Power BI Report Server pricing

The rights to install and use Power BI Report Server is included with any Power BI Premium licensing, which a P1 costs $5K/month. Alternatively, Power BI Report Server is included with SQL Server Enterprise with Software Assurance. Please note those last two words.

The pricing for SQL Server Enterprise can be relatively complex:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/sql-server-2016-pricing

But bottom like, it's going to cost you at least $15K

You can also spin up an Azure VM for the Power BI Report Server and pay for it on a consumption basis, but I think that's really there more for demo and testing purposes.

As far as security. Power BI Report Server has security. Do you have a more specific question around security?

---

Hi PaulDBrown,

 

We are using On-Prem PBI and so I can offer my understanding on this.

 

You will need SQL Server 2016 /17 Enterprise Edition with Software Assurance. The SA adds certain licensing benefits one of which is the right to download, install and operate the PBI RS on site. The SA covers the SQL SVR license, it adds benefits to that licence.

 

The SQL Licence is not usually paid for on a monthly basis, you can pay for it over a longer period 12, 24, 36 months etc, this needs to be agreed with your MS reseller or MS direct.

 

As most modern processors have 8 cores at least, you will typically need 4 x 2 Core Packs, the cost of which could be as high as $60k if you look at online MS pricing. But again this price can be by negotiation with the Reseller and MS, and can depend on the business sector your client is operating in.

 

You will also need PBI Pro licenses for the staff that are developing and publishing to the PBI RS, but under this setup the users of the PBI reports will not need any extra licenses. This is something I have only recently found out, luckily they are not expensive compared to the other costs.

 

You will of course also need the server hardware plus Windows Server Licenses to run the SQL Svr and PBI RS on. Get lots of RAM, we have 768GB RAM for our prod server, but are developing on something more modest.

 

Hope this helps

Rob

---