Pricing and Licensing for On-Cloud Power BI Service

[Shambavi]

Hi everyone,

I'm considering using on-cloud Power BI services. Could someone provide details on the total pricing and the type of licensing required for this setup?

Thanks in advance!

[TomMartens]

Hey @Shambavi ,

everything you need to run Power BI "on-cloud" (I use this term from your initial post) is included in the pricing.

In addition ro reading the Power BI Security Whitepaper I recommend reading the Microsoft Fabric Security Whitepaper: Microsoft Fabric security white paper - Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn and also read this blog article by Kim Manis: Important update coming to Power BI Premium licensing | Microsoft Power BI Blog | Microsoft Power BI

Regards,

Tom

[TomMartens · Accepted solution]

Hey @Shambavi ,

I recommend reading this article: Types of licenses for Power BI business users - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Please be aware that with the advent of Microsoft Fabric (What is Microsoft Fabric - Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn) finding the proper licensing model has become a little more complex. For this reason it is important to understand what Microsoft Fabric has to offer except Power BI.

It's important to have an idea about how many people will use (consume) Power BI reports, how many people will create Power BI reports and want to share (publish) these reports with colleagues. This is important to decide if it is sufficient using Pro licensing or if you need a dedicated capacity.
Then it's important to under Premium Per User (PPU) licensing, this licensing model offers Power BI Premium features for a smaller number of users. Be aware that PPU licensing does not include new Fabric workloads like Data Engineering or Data Science.

Hopefully, this helps to tackle your challenge!

Regards,
Tom

[Shambavi]

Hi Tom,

Thank you for the detailed response and the helpful resources!

I have a follow-up question regarding additional costs. According to the documentation Power BI Security - Power BI | Microsoft Learn the Power BI service is built on Azure, utilizing Azure Blob Storage for data uploads and Azure SQL Database for metadata storage.

Do we need to account for additional Azure service costs on top of the licensing fees for Power BI? If so, could you provide some insights into what those costs might look like?

Thanks again for your assistance!

Regards,
Shambavi