License individual users with modern, self-service analytics for publishing reports and dashboards and viewing content across your organization.
Publish and share Power BI reports.
Power BI Pro is included in Microsoft 365 E5.
Power BI Capabilities
Uncover insights with AI
Turn your data into visuals with advanced data-analysis tools, AI capabilities, and a user-friendly report-creation tool.
Bring all your data together
Create datasets from any source and add them to the OneLake data hub to create a source of truth for your data.
Turn insights into impact
Help users make better decisions by infusing insights into the apps you use every day, like those in Microsoft 365.
Empower every data team
Reshape how your organization accesses, manages, and acts on data by activating Microsoft Fabric in your Power BI experience.
Seamlessly scale as needed
Transform petabytes with enterprise-grade ingestion and semantic modeling in a tool that can scale across thousands of users.
Share insights everywhere
Easily embed and share reports in your other Microsoft services, including Teams, PowerPoint, Excel, and Power Platform.
Get more done with AI
Employ easy-to-use AI features that can find patterns in data, create reports instantly, provide answers, and more.
Govern and protect data
Meet your requirements and gain end-to-end visibility with Microsoft governance, security, and compliance.
Why Power BI
Copilot in Power BI
Overview
Create reports in seconds, generate DAX calculations, create summaries, and get answers, all in conversational language.
Create reports in seconds
Quickly create and tailor reports by simply describing what you want or asking questions about your data.
Summarize data
Quickly understand your data by adding insightful text summaries, and even tailor the tone, scope, and style of narratives.
Quickly measure suggestions
Create DAX calculations faster by asking Copilot in Power BI to suggest relevant code and entire functions.
Overview
Enable users without paid licenses to interact with reports and access the rest of your Microsoft Fabric workloads.
Unify your data estate
Establish an open data hub with OneLake to help data engineers connect and curate data from different sources.
Transform your data
Employ the suite of Microsoft Fabric workloads to integrate, process, analyze, monitor, and visualize your data.
Unify data governance
Responsibly connect people and data using an open and scalable solution that gives data stewards additional control.
Power BI in Fabric
Power BI Pro
Overview
License individual users with modern, self-service analytics for publishing reports and viewing content.
Self-service BI
Enable users to create reports and publish them to share with their coworkers, helping to foster self-service BI.
Microsoft 365 E5
Get Power BI Pro with other Microsoft 365 apps and industry-leading Microsoft security for one low price per user.
Create a free account
Author reports for your own use or view Power BI content hosted in a Power BI Premium or Microsoft Fabric shared capacity.
Power BI Desktop
Use the free app to connect, model, and visualize data with an easy-to-use report canvas and hundreds of visuals.
Activate your free trail
Sign up for the Microsoft Fabric free trial to explore the full suite of services—including everything Power BI has to offer.
Sharpen your skills
Get step-by-step guidance and explore key Power BI capabilities by taking Microsoft training courses.
Free account
Use Cases:
See what you can do with Power BI
Establish a governed source of truth
Connect all your disparate data sources in the same environment to establish a single source of truth for all your data.
Unify enterprise scale and self service
Combine enterprise-scale and self-service BI to drive insights and innovation at every level of your organization.
Infuse data experiences everywhere
Bridge the gap between insights and decisions through unmatched interoperation with the apps people use every day.
Empower anyone to work with data
Ensure everyone can explore data with an easy-to-use interface, free training resources, and an array of accessibility features.
Get started immediately
Start quickly with an easy-to-use report-creation experience, AI-generated reports, and hundreds of report templates.
Embed BI reports for your customers
Improve usability and user engagement in your own apps by using Power BI Embedded to embed stunning reports.
Microsoft 365 For Enterprise: Compare Plans
Power BI Pro Subscription
License individual users with modern, self-service analytics for publishing reports and dashboards and viewing content across your organization.
Publish and share Power BI reports.
Power BI Pro is included in Microsoft 365 E5.
Power BI Premium Subscription
License individual users with access to larger model sizes, more frequent refreshes, XMLA read/write, deployment pipelines, and other enterprise-scale features.
Includes all the features available with Power BI Pro.
See additional Power BI Premium features.
Power BI in Microsoft Fabric Subscription
License your organization for access to Microsoft Fabric in a unified product experience that uses the same compute capacity and storage.3
Includes all the features available in Power BI Premium per user.
