How Much Does Power BI Service Cost?

How Much Power BI License Costs?

There are high chances that your primary web searches would lead you to the website of Microsoft Power BI, as soon as start looking for a business intelligence solution for your organization. And when you will start looking for Power BI, you will mainly come across two options which include Power BI Pro and Power BI Premium. But, there are not just these two options; and there is a complete range of Power BI solutions depending on the features and usability. However, while choosing over which Power BI solution will be the best for business, usually the primary concern of our clients is the cost associated with Power BI licensing. First of all, let us tell you that finding out the accurate Power BI License Cost is a complex process; and it requires a good amount of research while answering plenty of questions, to exactly determine your business needs and usability requirements.

In the diagram below, we have listed down the main features and costs of Power BI Pro and Power BI Premium against the services that you need.

If you spend some time searching about Power BI costs, you will find out that Microsoft offers you a decent range of options, from Power BI Free Version to Power BI version that may cost you about $83,000, which is undoubtedly a hefty amount of money. Hence, it is very crucial that you take a sufficient amount of time to figure out your business needs and then match them against the service options and Power BI license offered by Microsoft. Learning about the features offered by every Power BI license can help you maximize your ROI, without spending an unnecessary amount of money.

What to Consider While Choosing MS Power BI Licensing for Your Business Enterprise?

Service options, features, and access levels are the main factors on which your choice of Power BI license is majorly dependent. To get Power BI license, there are mainly two ways, i.e;

• The first way is to use your self-service capabilities and utilize your personal or corporate account for getting access to the Free Power BI License. This method can also be used to get access to Power BI Pro and Power BI Premium Licenses.
• If you don’t want to use your personal or corporate account; but want to get the administrative subscription, so that you can further assign or distribute licenses; then you need to create an account on MS Power BI, and then request for an Admin Subscription. You can get Admin Subscription for any type of Power BI License.

Read also → Everything You Want to Know About Microsoft Power BI

Types & Abilities of Microsoft Power BI Licenses

Microsoft is updating Power BI at a very fast pace; which makes it a challenging task to keep up with the changes or advancements offer under every licensing option. As of January 2021, there are 5 different types of Power BI Licenses that are being offered by the company. These include;

• Power BI.
• Power BI Pro.
• Power BI Embedded.
• Power BI Premium.
• Power BI Report Server.

 

Let’s dig into the detail of each, one-by-one;

Power BI –Free or Basic Version

The Free or Basic version of MS Power BI is amazing and very easy to getting start with. As the name suggests, you don’t need to pay any money for this version; and that is why it is being considered as one of the ideal options to begin with. It is also a great choice; if you are still skeptical about business intelligence tools; because this free version can help you find out whether Power BI I the right intelligence tool for you or not. And once you get satisfied with the features, functionalities, and performance of Power BI; then you can either keep using it for free or move on to an advanced version. For instance, if you need your data and Power BI reports to be published over the server, or you want to share them with your clients, etc. then you are required to switch to any of the paid versions, and this may cost you somewhere between $10 to $125 or £90 per user/year.

Power BI Pro

At first, you may find Power BI Free and Power BI Pro very similar, however, the significant difference among them is the ‘Sharing’ feature which makes it an appropriate choice for those who want to share their Power BI reports and data with other users or on the server. Power BI Pro subscription is very affordable and it will cost you around the US $10.40 or £ 7.50/user/month.

If you also have a subscription to Billing Admin or Global Admin Account of MS Office 365; then you can avail of the Power BI Pro’s free trial for your company. During the trial, you will be offered 25 user licenses with a 1-month validity period. If you want to sign-up, then you can follow MS Power BI’s Step-by-Step guide. And if you are subscribed to MS Office Enterprise License (E5) then you can avail of the Power BI Pro version for free, because it is already including within the Office 365 Suite. Subscription charge to MS Office 365 Enterprise License (E5) is US $ 42.60 or £31/user/month.

Power BI Embedded

Power BI Embedded is an ideal choice for you if your firm requires advanced functionalities and features. But if you are not sure, and want to try these features first, then you can create a capacity for Power BI Embedded within you Azure Portal and then assign a Workspace. This will enable you to get access to the premium features of Power BI Embedded. And, once satisfied, you can simply pause the capacity that you have created, to avoid making any extra charges for you. However, this trial is not completely free, and you need to pay a small fee against it. But obviously, these trail charge are way smaller than the actual subscription costs of Power BI Embedded License.

Learn it this way! It asks you to pay about US $33 or £24 for an 8-hour trial; whereas the complete subscription will cost you US $83 or £ 60/month. Of which, the usage time of 1 hour is allotted for each day for 30 days. This clearly indicates that the cost almost doubles when you set up a capacity. If you don’t know how to set up capacity, you can take help from MS Playground Assistance to get one established for you.

Power BI Premium

Power BI Premium is a cloud-based service option and it may cost you around $4,995/month per computer resource/per cloud storage. This may seem a big amount for startups or small companies, but for enterprises with a large number of employees, with colossal data volume and high data refresh frequency needs, etc. this is s a great deal in terms of features and price.

‘Power BI Report Server Only’ Licensing

With Power BI, using SQL Server Reporting Service is not a problem anymore for business organizations; because it enables companies to utilize Software Assurance besides Enterprise SQL for publishing Power BI reports all across the corporate server. Differences in functionalities between On-Premise and SaaS are meaningful to consider when deciding over the right Power BI version for your business.

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