April 6, 2022 - But, publish to web is a non-secure way to share reports, as it is public. Any one with a link can view he report without security authentication. To share securely, both sharer and recipient have to have pro license or the report needs to be in a workspace with premium capacity. Power BI Free doesnt give you:

If a Power BI Premium capacity ... with free and PPU users. A PPU per-user license provides all Power BI Pro capabilities plus most Premium capacity features. A Power BI PPU license adds features and content available only with a paid license. Access is limited to people ...

This free user: ... gets content (apps, dashboards, reports, etc.) from Pro or PPU users who share that content using workspaces on capacity. is assigned the Viewer role to those app workspaces. ... Content hosted in a PPU workspace can only be used by users with PPU licenses. ... Feature availability is limited to My workspace. Content in My workspace is for the owner's personal use and cannot be viewed by anyone else in Power BI...

The person who creates content in Premium capacity uses a paid license to connect to data sources, model data, and create reports, dashboards, and apps that are saved to a workspace in Premium capacity. Users without a paid license can use a workspace in Power BI Premium capacity, as long as they have a role in that workspace. ... For free users to access reports, both the report and its underlying semantic model must be in Premium capacity.

Power BI Free is a robust and feature-rich tool for personal data analysis and learning, but its limitations in sharing, collaboration, data capacity, and refresh frequency prevent it from being a viable solution for most team-based or ...

May 7, 2025 - Viewing reports from Pro/PPU users also requires the content to be on that high-tier Premium/Fabric F64+ capacity (and you'll need viewing rights). Plus, you're limited by dataset size and refresh rates. Our Introduction to Power BI course uses the free Desktop tool, so you can take the course and learn without paying for a Power BI license.

November 13, 2024 - Power BI Free: Exactly what is in the name, it’s free. Power BI Pro: $10 per user with access to all services and features · Power BI Premium per user: $20 in a compromise for smaller businesses who want to avail Premium license services but don’t want to pay the minimum $5,000; offers most of the Premium services except for unlimited distribution and multi-geo support

October 16, 2025 - With the right Power BI license and reliable Data Analytics Services, your team can transform data into actionable insights that drive better decisions and measurable business impact—regardless of your organization’s size or sophistication. While powerful for individuals, Free lacks critical sharing capabilities most businesses need.

January 10, 2025 - On the other hand, for businesses with variable workloads, limited budgets, or in the initial stages of planning, the Fabric Capacity license with pay-as-you-go pricing, provides full flexibility in choosing available resources, resulting in a scalable cost (increasing or decreasing) month by month based on requirements. Fabric SKUs are available in a much broader range of resource levels (from F2 to F2048). Power BI content creators are still required to purchase a Pro license.

July 9, 2025 - Free users can publish to the web (public) but not securely share. Storage & Data: Both Free and Pro have a 1 GB per dataset limit and 10 GB per user storage. Cost: Free is $0. Pro is a paid per-user license (≈$10/month).

January 22, 2025 - While Power BI Free (basic) is suitable for learning and individual use, Power BI Pro allows for seamless collaboration, making it the first choice for businesses. ... Limited to smaller datasets, making it ideal for personal use.

September 20, 2024 - Same limitations as Power BI Free License (limited number of embed tokens).

November 5, 2025 - The core functionalities in Power BI Desktop, such as data cleaning, preparing data, connectors to data sources, custom reports, visualisations, and exports to Microsoft apps, are also standard in Power BI Pro and Power BI Premium. As expected, there are limitations with the free version, which provide incentives to upgrade:

When a user signs in, they automatically receive a license. Turning off self-service sign-up prevents users from exploring Power BI for data visualization and analysis. If you block individual sign-up, you might want to get Fabric (Free) licenses for your organization and assign them to all users.

April 17, 2025 - Power BI Pro is a per-user license allowing users to create, share, and interact with content in the Power BI service. Pro users can collaborate and share content with other Pro users. If Pro users want to share with non-Pro/Power BI-users, it needs to be hosted in Power BI Capacity. If hosted in Capacity, Pro users can also share with free and PPU users.

June 16, 2025 - Only the 100 report creators need Power BI Pro licenses to publish content to Premium workspaces. ... The remaining 1,100 users can view the reports without any additional licenses (as “Free” users), since the content is hosted in Premium ...

October 9, 2025 - With Power BI Pro, users can create and share reports, but access is limited to other Pro-licensed users. Power BI Premium offers dedicated capacity and enables users with free licenses to view reports shared within Premium workspaces, making it a better choice for organizations that need to distribute content to a wider audience without purchasing Pro licenses for everyone.

October 11, 2024 - Power BI Free is the entry-level license aimed at individual users who want to create and explore reports on their own. While limited in terms of sharing and collaboration, it provides substantial value for independent analysts.

August 29, 2022 - The biggest difference between the Power BI Pro and Free is that Pro Licence allows you to share data, reports, and dashboards with many other users (unless Power BI premium capacity hosts that content) who have a Power BI Pro license and an app-based workspace. In addition, Power BI Pro has a data storage limit of 10GB per user compared to free.