want to embed Power BI content into their custom solutions.
• It provides Power BI capacity through Azure A SKUs, billed hourly through an Azure subscription.
• Azure SKUs only support app-owned data.
• Embedded capabilities are also included with all Premium P and EM SKUs.
• Pricing of Power BI Embedded SKUs - https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/power-bi-embedded/
• Capacity of Power BI Embedded SKUs - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/developer/embedded/embedded-capacity-planning

Licensing Scenarios for Embedded Power BI

• Scenario 1: A customer is building a custom application that includes Power BI embedded. The customer is licensed with E5 and does not require external sharing or Premium features.

In this scenario 1, Azure Embedded A SKUs would be recommended.

• Scenario 2: A customer is building a custom application that includes Power BI embedded. The customer is licensed with E3, and a subset of users also have a Pro license. The customer is also looking to share Power BI content across the organization, share content with external users (B2B), and utilize additional features offered in Fabric.

In this scenario 2, Fabric capacity SKUs would be recommended.

Report Server

• Power BI Report Server is an on-premises option for delivering Power BI reports and paginated reports.
• It is licensed using SQL EE SA core licenses and is included as an SA benefit.
• A Power BI Pro license is required to publish Power BI reports to Report Server.

Links and Blogs Referred -

• Fabric Capacities – Everything you need to know about what’s new and what’s coming aka.ms/fabriclicensing
• Microsoft Fabric - Pricing https://azure.microsoft.com/pricing/details/power-bi-embedded/
• Copilot consumption - Microsoft Fabric https://aka.ms/Copilot-Billing-Docs
• Pricing - Bandwidth https://azure.microsoft.com/pricing/details/power-bi-embedded/
• Important update coming to Power BI Premium licensing https://aka.ms/P-SKU-Blog
• Pricing - Power BI Embedded https://azure.microsoft.com/pricing/details/power-bi-embedded/
• Microsoft Azure Legal Information https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/legal/
• Capacity of Power BI Embedded SKUs - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/developer/embedded/embedded-capacity-planning

Conclusion

Upgrading from Power BI to Microsoft Fabric with Copilot and AI can present challenges in capacity management, license compatibility, and feature utilization. To avoid these, users must assess data needs, reporting needs, sharing and collaboration needs, plan Fabric capacity, confirm Copilot licensing, and engage in comprehensive AI training.

Therefore, despite the initial abundance of Power BI licensing options, a structured, data-centric approach empowers organizations to build a precisely tailored solution. By thoroughly considering volume, audience, features, and use case, and by implementing a scalable roadmap, businesses can confidently leverage flexibility. This ensures an analytics environment that not only meets current needs but also anticipates future growth, driving sustained success through informed decision-making.

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