Power BI Free v/s Power BI Pro v/s Power BI Premium: Choose Your Most Suited Needs

Whether you are a business owner or an enthusiast who likes to keep a tab on the latest market trends, chances are you already know about the potential of Power BI Pro vs Premium. Despite its popularity, we often receive questions like:

How to differentiate between Power BI free v/s Power BI Pro v/s Power BI Premium? 

What type of license one must buy and what is the pricing of Power BI Pro and Premium?

Well, if you too are someone who desperately wants to embrace Microsoft Power BI consulting services and know the answers to all these questions, then you have landed on the right spot.

Today in this blog we will break down the details of Microsoft Power BI along with its prices.

What is Power BI?

Microsoft Power BI is a business intelligence platform that caters its technical as well as non-technical users with its tools that aggregates, analyzes, visualizes and shares data.

It acts as a medium to connect with hundreds of data sources, simple data preparation, and stunning report building.

Power BI’s user interface is quite similar to Excel making it easy for the users to adapt to it rapidly with minimal training.

Power BI implementation has helped a lot of business owners.

Power BI comes with three versions:

  • Power BI Free
  • Power BI Pro
  • Power BI Premium

Each version differs in its pricing, features, and functionalities. So, what do they have in store for you? Let’s find out!

Power BI Desktop / Free

As the name implies, Power BI free is the basic version that comes as a desktop-based app only.

To start enjoying the basic Microsoft Power BI benefits, all you need to do is sign up with your business email ID.

Despite being a free version, you will be amazed by the features it offers to its users. To name a few:

  • Power BI Desktop allows you to connect with more than 70 data sources. 
  • Its visual tools allow you to transform raw data into a simplified report.
  • Build custom reports, stunning visualizations and get advanced analytics
  • Export your reports easily to PowerPoint, Excel, etc.
limitations to the power bi desktop free version

Download Power BI Desktop

Who can choose Power BI free licensing?

Literally anyone! But the only thing to take note of is Power BI Desktop is not for someone who aims to distribute the reports to other employees.

If you are doing your own analysis and are the sole decision-maker, then this app is for you. In addition, you have access to Direct Query, live connection and gateways.

Power BI Desktop Licensing Cost: 

0$, it’s for free.

Power BI Pro 

Power BI Pro is one step ahead of the free version. With Power BI Pro one can share data, reports, and dashboards with the users who own pro license.

Besides, it also allows the user to create app workspaces that are not possible in the free version.

You can also do Power Apps, email subscriptions, embed API’s and controls. Every Power BI pro owners get a 10 GB data storage limit.

Here are some highlighting Power BI Pro features:

power bi pro features

When to choose Power BI Pro?

Owners with small and large business developments can go for Microsoft Power BI Pro license.

Pro allows employees from different departments to engage in ad hoc analysis, share and publish quickly while taking care of other relative activities.

What is Power BI Pro license cost?

Power BI Pro pricing costs around 9.9$ per user. Although those who are not sure about purchasing Power BI Pro license can try its 60 days free trial. 

Power BI Premium

When you buy Power BI Premium license, you are buying bulk for your organization. Here, anyone from your organization can access and view the content.

Although, people still need a Power BI Pro license if they wish to build and share the reports. So, the best way to use full Power BI potential is to mix Pro and Premium.

You can buy Power BI Premium license for the whole organization and a few Pro licenses for report building.

Who should go for Power BI Premium?

Large organizations that have a large number of employees and want them to have the data access must go for Power BI Premium.

It is specifically designed to overcome the challenges of large enterprises and their deployments.

Power BI Premium empowers an enterprise by helping them own their own capacity rather than having a shared one.

Power BI Premium Features

Power BI Premium Features

Power BI Premium license cost

The Power BI Premium cost is $5004. The minimum cost entry is $4995 and rest of the $9 is for a pro license that one will need to publish premium capacity.

As we have seen that with Power BI features comes a lot of Power BI benefits. It has become an integral part of the business world.

Being a Power BI vendor and gold partner for years, SA Technologies excels in offering comprehensive Power BI services.

We with our team of certifies consultants strive to deliver excellence with every solution. 
Also Read: Microsoft Power BI Desktop – An Efficient Tool for Data Integration