Power BI Pro vs Premium

Power BI is a software developed by Microsoft. It allows users to create data visualizations for business intelligence. Microsoft currently offers Free, Pro, and Premium versions of Power BI. Typically a free license is for personal use only since it does not allow for content sharing. In this article, we will compare Power BI Pro and Power BI Premium to help you decide which license best suits the needs of your business.

Power BI Pro

Power BI Pro is individually licensed. This means that a license must be purchased for each individual user. Only those with a Pro license or Premium license can consume content produced in Power BI Pro. In other words, someone with only the free version cannot view content created in Power BI Pro. The current pricing for Power BI Pro is $9.99 per user per month.

Power BI Premium

Power BI Premium offers extra features and capabilities such as support of larger data volumes and faster performance. The most significant advantage however of Power BI Premium is that licenses are available for purchase per user as well as per capacity. Reports created in Power BI Premium can be consumed by those with either a Pro or Premium license. This is especially cost efficient if your organization has a large base of view-only users.

In this case, it is ideal to purchase a Pro or Premium Per User license (depending on data volume and performance requirements) for individuals who are actively collaborating on and publishing reports, since Pro or Premium Per User is required to create content, and a Premium Per Capacity license for the view-only base. The current pricing for a Power BI Premium Per User license is $20 per user per month. A Power BI Premium Per Capacity license starts at $4,995 per capacity per month.