Example of cost Power BI embedded

[AnniekH96]

Hello everyone,

I'm currently assessing the monthly expenses involved in publishing a simple report on my website, which will be accessed by approximately 40 users. Each user is expected to use this report for about one hour per week. I've received an initial estimate using ChatGPT, and I'm curious to know if it seems accurate based on anyone's experience.

According to the provided estimate, if we assume the usage of a mid-tier Power BI Embedded plan with an approximate cost of $2 per hour, the total monthly cost for 40 users - each accessing the dashboard for an hour weekly - would be approximately $346.40. This calculation is based on the premise that there are roughly 4.3 weeks in a month, leading to a total of 4.3 hours of usage per user per month. Multiplying this by 40 users gives 172 hours of usage, which at $2 per hour, amounts to the estimated monthly cost of $346.40.

I'd appreciate any insights or experiences you might have with similar setups in your companies.

[Kananchuk]

Hi, in Power BI Embedded, you only pay for the time used, but it doesn’t have built-in auto-start and stop functionality. For instance, some other services, like Azure App Service, have this capability: if no one is using the service, it will stop, and the first user after a pause will experience a “cold start.” If you want to avoid that, you can use the “Always On” mode.

Power BI Embedded only provides an API for starting and stopping services (you can also do this manually through the Azure portal).

A possible solution is to use third-party products that enable automatic start-and-stop functionality.

This one definitely works: https://genolis.com.au/smart-power-bi-embedded-manager-add-on.

It also solves the autoscaling issue, for example, when multiple users open reports simultaneously and your plan doesn’t have enough resources.

[ibarrau · Accepted solution]

Hi. Power Bi Embedded doesn't work by user, it's by capacity. It will charge if the capacity is resumed and it won't if it's paused. You can configure scripts over azure to pause and resume in order to reduce the costs.

You can think about a plan of days of week and hours a day that it will be turned on for any user to use it. You can't know when a person is using it to turn on or off. It's like turning on a VM to let any one use it untill you turn it off. So for example if you want to keep it on 8 hours a day during working days. Assuming 24 working days a month and 8 hours a day you will have it on for 192 hours. You can then multiply 192 x $ of the plan. In this case $2 hours would be $384 by month.

Again, it doesn't matter if it's 1 or 40 users. If the users are too many it won't cost more, it will be slow depending on the plan. 40 users is a small number you shouldn't have any trouble.

I hope that make sense

[AnniekH96]

Hi! This is really helpful, thank you!

Just to clarify, if I were to turn it on as you suggested on workdays, but it ends up not being used, would the cost still be $384 a month?

[ibarrau]

Once it's turned on. It's running the cost. Even if you are not using the capacity at all over power bi service. So if you turn it on during working days and your users are not viewing any report, then the cost is still $384.

I hope that helps,