How to use Power BI

The Power BI Licenses you need to share reports in your organization

1 August 2024
joe
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This post is a little different. No video this week, because we’re talking about Power BI Licenses. Not the most exciting thing in the world but *immensely* important to understand when it comes to sharing Power BI reports in your organization.

Let’s learn about how Power BI license levels affect how you can share (or not share) Power BI reports within your organization.

As with anything administrative concerning Microsoft, it’s a bit of a labyrinth deciphering just what is possible with different licenses, so I’m going to try and make this digestible and easy.

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ORGANIZATION-WIDE MS OFFFICE PLANS

Before we start, you organization may have an organization wide Microsoft Office license that has Power BI “Pro” licenses included for your entire organization. Check with your IT department to see if this is the case. If so, everything below about “Pro” licenses applies to everyone in your organization.

The most common is one that Microsoft calls an “E5” Office Plan that includes a ton of apps including Power BI Pro for everyone.

E5 currently runs at $35.75 USD per user, per month.

Your organization may not have one of these plans, so let’s explore different Power BI licenses that can be given to individual users, but also everyone.

No problem if you have questions… Microsoft does not make this super clear, and changes things occasionally.

Down below all these write-ups, I’ve attempted to put all your options into some tables, so you can compare different scenarios easier.


FREE LICENSE

Anyone can download Power BI Desktop for free from Microsoft (or, free from the Microsoft Store, which I recommend), login with an email (your own, or one connected to your org, connect to data, and publish a report to the Power BI service, which allows you (and only you) to view your report in a browser.

So, with a free license, you can create reports, but no one else in your org can see them.

PRO LICENSE

A Power BI Pro license currently costs $14 USD per user per month.

(Prior to April 2025, it was $10 USD per user per month)

A Pro License is needed to publish a report you make to something called a Workspace in your organization.

Think of a Workspace like a locked room. You put a report in that room, and you get to decide who has access to that room. Maybe everyone does. Maybe just 1 department should have access. Maybe just a few people.

However, even with access to a workspace, a viewer *also* needs to have a Pro license to have the report show up for them.

So, Pro licenses are needed to share AND view reports.

PREMIUM

Power BI Premium (Microsoft also calls this Premium Capacity) is organization wide, and *starts* at $5,000 per month (and seems to go up to as high as $80,000 per month), so it is geared towards larger organizations.

A lot of Premium features have to do with data capacity like larger data models, more refreshes of data per day, etc. but it also affects sharing reports in an organization.

With Premium, some users can be given Pro licenses (included, no extra cost) to create and share reports. Everyone else can have a “free” license (they call it free but it’s part of the Premium plan).

For one of the Pro users to share a report with “free” users, they’d put the report in a workspace assigned to the Premium capacity and then give workspace access to whoever needs to view the report.

With Premium, anyone in your organization can see a report, whether they are assigned a Pro account or not.

Clear as Mud

I’ve simplified this as much as I can for you, using my interpretation of the myriad of Microsoft Power BI License information on their site. Down at the bottom of this post I’ve included links to where I’ve pulled this info.

A Table of License Scenarios

Here’s and nice and (relatively) easy table of different scenarios to help you out. It lays out what different License scenarios let different users do and how much it costs.

Summary:

If your organization already has an Office plan that has Power BI Pro included for everyone, you’re golden. You can share with anyone in your organization. Rock on.

If not, and you’re an organization with less than 500 people who need to view reports, getting PRO licenses for them is the better deal. If you have more than 500 people, have a look at the Premium Capacity options.

Microsoft Sources for this post:

Other Methods:

There’s a few other ways you can theoretically share a Power BI report, but in not quite the same way as you probably want to… a secure interactive version your colleagues can use.

Public Sharing: Once you publish a report to the Power BI service, you have the option of sharing it *publicly*, outside your organization (or within your organization to anyone, regardless of license type).

A public report can be embedded into a webpage that anyone can look at. Even if you password-protect that webpage, the data that underlies that report is available for anyone to theoretically access, so you have to be REALLY sure you can share that data.

Exporting static versions: Another thing you can do once you have your report on the Power BI service is Export it to Powerpoint or PDF. This option creates a slide/page for each page in your report. You can then send the powerpoint or PDF file to colleagues.

It’s essentially a static snapshot though. Not interactivity.

Embedding in Powerpoint: Last year Microsoft gave us the ability to embed a live report into a powerpoint. Theoretically, you as the creator, could then open that powerpoint (for instance in a meeting) and show the Power BI report. YOU would have to be logged in for it to show up though. Anyone else wouldn’t be able to access the report in that Powerpoint.

Take care everyone,

Joe.