Licensing

[Syndicate_Admin]

Hi, I need your help to know what type of license I need or what alternatives exist to share a Power BI report that uses RLS security profiles so that each user sees different information depending on their role. My customers don't have a power bi license and I need to know the best way to share the report with them while keeping the data secure. I appreciate the guidance.

[v-tejrama]

Hi @Syndicate_Admin ,

Thank you @Nabha-Ahmed for the response provided!

Has your issue been resolved? If the response provided by the community member addressed your query, could you please confirm? It helps us ensure that the solutions provided are effective and beneficial for everyone.

Thank you.

[v-tejrama]

Hello @Syndicate_Admin ,

I wanted to check if you had the opportunity to review the information provided. Please feel free to contact us if you have any further questions.

Thank you.

[Nabha-Ahmed]

Hi @Syndicate_Admin 

It depends entirely on how many external customers you need to share with and whether they have licenses. Here is the simplified guidance:

✔ If you only have a small number of customers (e.g., 1–15 users):

Buy Power BI Pro licenses for them.

Cheapest option

RLS works

Easy B2B sharing

✔ If you have many external customers (dozens → hundreds):

Use Power BI Embedded (A SKUs).

External customers do not need Power BI licenses

RLS works

Much cheaper than Premium P1

Ideal for customer-facing scenarios

✔ If you are a large organization and need enterprise sharing:

Use Power BI Premium Capacity (P1).

External users do not need licenses

RLS works

High capacity, but expensive

⭐ Summary — “Which one should you choose?”

Few customers → Power BI Pro

Many customers → Power BI Embedded (A SKUs)

Enterprise scale → Power BI Premium P1

If this solution helped you resolve your issue, please mark it as the accepted answer so it can reach and help others as well. Your support is appreciated.

Best regards 

Nabha Ahmed

[Syndicate_Admin]

Hello thank you very much for your information, it is not a test.. hehe I'm a person I'm just new and I didn't know very well how this worked.

Taking advantage of your wisdom, you help me how to know about option 2 and 3, which is the best option and which is more profitable talking about cost? I'll tell you a little, I am dedicated to making reports for companies that have more than one distributor so maintaining this security system (RLS) is very important, in addition to the fact that I manage more than one company. Which one would you recommend?

[KarinSzilagyi · Accepted solution]

Hi @Syndicate_Admin, sorry for the late response, it seems I missed the notification.

If you have multiple different clients that you want to service with individual reports that are made specifically for those clients, don't need any of the Fabric features and expect fewer than ~300 - 400 Read Users (which is typically the break-even point for individual Power BI Pro licenses vs a reserved F64-SKU, depending on your exact region) and don't expect large individual data models (< 1 GB per model), I would probably recommend to go with option 3) Embedded license (App owns Data). 

The F64-SKU would make sense if you either-way need to build a new full data platform as the basis for your reports and have hundreds of users that need to access your reports via Power BI Apps or directly via the Workspace, but I assume that isn't currently the case.

I just checked the SKU-table again, and with F-SKUs > F8 you also get the embedded features, so you could also get a smaller F-SKU (min. F8) to process your data + embedd the reports as App Owns Data!

[KarinSzilagyi]

Hi @Syndicate_Admin, I'm not sure whether this is some sort of system test or not, but figured I might answer the question anyways.

There are three licensing options for reading users to consider depending on the number of end-users and where/how they should access the reports later.

Option 1) The classic Pro-License. Any user in a Pro-Workspace also requires a Pro-License to access the report. The most common options for the Users to access the reports would be through either an App ("normal" Power BI App or a public preview organizational App) or directly via the Workspace. This option mostly makes sense if you have a small number of end-users. 

Option 2) Premium Capacity or >=F64. If you have a large number of read users and already have an existing Premium Capacity or want to also utilize Microsoft Fabric Features + want your users to access the reports via an app or directly via they Workspaces, this might be the choice for you. In a Premium Capacity (= P-License) or Fabric Workspace using at least a F64 license (or bigger) only the users that publish the reports need Pro Licenses, while the read-only users don't require individual licenses.

• Option 3) If you want to embed the reports into an external platform (e.g. your custom built Client Portal of some sort) you need an Embedded License (A-License). Here you can still define your RLS roles but your users access the reports through an external website you provide. The read-users do not require individual licenses to access the reports with this option.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/developer/embedded/embedded-row-level-security