Microsoft Fabric in portal.azure.com or app.powerbi.com differences

[tls-tjen-admin]

Dear Community,

Here in short, we have 10-20 Power BI Reports editor or make reports, but then we have around 100 Power BI viewers, so that Microsoft Fabric Capacity would be suit our case, as it is also very cost effective.

My question are:

1. What are the differences if we create a Microsoft Fabric capacity inside portal.azure.com and Microsoft Fabric within app.powerbi.com?

2. Do we must activate Microsoft Fabric within app.powerbi.com with minimum 1 Power BI Premium user in order to share Power BI Reports to 100 Power BI free license viewers? And it must from Power BI Premium user right? Not from a Power BI Pro User?

3. What is the Microsoft Fabric inside portal.azure.com for? Why there is 2 way of activating Microsoft Fabric and it is very confusing.

Thank you and Best Regards,

Tjen

[tls-tjen-admin]

Dear @rohit1991 ,
Thank you so much for the prompt reply.

Some other questions below:

So far, from your explanation, for No.1, there is not much different, between activate the MS Fabric Capacity in Azure Portal or Power BI. But we just tried the MS Fabric trial in Power BI, and we could try to decrease the capacity and the default is 64, is this normal? It seems so, as stated here https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/admin/capacity-settings?tabs=trial

Do we have to finished the 60 days trial there, and then decrease the capacity later?

On the other hand, we also just tried activate and create MS Fabric with F2 capacity in Azure Portal (but have not tried to make a workspace from a Power BI Premium User and link it to this fabric), but seems we will be billed for this one and this is not a trial at all? Anyway, I paused it, just in case.

Thank you and Kind Regards

[rohit1991]

Hi, hope this clears  your doubt.

1. Differences Between Creating Microsoft Fabric Capacity in Azure Portal vs. Power BI: Azure Portal: Used for enterprise-level resource management and billing integration with Azure subscriptions. Ideal for IT admins managing multiple services.Power BI (app.powerbi.com): Directly enables Microsoft Fabric capabilities for Power BI users.
Simpler, tailored for end-users and Power BI-specific needs.

2. Sharing Reports with Free Users: Yes, sharing Power BI reports with 100 free users requires Power BI Premium capacity, not a Pro license. A Premium user or tenant admin must activate it.

3. Purpose of Microsoft Fabric in Azure Portal: Azure Portal provides centralized management for broader organizational needs, while app.powerbi.com focuses on quick access for analytics and collaboration. The dual setup caters to both IT and business user preferences.