Which PBI enterprise license plan to choose?

[mybarbie9917]

I have an on-premise database, 2 PBI developers who prefer to have Premium features, and 20 content users.

I plan to get the Premium Per User license for each of PBI developer and Pro license for each of the content user.

However, I read that PBI Premium Per User doesn’t support reports on-premises. Does it mean I can’t create a connection to on-premise database with PPU license? Should I try migrate the data to the cloud?

Can you please advise which enterprise license I should get for my situation?

[edhans · Accepted solution]

That info is incorrect. Even Power BI Pro supports on prem usage via a Gateway, which is free. There are some Premium features in other Power Platform producst (Power Apps, Power Automate) that require premium to get access to a gateway, but that is not the case for Power BI.

Whereever your Power BI devs are developing, if it is Pro or Premium Per User (PPU) then the end users must have the same license. 

Your devs cannot develop content that has PPU capabilities (larger models, editing via XMLA endpoint, enhanced compute dataflows, etc.) and then have Pro users see it. They will be blocked. If it is a Pro workspace, then everyone must have a Pro (or PPU) license. If it is a PPU workspace with these extra features, everyone must have a PPU license.

If you develop PPU content, then try to link it to a Pro workspace so Pro users can see it, the content will be blocked.

The exception is if you have Premium Capacity (starts at $4,995 per month for the company) then all of your users can have Power BI Free licenses to see the content, and your devs only need Pro to develop and pubilsh content.

Make sense? 

Note that your PPU licensed devs can create content in a Pro workspace, but they will not get any PPU features. But it might be you have 50 users, and 10 need data models that need a Premium Per User license to have the larger models. So if you have a dev, they need PPU to create and publish, those 10 users need PPU to see that content.

But then your PPU dev can create other content in a normal Pro workspace, and those other 40 users just need a Pro license.

So the license determines the capabilties of the workspace and what can be done with it, not of the license holder.

[mybarbie9917]

Thanks for the detailed explanation! Even after reading PBI documents, I'm still not aware that the end users must have the same license as the developers to see the content. You save me!  

My devlopers just need some features in PBI workspace like dataflow and development pipeline and users just need to access the app to consume the content. If I get PPU license for all developers and content users, will I be able to achieve that goal with the lowest cost and the best capacity? 

[edhans]

Yeah, if you want Deployment Pipelines, then you need a PPU license, and that means all user need a PPU license to see that content.

[mybarbie9917]

Great! Thanks for replying to confirm my understanding. 😊