Power BI Visuals and Their Limit

[GoutamHegde]

Hello @PBICommunity Need Help in the following scenario
I am currently working on a project where my datasets and semantic models in Power BI are operating in directquery mode with GCP BigQuery. These models are published to PBI service, and we are building reports using live connections to these models. I’m looking at this from both a performance and cost standpoint, and I would appreciate your advice or corrections if I’m misunderstanding something.
Here are a few questions I have:

1. What is the ideal and max number of columns to add in a detailed tabular visual? I know that a matrix can support up to 100, but I’m unsure about tabular visuals.
2. Regarding cost and performance, how does adding more columns in a single report compare to having multiple reports with fewer columns each? Which approach has a higher cost and why?
3. Similarly, what would be the cost and performance differences between adding all columns from a single table versus adding columns from different tables? Which method would result in higher costs and why?
4. Would there be any difference in cost and performance if multiple users are accessing the same report?
5. Lastly, would you recommend having one report with more than 100 columns or 10 reports with 20 columns each?

Your insights would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

[lbendlin · Accepted solution]

1. Avoid horizontal scrollbars at all costs. Users hate them.  Only show as many columns as you can without the horizontal scrollbar appearing

2. Question is too fluffy for anything but a "It depends"  answer

3. same as 2

4. depends if your data source is import or direct query mode, and how performant your measures are

5. Neither.  Focus on providing insights, not on counting number of columns.