Business analytics

Microsoft Power BI – pricing and business uses

Microsoft’s reporting and analytics tool: combine Excel, accounting and CRM data and build dashboards that refresh themselves.

Business analytics
Microsoft
Free €0 / Pro €12.10 / Premium Per User €20.80 per user/month (excl. VAT, annual billing)

How much does Power BI cost in 2026?

In short: Power BI Desktop is free, and you can build your own reports at no cost. Sharing reports with a team usually requires a Pro licence at €12.10 per user per month. Premium Per User costs €20.80. Prices are for annual billing and exclude VAT.

Power BI prices in euros (excl. VAT), checked 8 November 2026
Plan	Price	Who it is for and what you get
Free and Power BI Desktop	€0	Build reports on your own Windows PC and use them personally online. Reports cannot be shared with others.
Power BI Pro	€12.10 / user / month	Publish and share reports and work in shared workspaces. Both the author and the viewer need a Pro licence. Included in Microsoft 365 E5.
Premium Per User (PPU)	€20.80 / user / month	Larger data models, more frequent refreshes and more advanced features than Pro. Content in a PPU workspace can only be viewed by PPU users. Add-on for Pro or E5 users: €12.10.
Fabric capacity (F2–F64 and larger)	F2 about €150–250 / month, F64 about €4,700–8,000 / month	Dedicated capacity for the organisation. From F64 upwards, viewers do not need a Pro licence, but report publishers do. The lower figure is with an annual reservation, the higher one with continuous pay-as-you-go use.
Power BI Embedded	Usage-based	Embedding reports in your own application or customer portal. Priced by Azure capacity.

Example: a team of five where everyone builds and views reports pays 5 × €12.10 = €60.50 a month for Pro licences, or about €726 a year. F64 capacity only pays off with hundreds of viewers: its annual reservation costs about as much as 390 Pro licences.

What is not included? Data storage and transfer in other services, a server for the on-premises data gateway, and implementation work by a consultant.
Copilot and AI. Copilot in Power BI requires paid Fabric capacity, so it is not included in a Pro licence alone.
Fabric prices are orders of magnitude from the Azure price list (North Europe region, excl. VAT). The pay-as-you-go figure assumes the capacity runs all month; you can pause it to pay less.

Source: Microsoft’s Power BI pricing page and the Azure price list, checked 8 November 2026. Prices change, so confirm the final price with Microsoft before you buy.

The parts of Power BI: Desktop, Service, Power Query and DAX

Power BI Desktop: A free Windows application for building reports: getting data, the data model, calculations and visuals.
Power BI Service: The online service (app.powerbi.com) where reports are published, shared and refreshed on a schedule. This is where licences matter.
Power Query: No-code data loading and cleaning, with more than a hundred connectors to sources such as Excel, SharePoint, SQL databases, Salesforce and Google Analytics.
DAX: The formula language for measures, such as sales versus last year or a rolling 12-month total. It feels familiar to Excel users but gets demanding quickly.
Mobile app: View reports and dashboards on iOS and Android phones.
Microsoft Fabric: Microsoft’s data platform that Power BI is part of. Larger organisations build their data warehouse and pipelines there in one place.

Who is Power BI for? Pros and cons

Best for companies that already use Microsoft 365 and Excel and want to replace manually compiled reports with ones that refresh automatically. Power BI is also a good choice when data comes from several systems, such as accounting, CRM and an online shop. If you only report on Google Analytics and Google Ads, the free Looker Studio may be enough.

Pros

Price: Pro is affordable compared with Tableau and Looker, and Desktop is free.
Familiar for Excel users, with tight integration with Teams, SharePoint and Excel.
A wide range of connectors and powerful data cleaning with Power Query.
DAX handles demanding calculations, and the data model stays fast even with large volumes.
Plenty of free learning material and an active user community.

Cons

Desktop runs only on Windows. On a Mac you need a virtual machine or the browser version, which has fewer features.
Every viewer needs a Pro licence until the organisation has F64 capacity, so a large audience gets expensive.
Licensing is complex: Free, Pro, PPU, Fabric capacities and Embedded are easy to confuse.
DAX and data modelling take study. A poorly modelled report is slow and calculates wrong figures.
Publish to web is a risk: anyone with the link can see the data, so it is not suitable for confidential information.

