Forum Discussion
Report Performance
Desktop can feel “instant” because it benefits from local caching, fewer concurrent workloads, and sometimes a “warmer” session. In the Service you add extra latency layers (capacity scheduling, network hop, rendering) and you’re sharing resources with other users/operations.
If near-real-time is the goal: consider a hybrid approach (Import/DirectLake for most visuals + DirectQuery only where needed), or use a small imported “hot” table refreshed frequently.
Reduce page weight: fewer visuals per page, avoid heavy tables, reduce high-cardinality columns, turn off unnecessary interactions.
Optimize the warehouse: avoid complex views for DirectQuery; push logic into a prepared table/aggregation that Power BI can hit cheaply.
Hi Hussein_charif,
this is usually a memory issue. Please go to task manager and see how much memory on the computer where the desktop runs is been absorbed for every update. You might have more RAM on the server where PBI Desktop runs than on the cloud. Or it might be an Internet connection thing
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Francesco Bergamaschi
MBA, M.Eng, M.Econ, Professor of BI
Hi FBergamaschi , so what you're saying is that it's an issue from my device, and not necessarely from power bi service app?
Hi Hussein_charif ,
No, this isn’t a problem with your device. If the report runs smoothly in Power BI Desktop but is slower in the Power BI Service, the issue is related to service side behavior rather than your local machine’s memory or CPU. In the Service, reports use Fabric capacity, so local resources don’t affect performance.
With DirectQuery, performance in the Service can be influenced by factors like capacity load, simultaneous queries, caching limits, and how visuals request data. It’s normal for these aspects to impact Service performance, even if things work well in Desktop.
Regards,Yugandhar.
