Power BI pricing in 2026: what each license costs, and which you need
Power BI pricing comes down to three numbers for most teams: Power BI Pro at $14 per user per month, Premium Per User at $24, and Fabric capacity from about $156.33 a month when you need it. Which one you need depends on how many people build reports and how many only read them. The calculator below works it out for your team.
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Power BI license prices in 2026
These are Microsoft's list prices in US dollars, checked on 15 October 2026. Per-user licenses are billed yearly. Capacity prices are for the East US region and assume the capacity runs all month (730 hours); other regions and currencies differ.
| License | Price | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Power BI Desktop | Free | Building reports on your own computer. Sharing them needs a paid license. |
| Power BI Pro | $14 per user / month | Publishing, sharing and viewing shared reports. The default for most teams. |
| Premium Per User (PPU) | $24 per user / month | Premium features per person: bigger models, 48 refreshes a day, XMLA endpoint. |
| Fabric capacity (F SKUs) | From $262.80 / month (F2, pay as you go) | Shared compute for Fabric and Power BI. From F64 up, viewers need no Pro license. |
| Power BI Embedded (A SKUs) | From $735.91 / month (A1) | Showing reports inside your own app or portal. |
Sources: Microsoft Power BI pricing, Microsoft Fabric pricing and the Azure Retail Prices API for capacity rates, and Microsoft Learn on Fabric licenses for the viewer rules. Microsoft changes prices; check before you buy.
Power BI cost calculator
Enter how many people build or edit reports and how many only view them. The calculator compares the license options at list price and shows the cheapest one that works.
List prices, US dollars, per month, East US capacity rates on a one-year reservation ($78.17 per capacity unit a month) or pay as you go ($131.40). Excludes taxes, discounts and Azure storage.
Power BI Pro vs Premium Per User
Pro covers what most teams need: publishing reports, sharing them, scheduled refresh up to 8 times a day and semantic models up to 1 GB. If your reports fit inside those limits, Pro is the answer and the rest of this page is optional reading.
Premium Per User costs $10 more per person and lifts those limits: models larger than 1 GB, up to 48 scheduled refreshes a day, the XMLA endpoint for tools like Tabular Editor and DAX Studio, and deployment pipelines. The catch most people miss is that content in a PPU workspace can only be opened by people who also have PPU. So PPU suits a small group of analysts who all need the heavier features, not a company where 50 managers just read the numbers.
A 1 GB model limit sounds tight, but a well-built star schema compresses far better than most people expect. Before paying for Premium, it is often worth checking whether the model is simply carrying columns and rows nobody uses. I wrote about that in how to fix a slow Power BI report.
Fabric capacity and Power BI Premium capacity pricing
Capacity is a different model: you pay for a block of compute, not per person. Microsoft is retiring the old Power BI Premium per-capacity (P) SKUs for new purchases and points customers to Fabric F SKUs instead. F64 is the size that matches the old P1.
| Fabric SKU | Capacity units | Pay as you go / month | 1-year reservation / month | Free viewers? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| F2 | 2 | $262.80 | $156.33 | No, viewers need Pro |
| F4 | 4 | $525.60 | $312.67 | No, viewers need Pro |
| F8 | 8 | $1,051.20 | $625.33 | No, viewers need Pro |
| F16 | 16 | $2,102.40 | $1,250.67 | No, viewers need Pro |
| F32 | 32 | $4,204.80 | $2,501.33 | No, viewers need Pro |
| F64 | 64 | $8,409.60 | $5,002.67 | Yes |
The line that matters is the last column. Below F64, everyone who views Power BI content still needs a Pro license, so a small capacity adds cost rather than removing it, unless you need the other Fabric workloads such as lakehouses, warehouses or notebooks. From F64 up, people with a free license and a viewer role can open the reports. At the reserved F64 price of $5,002.67 a month, that only beats Pro once you have roughly 357 or more viewers.
Power BI Embedded pricing
Embedding is for showing reports inside your own software, such as a client portal, where your customers should not need a Microsoft account. With the app-owns-data model, your application signs in on their behalf and the end users need no Power BI license at all. You pay for capacity instead: an A1 node costs about $1.01 an hour in East US, about $735.91 a month if it runs non-stop, and F SKUs can be used for embedding too.
A SKUs can be paused, so a portal that is only used in office hours, or a test environment, can cost a lot less than the full-month figure. For a portal with a handful of clients, it is also worth comparing against a custom web dashboard that reads the same data without a Power BI capacity at all. That is a choice I make with clients when I build client portals and data apps.
Is Power BI included in Microsoft 365?
Only in the enterprise E5 plans. Power BI Pro is included in Microsoft 365 E5 and Office 365 E5. The Business Basic, Standard and Premium plans that most small companies use do not include it, so Pro is a separate $14 license on top. If you are on E5 already, your users can share and view reports without buying anything extra.
The short version: most teams under a few hundred people should put everyone who touches reports on Pro and spend the rest of the budget on a clean data model. If you are not sure which license mix fits, ask me as a Power BI consultant and I will tell you, even when the answer is the cheapest option.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Power BI cost per user?
Power BI Pro costs $14 per user per month and Premium Per User costs $24 per user per month, both billed yearly, according to Microsoft's pricing page in October 2026. Power BI Desktop is free. Everyone who shares or views shared reports needs Pro, unless the reports sit on a Fabric capacity of F64 or larger, where viewers can use a free license.
What is the difference between Power BI Pro and Premium Per User?
Premium Per User adds the Premium features for each licensed user: semantic models larger than 1 GB, up to 48 scheduled refreshes a day instead of 8, the XMLA endpoint, deployment pipelines and more. The catch is that content in a Premium Per User workspace can only be viewed by people who also have a Premium Per User license.
Is Power BI included in Microsoft 365?
Power BI Pro is included in Microsoft 365 E5 and Office 365 E5. It is not included in the Microsoft 365 Business plans that most small companies use, so on those plans Pro is a separate license. The free Power BI Desktop app works without any Microsoft 365 plan.
When is Fabric or Premium capacity worth it?
A Fabric capacity is worth it mainly when many people only view reports. On F64 or larger, viewers need no Pro license, but F64 costs about $5,002.67 a month on a one-year reservation in East US. With Pro at $14, that only pays off above roughly 357 viewers. Smaller F capacities still require Pro for every viewer.
How much does Power BI Embedded cost?
Power BI Embedded is billed per capacity, not per user. The smallest A SKU, A1, costs about $1.01 an hour in East US, about $735.91 a month if it runs all month. Fabric F SKUs can also be used for embedding. You can pause an A SKU when nobody uses it, which lowers the bill for internal or test use.
Do report viewers need a Power BI license?
Yes, in most cases. Viewers need Pro (or Premium Per User for content in a PPU workspace) unless the report is published to a Fabric capacity of F64 or larger, or embedded for external users with the app-owns-data model, where end users need no Power BI license at all.