Power BI vs Looker Studio, Looker and Tableau

Tool	Price	Best for
Power BI	Desktop free, Pro €12.10 / user / month	Microsoft 365 companies, data from many systems and financial reporting
Looker Studio	Free, paid Pro version	Google data: GA4, Google Ads and Sheets. Quick to start, lighter on calculations
Looker	By quote, typically tens of thousands of euros a year	Large organisations with their own data team and a cloud data warehouse
Tableau	Per user, creator licence clearly pricier than Power BI Pro	Analyst teams focused on visualisation and Salesforce environments

In-depth comparison with prices: Looker vs Looker Studio vs Power BI: differences, pricing and which to choose (2026). See also the tool pages for Looker Studio and Tableau.

Power BI training and free learning

Microsoft Learn is free. Microsoft Learn offers free Power BI learning paths from beginner to advanced.
PL-300 certification. Microsoft Certified: Power BI Data Analyst Associate (exam PL-300) proves your Power BI skills: preparing, modelling, visualising and managing data. The exam takes 100 minutes and is paid; the price depends on your country. It is available in English, German, French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese and several other languages. You renew the certification yearly with a free online assessment.
Video. Microsoft’s official Power BI YouTube channel has introductions and tutorials.
Tip: practise with the free Desktop on your own Excel data before buying licences. Once you can build a data model and a few DAX measures, you are well on your way.

Rolling out Power BI step by step

Decide what to measure. Pick 3–5 metrics that drive decisions, such as gross margin, sales by customer and cash flow.
Install Power BI Desktop. Download the free app from the Microsoft Store and build a first report with your own data.
Load and clean data with Power Query. Connect Excel, accounting, CRM or a database. Fix column types and remove duplicates at this stage.
Build the data model and measures. Separate transactions (sales lines) from descriptive tables (customers, products, dates) and calculate metrics with DAX measures.
Publish and schedule refresh. Publish the report to a team workspace in Power BI Service. On-premises sources need a gateway; cloud sources refresh directly.
Share and manage access. Buy Pro licences for everyone who builds or views reports, and restrict visibility with row-level security if needed.
Track usage. After a month, check who uses the reports and whether the figures are right. Remove pages nobody needs.

Frequently asked questions

How much does Power BI cost?

Power BI Desktop and personal use are free. Power BI Pro costs €12.10 and Premium Per User €20.80 per user per month with annual billing, excluding VAT (checked 8 November 2026). Dedicated Fabric capacity starts at roughly €150–250 a month.

Is Power BI free?

Partly. Power BI Desktop is free and lets you build reports on your own computer. Sharing reports with others online requires a paid Pro or Premium Per User licence or Fabric capacity.

Do Power BI report viewers need a licence?

Usually yes: viewers need a Pro licence, and content in a PPU workspace can only be viewed by PPU users. The exception is Fabric capacity of size F64 or larger, where viewers only need a free licence.

Does Power BI work on a Mac?

Power BI Desktop runs only on Windows. On a Mac you can use the browser-based Power BI Service, which has more limited editing, or run Windows in a virtual machine.

What is the difference between Power BI Pro and Premium Per User?

Pro is enough for publishing and sharing reports. Premium Per User adds larger data models, more frequent scheduled refreshes and advanced features such as paginated reports and deployment pipelines. PPU costs €20.80 per user per month.

Should I choose Power BI or Looker Studio?

Looker Studio is free and the quickest way to report on Google data such as GA4 and Google Ads. Power BI is better when you combine data from many systems or need demanding calculations and financial reporting. Innohub’s comparison article covers the differences and prices.

How can I learn Power BI for free?

Microsoft Learn has free Power BI learning paths, and you can practise with your own data in the free Power BI Desktop. The PL-300 certification exam is paid, but the preparation material is free.

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What is Microsoft Power BI?

Power BI is Microsoft’s business intelligence tool. Reports are built in the free Power BI Desktop app and shared with the team in the Power BI Service, which usually requires a Pro licence. Power Query loads and cleans the data, the DAX formula language calculates the metrics and visuals turn them into a dashboard. Power BI is part of the Microsoft Fabric platform and fits most naturally into a Microsoft 365 environment.

How can a business use it day to day?

Concrete use cases for entrepreneurs and knowledge workers:

Monthly financial report

Actuals versus budget straight from accounting or Excel data, with the report refreshing automatically.

Sales tracking

Sales by customer, product and salesperson from CRM or invoicing data.

Inventory and deliveries

Stock levels, delivery times and shrinkage in a single view.

Marketing reporting

Website and ad channel figures in one report.

Automating Excel summaries

Replace manually compiled Excel summaries with a report that refreshes on a schedule.