Checked by Hanny Ramzy on 26 September 2026. Drafted with AI help. Then checked against the Power BI and Fabric documentation from Microsoft on Microsoft Learn. Screenshots are from our own test Microsoft 365 account.
Power BI has three licences for people: Free, Pro and Premium Per User (PPU). Free is for dashboards that you make for yourself. Pro is for sharing. Each person who opens a shared report must have Pro, not only the person who made it. PPU is for analysts whose data is too big for Pro, or changes too frequently.
Many Malaysian SMEs buy one Pro licence for the owner and share the dashboard. Then the team sees a “you need to upgrade” message, not the numbers. Office Niaga supplies Microsoft 365 through a Microsoft CSP partner, and we can supply Power BI Pro. We do not show prices, because prices change frequently.
Free, Pro and Premium Per User at a glance
This table shows what each licence lets you do in the Power BI service, from the Microsoft documentation on 26 September 2026:
| What you want to do | Free | Pro | Premium Per User |
|---|---|---|---|
| Build reports in Power BI Desktop | Yes, Desktop is free | Yes | Yes |
| Create reports and dashboards in your own My workspace | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Publish to a shared workspace and work on it with colleagues | No | Yes | Yes |
| Share a report or dashboard with another person | No | Yes, with other Pro or PPU users | Yes, with other PPU users |
| View a report shared from an ordinary (shared capacity) workspace | No | Yes | Yes |
| View content shared from Fabric F64 or larger, or Premium, capacity | Yes, with a workspace role such as Viewer | Yes | Yes |
| Scheduled refreshes per day, per semantic model | 8 (in My workspace) | 8 | 48 |
| Semantic model size | 1 GB default | 1 GB default | Up to 100 GB |
| XMLA endpoint, deployment pipelines, Premium AI features | No | No | Yes |
A “semantic model” is the old “dataset”: the data and calculations behind your report. Ordinary workspaces are on shared capacity. There, each refresh must finish in two hours. When you click Refresh now yourself, that refresh is not one of the eight a day.
Free: dashboards for yourself
Microsoft now calls the free licence Fabric (Free), because Power BI is part of Microsoft Fabric. With Free, you can make reports in Power BI Desktop and publish them to My workspace. You can also set a scheduled refresh on your own data, and add alerts to your own dashboard tiles.
A free user cannot share a report, make a shared workspace, or view a report from an ordinary workspace. Microsoft says that a free licence from self-service sign-up does not expire, unless someone cancels or removes it. Our test account had never used Power BI. When we first published from Power BI Desktop, Microsoft asked us to sign up for the free licence. It did not start a trial.
Pro: sharing with the team, and everyone needs it
Most small businesses need Power BI Pro. Microsoft says: “Only Power BI Pro users can publish, share, or consume other Pro users’ content unless it resides in a Power BI Premium capacity.” “Consume” means view. Thus, in an ordinary workspace, these people must have Pro:
- The person who makes and publishes the report.
- Each person who edits the report in the shared workspace.
- Each person who only opens the report to look at the numbers.
With Pro, you can publish to shared workspaces, share reports and dashboards, and publish apps. You can also get email updates of reports, and share with guest users outside your company. The guest also must have Pro or PPU, from their company or yours, unless the content is on F64 or larger capacity.
For most SME sales, stock and finance reports, the Pro limits in the table are sufficient.
Premium Per User: for analysts with big data or frequent refresh
Premium Per User (PPU) “includes all Power BI Pro license capabilities”, so you do not need Pro as well. In addition to the items in the table, PPU gives advanced dataflow features and enhanced automatic page refresh. The XMLA endpoint lets tools read and write models directly. Deployment pipelines move reports from development to test to production.
PPU content is only for PPU users. Microsoft says that “to collaborate and share content in a PPU workspace, all users need a PPU license”. This rule also applies to the XMLA endpoint, Analyze in Excel and Composite Models. A colleague with Pro cannot open a report in a PPU workspace.
Microsoft says that PPU “is more cost effective when Power BI Premium features are needed for fewer than 250 users”. PPU does not give you a Fabric capacity. Thus, it does not give you Fabric items such as lakehouses, warehouses or notebooks.
The exception: capacity for large organisations
A capacity is computing power that the organisation pays for, separate from user licences. The Microsoft rules in September 2026 are:
- On Fabric F64 or larger, or the older Power BI Premium P capacities, free users with the Viewer role can view reports and dashboards. The report and its semantic model must both be on that capacity.
- On smaller Fabric capacities, F2 to F32, each viewer must have Pro or PPU.
- People who create and share content must have Pro or PPU, also on a capacity.
F64 is a large capacity that you buy through Azure, for organisations with many report viewers. Office Niaga does not sell Fabric capacity or PPU. If you think that you need one of them, speak to us and we will help you find the correct source.
