What is Power BI? Power BI is the premier business analysis service from Microsoft and comes in 3 primary versions Free, Pro and Premium. But which one is right for your business? In this article, we will cover all the peculiarities of each version, and include basic pricing details so you can determine what service harmonizes your needs and budget.
What can I do with the FREE version of Power BI?
Power BI Free is not the average analytics application that you look at and then realize you are confined in a freemium model that you cannot really do much with. In fact, it is quite the contrary as it is packed with functionality that most organizations can leverage immediately and we have provided some advice as well below on how to really stretch the Free release of Power BI to its seams.
You may already have access to Power BI Free through your Office 365 Subscription!
If you already subscribe to Office 365 then you already have access to Power BI since it is incorporated in all Office 365 plans. So before you purchase Power BI you can signup at any time and investigate the service.
Power BI Desktop is FREE!
Power BI Desktop is a full-fledged analytics and business intelligence application. Users can get started using Power BI through the free Power BI Desktop application. Out of the box, the application allows the ability to connect to over 100 (at the time of this writing) different services and data sources.
The Power BI Mobile App is also FREE!
So just know that you can also access your published reports on your mobile device at any time from the Power BI Mobile app.
Power BI Free gives you access to the same visualizations in the PRO and Premium Versions
Using Power BI Desktop you can curate custom reports, metrics, dashboards and you even have access to the full custom visuals library on app source as well from the Microsoft community to download into your own reports for use.
You can even publish to the web to share with other users in the Free Version of Power BI but there is a catch…
Spoiler Alert: Your Data is Public
So you will have the capability to publish your reports and datasets to the web even if you do not have any pro licenses within Power BI. The catch, however, is that Power BI will produce a public link that is accessible to anyone that knows the URL of the link.
Granted the URL that is generated from Power BI is not one that is going to be easily located on the internet or guessed, but it is hardly secure. It is obscure for sure, but not secure.
Power BI Free – Refreshing your Data in Power BI Free is Limited
You can refresh data published to the web with Power BI Free, but just know that you will have to load up your .pbix file, refresh all the data, then publish it to the web manually.
I guess that you could technically script this if you had Power BI Desktop running on a dedicated laptop so that it could update and refresh your information daily.
If you need to refresh your data more often than once a day that is also possible with the Free version of Power BI. You can actually refresh your dataset up to 8 times a day. So, for example, you could still make the free version work for you.
If you have an 8-hour workday you could start refreshing data at the beginning of each workday, and then refresh once per hour until the end of the workday.
Still totally usable in most use cases for an organization. Even better if the information does not have to be updated more than once per day.
Power BI Free – Collaboration is Limited, but try this workaround
So we mentioned you can create awesome reports in Power BI Free but sharing them was limited unless you wanted to share them with an obscure link.
So how else do you get your content shared to your organization? Especially for those who do not want to install Power BI Desktop?
One of my favorite ways to share your Power BI Reports with other users is to take advantage of PowerPoint. With PowerPoint, there is an addon in the Microsoft Store that is free and it is named web viewer.
You can take the embed link from your Power BI report when it is published and simply add it into the PowerPoint file.
This file can be secured in SharePoint and displayed to groups of users or it can be presented on panel screens just like a rolling PowerPoint slide of Power BI awesomeness!
Power BI Free – Your Data Is Limited, but try this workaround
So Free, in this case, means that your datasets are also limited in Power BI. The total amount of storage that you have available to you in the free version is 10GB.
You are also limited to the total size of your .PBIX file (the file your build your reports in) is 1GB. So essentially, you could have (10) – 1 GB reports.
A simple potential workaround to the size limitations in Power BI Free
If you are primarily after the Dashboard and visualization features of the product you will find that you can really stretch the Free version of the product considerably when you take the time and summarize the dataset you are uploading in Power BI first.
It is all about how much data you are putting in and what you are planning to use the reporting for as an example…
Let’s say you if you have a dashboard with a piechart showing the total number of product sales by salesperson for each month of the year. You don’t need to drill into the data, but just display it for a report.
So, for this simplistic example should we upload every single transaction into the PBIX file? In short, you would save a ton of storage by summarizing, aggregating, and grouping the data first before it gets into Power BI.
There are many ways to do this and you will really stretch Power BI Free for a long time with this method since if your data is already summarized and aggregated it will be moderately tiny begin with!
Larger Datasets are a real problem with Power BI Free
Inevitably, some of you may have larger datasets that go beyond this even when your data is summarized outside of the product. If this is the case then the Power BI free version is not going to be the right fit and you will quickly run out of storage for your reporting. That is ok, as Power BI Pro can help with that.
Final thoughts on Power BI Free
So Power BI Free is amazing and offers so much, but if you want to share your reporting external to the organization in a secure way this could be a problem. If you have really large datasets that you cannot summarize beforehand then you may struggle with the limitations of the product.
However, if these situations do not apply specifically to your needs then you should absolutely check the product out today and start using it in your organization as the value add is tremendous with the Power Platform.
