Power BI Licensing Explained

Power BI Licensing Overview

Let’s starts with the basics, in Power BI you have the following licenses, each of them is either:

• User Based - you pay per a single user
• Capacity based - you pay par a capacity node

Keep in mind that the main development tool - Power BI Desktop is free of charge and you need a Windows machine to run it.

In Power BI you pay for:

• Consumption of the reports
• Better performance of the reports
• Higher data-volume capacity
• Speed of development
• More advanced features

The flexibility of the licensing caters to o different needs and budgets, in the same time being a perfect up-sell mechanism for Microsoft :) Just look as this flow, I’ve already seen many times:

1. Robert creates a sales report in a free Power BI Desktop
2. Robert wants to share his report with 3 District Managers: Anna, Mehdi and Giovanni via Power BI Service
3. Robert, Anna, Mehdi and Giovanni don’t have Power BI licences, but they can use Power BI Pro for free during the first 30 days.
4. During the 30 days, they procure 4 Power BI Pro Licences at a low cost of 33,6€ per month.
5. Robert’s reports are huge success, the District Managers started sharing them with their teams. After 4 months they are 46 Power BI Pro users. The total cost is 386,4€ per month

This is a typical scenario. Consumption of the reports is the cost-driver in this situation.

Let's continue this story with two new variants:

Moving to Power BI Premium Per User

1. Robert’s reports are remarked by the EMEA Sales Director, he wants to spread the reports across all European countries. There will be 148 Power BI users in total.
2. The volume of the data is much bigger right now and more difficult to manage, after each added country Robert tries to optimize his Dataset, but still the dataset finally exceeds 1GB. The limit of Power BI Pro licence is reached.
3. Robert recommends to go for the Power BI Premium Per User Licence.
4. The costs of Power BI reach 2501,2€ per month.

Higher data-volume of the reports is the cost-driver in this situation.

Moving to Power BI Premium Per Capacity

Let’s change just a little bit the parameters of the previous story:

1. Robert’s reports are remarked by the EMEA Sales Director, he wants to spread the reports across all European countries. There will be 300 Power BI users in total.
2. The volume of the data is much bigger right now and more difficult to manage, after each added country Robert tries to optimize his Dataset, but still the dataset finally exceeds 1GB. The limit of Power BI Pro licence is reached.
3. Robert calculates the costs Power BI Premium Per User. The costs are: 300*16,90€=5070€ per month. Robert compares the cost with Power BI Premium Capacity which is 4212€ per month.
4. Robert decides to go for the Premium Capacity, the costs of Power BI reach 4212€ per month.

Higher data-volume and consumption of the reports are the cost-drivers in this situation.

You can easily increase the capacity of Power BI and … the spendings. Choose wisely.

Power BI Licences - Which one to choose in a nutshell

Pick Power BI Premium Per User if:

1. You have a dataset larger than 1 GB that cannot be optimized.
2. Your team spends a lot of time on PBI model deployments and you want to introduce more DevOps approaches, for which you need the XMLA endpoint.
3. You rely heavy on the development of modelling/ETL via Power BI/Power Query.
4. You have less than 250 users

Pick PBI Premium Capacity if:

1. You have at least 250 users who need Premium capabilities or at least 501 users in total.
2. You need to deploy in multiple geographies.
3. You rely heavy on the development of modelling/ETL via Power BI/Power Query.
4. You want to show reports to not defined number of users.
5. Your data model will be bigger than 100GB.

Pick PBI Embedded if:

1. You want to share your data with external users.
2. You want to show reports to a large number of users for a short period of time.
3. You want to build a PoC solution requiring access to PBI Premium.
4. You want to build your own user authentication method.
5. You build an independent solution in which Power BI is embedded for the many users from outside you organisation

In other scenarios, in general I would recommended to stick with Pro licenses. Obviously all organisations are different and I advise to analyse each scenario individually.

Extremely important factor to consider is also the size of your development team. Working in parallel on the same Power BI Products is much easier with one of the Premium options, due to:

• Availability of XMLA endpoint read/write connectivity
• Datamarts
• Enhanced Data Flows capacities

Do you know any more licensing scenarios? Please share them in the comments.

Please always keep in mind, that in PBI Embedded you loose all the benefits of PBI Service, as the users of PBI Embedded don’t have the needed licences to access Power BI Service. It can be very serious issue for the proper adoption process. PBI Embedded is also the only licensing option that will be shown on your Azure Billing Statement

Comparison of the features between the licences

An interesting alternative to Power BI Premium is the use of Analysis Services. This can be a much more cost-effective approach than sticking to PBI Premium.

Power BI Premium vs Analysis Services

An interesting alternative to Power BI Premium is the use of Azure Analysis Services. This can be a much more cost-effective approach than going with PBI Premium Capacity. Before deciding to go with Power BI Premium Capacity you should always analyse the option of Azure Analysis Services.

Power BI Licences - 7 last tips

??Remember that for PBI Capacity Premium and PBI Embedded, developers must still be assigned a PBI Pro license.

??With Power BI PPU, you can store up to 100GB in a data model, the same as P3 Capacity.

??If you have a Microsoft Customer Agreement, the prices may be lower.

?The prices of Power BI licenses may also be lower in your CSP.

??A Power BI Pro license is included in an Office E5 License.

?? You do not need a Power BI Embedded license to embed your PBI report.

?? You can have PBI Capacity Premium in monthly commitment instead of yearly if you pass by CSP.

Thanks for reading my article, if you have any suggestions/questions please leave a comment/pm me.