Which one do I need?
Find your situation in the left column. This table is our reading of the Microsoft licensing rules:
| Your situation | What to buy |
|---|---|
| Only you, with your own spreadsheets | Free is sufficient. Download Power BI Desktop and publish to My workspace. |
| You make a report, and colleagues must see it live | Pro for the creator and for each viewer. |
| A model bigger than 1 GB, or more than 8 scheduled refreshes a day | PPU, for each person who works with or views that content. |
| Hundreds of people only view reports | Fabric F64 or larger capacity, plus Pro or PPU for the creators. A smaller capacity does not replace Pro. |
| Your company is on Microsoft 365 E5 or Office 365 E5 | You already have Pro: each E5 licence includes one Pro licence. Do not buy Pro again. Look at Billing > Licenses first. |
| You are not sure yet | Start with Free. Then use the Microsoft 60-day trial of the paid features before you buy. |
Microsoft also gives a 30-day organisation trial of Pro for up to 25 users. Your admin can turn off self-service trials. If you do not see the trial button, ask the person who manages your Microsoft 365.
Example: 5 staff need to see the sales dashboard
Your sales manager makes a monthly sales dashboard from an Excel export of your accounting system. Five sales staff must see it each morning, and it must refresh two times a day. The sales manager must have Pro to publish and share it. Each of the five staff must have Pro to open it, because the workspace is on shared capacity. The total is 6 Pro licences, or 5 if the manager is one of the five. Two refreshes a day is in the Pro limit, so you do not need PPU or Fabric capacity.
If only the manager has Pro, each of the five staff sees a prompt to upgrade to Pro, PPU or a trial. “Publish to web” is not a solution. It makes a public link that any person on the internet can open, and free users cannot make one. You can send the report as a PDF or PowerPoint file, if your admin allows exports. But your team then gets a fixed copy, not a live report.
Works for Google Workspace companies too
You do not have to move your email to Microsoft to use Power BI. Microsoft says that you sign up with a “work or school email account”, and that “you can’t use consumer email accounts (for example, Gmail or Hotmail) directly.” An address on your own company domain, for example a Google Workspace address, is a work address.
A tenant is the Microsoft directory for your business. If your company has one, you sign in with that account, and you get a licence as your organisation settings allow. If it has no tenant, Microsoft says that the sign-up “might route you to an alternate sign-up that provisions an account and sometimes a new tenant.”
For a team, it is better for an admin to set up the Microsoft tenant first, and then assign Pro licences.
What changed recently
Microsoft changed some names in Power BI in the last two years. These are the changes that you will probably see:
- Power BI is now part of Microsoft Fabric. You can sign in at app.powerbi.com or at app.fabric.microsoft.com.
- New names. The free licence is Fabric (Free). “License mode” is now “workspace type”. Datasets are now semantic models.
- Microsoft will stop Power BI Premium capacity (P SKUs). Microsoft does not sell new P SKUs, and asks customers to move to Fabric F SKUs. Pro and Premium Per User “continue as-is”.
How to check which licence you have
Users: sign in at app.powerbi.com, select your profile picture at the top right, and look at the licence type. For more data, select View account > Subscriptions. Our guide to what Power BI is and how to open it shows where to find it.
Admins: go to Billing > Licenses in the Microsoft 365 admin centre, and select Power BI Pro to see who has one. Our guide to assigning a Power BI Pro licence gives the steps.
Our help centre also shows how to build your first report in Power BI Desktop and how to publish and share a report.
How we checked this guide
Each licensing fact comes from these Microsoft Learn pages, which we checked on 26 September 2026: “Power BI service features by license type”, “Licenses and subscriptions for business users”, “Power BI features available to free users”, the Power BI licensing guide for organisations, “Understand Microsoft Fabric licenses and capacity”, the Premium Per User article, “Data refresh in Power BI”, “Large semantic models in Power BI Premium”, the self-service sign-up and trial articles, the Power BI Premium to Fabric migration overview, and the Microsoft 365 and Office 365 plan options table.
We took the screenshots in our own test Microsoft 365 account on 26 September 2026. We drafted this guide with AI help. Then Hanny Ramzy checked each licence rule, limit and menu path against those pages on 26 September 2026. For the Microsoft 365 plan names, see our guide to Office 365 vs Microsoft 365. When Microsoft changes the rules, we will update this page.
Need Power BI Pro licences?
Office Niaga can supply Power BI Pro licences and help you set up your first dashboards. WhatsApp our team on +60 16-916 3324, and tell us who makes the reports and who must see them. We will calculate the number of licences with you.
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Hanny Ramzy runs Office Niaga at Web Impian Sdn. Bhd. (SSM 920163-H) in Kota Bharu, Malaysia, helping businesses and agencies move to Google Workspace and business email with Ringgit billing and local support.