Which Power BI licences are there?

Microsoft has reshuffled its licences a few times over the years, so it is no surprise if you have lost track. In 2026 there are four options that matter for an SME:

  • Power BI Desktop (free). The application you build reports in. Free to download, runs on Windows. You can build anything with it, but you cannot share.
  • Power BI Pro. The standard per-user licence. It lets you publish reports to the online environment (the Power BI service), share them with colleagues and set up scheduled refresh.
  • Power BI Premium Per User (PPU). Everything in Pro, plus more compute and room: larger data models, more frequent refreshes and a number of advanced features.
  • Fabric capacity (F SKUs). Not a licence per person, but a block of compute you buy per month or per hour. It runs Power BI as well as the rest of Microsoft Fabric: data pipelines, a lakehouse, notebooks and so on.

Premium per capacity (the old P SKUs) is being phased out by Microsoft in favour of Fabric. If you come across that term in older articles: for a new decision, look at Fabric.

What do the licences cost in 2026?

List prices on Microsoft's website, billed annually and excluding VAT (checked on 22 September 2026):

  • Power BI Desktop: free.
  • Power BI Pro: $14 per user per month (€12.10 on the Dutch site).
  • Power BI Premium Per User: $24 per user per month (€20.80 on the Dutch site).
  • Fabric capacity: variable, depending on size, region and whether you pay as you go or reserve for a year. The smallest capacity (F2) costs a few hundred per month; F64 runs into the thousands per month. According to Microsoft, a one-year reservation is about 40% cheaper than pay-as-you-go.

The Pro and PPU prices have applied since 1 April 2025, the first price increase since Power BI launched. If you have Microsoft 365 E5, Power BI Pro is already included. With Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Standard or Premium, it is not.

Prices change, and your reseller or Microsoft agreement may differ. Always check the current price before you put together a budget.

Who in your company needs which licence?

This is where most of the confusion lies. The rule of thumb: anyone who wants to view shared Power BI content needs the same licence as the environment that content lives in. So not just the creator, the viewer too.

  • If a report sits in a regular workspace, the creator and the viewers all need a Pro licence (or PPU, which includes Pro).
  • If a report sits in a PPU workspace, everyone who wants to view it needs a PPU licence. One PPU user does not make things cheaper for the rest; quite the opposite.
  • If a report sits on Fabric capacity F64 or larger, viewers with a free licence can view it. Creators still need Pro.
  • On smaller Fabric capacities (F2 up to F32), viewers of Power BI reports still need a Pro licence. So an F2 is not a cheap way around Pro licences.

That last point is often missed. A small Fabric capacity can make sense for the data processing underneath, but it does not solve the licensing question for your viewers.

Pro or Premium Per User: when is the difference worth paying for?

For most SME reporting, Pro is more than enough. PPU only starts to matter once you hit one of these limits:

  • Data model size. With Pro, a published model can be at most 1 GB; with PPU it can be far larger. A well-designed SME model rarely reaches 1 GB, but years of line-level transaction data can make it tight.
  • How often you refresh. Pro allows 8 scheduled refreshes per day, PPU 48. If you want fresh figures every half hour, you need PPU, or a different setup.
  • Advanced features such as incremental refresh on large tables, deployment pipelines or paginated reports at scale.

If you notice you are approaching 1 GB, look at the model itself first. Unneeded columns, overly precise timestamps and history nobody uses often take up most of the space. A good data model is usually cheaper than a heavier licence.

When does Fabric capacity make sense for an SME?

Fabric answers two very different questions, and it helps to keep them apart.

Question 1: "We have a lot of viewers." From F64 upwards, viewers no longer need a paid licence. But F64 costs thousands per month, while Pro costs €12.10 per person. Run the numbers for your own headcount: only at roughly a few hundred viewers does F64 start to compete with Pro for everyone. Most SMEs are well below that.

Question 2: "We also want our data platform on Microsoft." Then a small capacity (F2 or F4) can make sense: you get a place to pull in, clean and store data alongside your reports. That is a decision about your data engineering, not about your dashboard licences. Keep in mind that your viewers on a small capacity still need Pro.

Unsure whether you need that platform? Start without it. A data foundation can live perfectly well outside Fabric, and you can always move later.

Worked example: an SME with 15 users

A fictional example to make it concrete. A wholesaler with 40 employees wants a finance and sales dashboard. Three people build or adjust reports (the controller, the managing director and the sales manager). Twelve people only view: account managers, team leads and the management team.

  1. Pro only: 15 × €12.10 = €181.50 per month, excluding VAT. Everyone can build, share and view. Eight refreshes per day.
  2. PPU for everyone: 15 × €20.80 = €312 per month. Only worth it if the model genuinely grows beyond 1 GB or management wants fresh figures every half hour.
  3. F64 with free viewers: three Pro licences plus a capacity costing thousands per month. With twelve viewers, impossible to justify.

For this company, Pro for everyone is the logical choice. The biggest gain is not in the licence, but in whether the connection to the source systems is set up properly, so that those eight daily refreshes actually pull in the right figures.

How to choose in five steps

  1. Count creators and viewers. Who builds reports, who only views? Write the numbers down.
  2. Check your Microsoft 365 plan. With E5 you already have Pro. With Business Basic, Standard or Premium you do not.
  3. Estimate your data volume. Does your model stay under 1 GB, and are eight refreshes a day enough? Then Pro will do.
  4. Only model F64 with hundreds of viewers. Below that, Pro for everyone is almost always cheaper.
  5. Start small and scale up. Licences can be added or changed later. Start with Pro for the people who actually work with the reporting today.

Still unsure whether Power BI is the right next step at all? Read Excel or Power BI? When it is time to switch first.

Help with your Power BI setup

The licence is the easy part. The hard part is a data model that is right, connections that run reliably every day and KPIs everyone defines the same way. Want to know which setup fits your business? See how we approach dashboarding, or read more about our approach.