Power BI PRO – what else can I do with a Pro License vs. Free License?
With Power BI Pro you get all the features in the free but you are allowed much larger data sizes. In part because the pricing and storage are now based on each per-user license. We will cover the primary differences between the Free and Pro versions below.
Important Note: You may already have access to Power BI Pro Licensing if you use Office 365. This is because of certain versions of Office 365 tiers such as E5 already provide full access to Power BI Pro for their users.
What is the price for a license of Power BI Pro?
The price is $9.99 per month per user which will get you 10 GB of storage per user that is licensed with the product.
You also gain the ability to share reports, with other users of the organization securely, and collaborate. However, this will require each of those users to also have a Power BI PRO license as well in order to consume and modify the reports.
It is important to note that your PBIX file is still limited to 1GB as in the free edition as well of Power BI. But now each user of the organization can have up to 10 GB each of reports in Power BI.
How often can you refresh data with Power BI Pro?
This may be surprising but at the moment you can still only refresh a maximum of 8 times per day which actually matches the abilities in the free version so nothing really different there.
Power BI Pro provides access to the On-Premise Data Gateway
If you have data on-site that you would like to sync with Power BI you can connect them using the On-Premise Data Gateway. In many cases, this data is in a database such as SQL, Maria, and/or MySQL.
You can install a small piece of software that will sync the data to Power BI and refresh it on a regular interval. This means that you do not necessarily have to tie-up a machine for refreshing the data in Power BI.
Power BI Pro – Live Data Connections
So if you have live streaming of data such as through IoT devices, or maybe even from telemetry data feeding in from your applications then you have the ability with Power BI to leverage that data and live connections to support your dashboards and custom datasets within the Power Platform.
Power BI Pro – Online Processing Environment is Shared
So when you upload your PBIX data file and are waiting for it to be processed in the Power BI cloud you will be using shared computing power on a hosted Power BI cloud server.
This means that your files will be queued for processing and it could randomly take more or less time to complete depending on current availability. This is similar to the shared hosting space on a web server where the resources are essentially shared by all users of Power BI Pro.
Power BI Pro – Embedding Data into Other Applications
This is becoming a huge feature with a pro license and it is known as Power BI embedding. There are many applications out there that already support embedding Power BI reports in them. Some examples are SharePoint, Teams, and many additional SAAS applications.
You can even obtain a Power BI Pro license just for your custom application. That is right you may want to embed Power BI reports into your own app and you can do that with a single user Power BI license to embed all the capabilities of Power BI into your application.
Power BI Premium – What do I get VS the standard Pro License?
The power BI Premium is all about additional storage, dedicated processing power, and maximum refresh rates for those clients that have large amounts of data and need the dedicated capacity to support its users.
The Premium service is not priced by users but rather is based on performance tiers similar to how dedicated servers are currently priced in Azure. This is most likely because the reporting servers are most likely running on a dedicated SQL instance running the Power BI server feature.
What is pricing for Power BI Premium?
There are 6 models of pricing for Power BI Premium that are based on the capacity needs of a client and 2 that can only be purchased currently through Microsoft Volume Licensing. The Power BI Premium service pricing starts at $625 per month and goes all the way up to $20,000 per month depending on the total number of cores that are needed, memory, and the renders per hour that are expected each hour.
How many users do I get with a Power BI Premium License?
The number of users for a Power BI Premium license is unlimited. There are no user restrictions as the license moves from a per user basis over to a per organization basis.
You also get the ability to have unlimited sharing of your reports outside the organization as well when you purchase a Power BI Premium subscription.
Power BI Premium – Dedicated online processing
When you get a Power BI Premium subscription your processing is completely dedicated and your resources are not shared with other organizations.
This means that when you upload your PBIX files for processing they will be handled in the order received and will not have to wait in a queue. This can be important for many close to real-time data applications and metrics that need to be monitored and displayed.
How big can my PBIX files be on Power BI Premium?
The maximum size is actually 10 GB for PowerBI Premium per PBIX file with a maximum total storage of 100TB in total on the Power BI Premium subscription.
So if you are a client that has a very large amount of data then the Premium license has all the capacity you would need for a BI tool.
With Power BI Premium – You get a Power BI Report Server License
This can be a huge value to your organization if you want all the processing capabilities of Power BI running on a secure server inside your organization. This is an extension that runs on top of SQL Server reporting services which provides all the abilities of Power BI running within the walls of your organization.
This is great for those organizations that have very sensitive data that you do not want to share outside the organization. It also could be that you have privacy or data concerns in sharing your information in the Power BI cloud. Either way, this gives you the choice on how and where to deploy Power BI.
How often can I refresh data with a Power BI Premium subscription?
This is one area that is really different than the PRO or even the Free licenses that are limited to 8 refreshes daily.
You have the ability within the Power BI Premium subscription to refresh your data up to 48 times daily, or once every 30 minutes.