Gain access to the rest of Microsoft Fabric workloads through a unified product experience and capacity.
Use Autoscale to respond to occasional, unplanned overage spikes in capacity by automatically adding one vCore at a time per 24-hour period.
Power BI Pro
Power BI Premium
Power BI Premium per capacity
(includes Microsoft Fabric)
Create reports with Power BI Desktop6
Publish Power BI reports to share and collaborate
Advanced AI, dataflows, datamarts, and XMLA endpoint read/write
All users can consume Power BI content without a paid per-user license7
Access to all the Microsoft Fabric workloads, including Data Factory, Data Engineering, Data Warehouse, Data Science, Real-Time Analytics, and Data Activator
Model memory size limit8
1 GB
100 GB
400 GB
Refresh rate for Power BI datasets
8/day
48/day
48/day
Maximum storage (Power BI native storage)9
10 GB/user
100 TB
100 TB
Data security and encryption
OneLake storage, OneLake BCDR storage, OneLake cache, and networking10
[1] Power BI Pro and Power BI Premium per user subscriptions are available for self-service purchase, as well as through the Microsoft 365 admin center. Purchasing Microsoft Fabric requires access to the Microsoft 365 admin center. Learn more about available Power BI purchasing and licensing options.
[2] A $10 per user/month add-on is available for users with Power BI Pro and Microsoft 365 E5 licenses to step up to Power BI Premium per user. Learn more about purchasing Power BI Premium per user.
[3] Power BI Pro license is required for all Power BI Premium (“P”) and Fabric Capacity (“F”) SKUs to publish Power BI content to Microsoft Fabric. Enabling content consumers to review and interact with Power BI reports without additional paid per-user licenses is available at P1 and above (and F64 and above).
[4] Autoscale is an optional add-on that requires Power BI Premium per capacity (Gen2) and Azure subscriptions. Limits can be preset with autoscale to control costs, such as thresholds on vCore scaling or total subscription charges.
[5] Representative of features available in general availability (GA) status.
[6] Power BI Desktop is the data exploration and report authoring experience for Power BI, and it is available as a free download.
[7] Power BI report consumption without paid per-user licenses applies to Fabric SKUs F64 and above, and Power BI Premium per capacity SKUs P1 and above.
[8] See the Power BI model memory size limit capacity and SKUs.
[9] For storing Power BI data sets only
[10] For a limited time, Power BI Premium per capacity customers will be able to use OneLake storage, OneLake cache, OneLake BCDR storage, and networking without an Azure subscription. Eventually, an Azure subscription will be required, and the standard prices apply.
Interoperability:
Powerful alone, better together
Microsoft Power Platform
Turn ideas into impactful solutions
Embed insights from Power BI across your Power Platform products to build low-code, data-driven solutions that help everyone get more done.
Microsoft Azure
Connect Power BI across your data estate
Add Power BI reports to Azure apps, analyze petabytes of Azure data in Power BI, and infuse your reports with advanced AI capabilities and insights.
Microsoft 365
Get deeper insights in Microsoft 365 apps
Empower business users to explore and share data in the Microsoft apps they use every day—Teams, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and SharePoint.
Microsoft Purview
Manage, govern, and secure your data
Get easy data discovery, data cataloging, and sensitivity labeling in a unified view using Power BI and Microsoft Purview.
Dynamics 365
Turn data into impact in business apps
Connect your Dynamics 365 data to Power BI and embed AI-driven reports in your business applications so users can take informed actions quickly.
Security:
Gain visibility into your data estate
Get peace of mind with built-in security features and seamless interoperation with leading security and governance solutions.
Power BI Security
To plan for Power BI security, see the Power BI implementation planning security series of articles. It expands upon the content in the Power BI Security white paper. While the Power BI security white paper focuses on key technical topics such as authentication, data residency, and network isolation, the primary goal of the series is to provide you with considerations and decisions to help you plan for security and privacy.
The Power BI service is built on Azure, Microsoft's cloud computing infrastructure and platform. The architecture of the Power BI service is based on two clusters:
The Web Front End (WFE) cluster. The WFE cluster manages the initial connection and authentication to the Power BI service.
The Back-End cluster. Once authenticated, the Back-End handles all subsequent user interactions. Power BI uses Microsoft Entra ID to store and manage user identities. Microsoft Entra ID also manages data storage and metadata using Azure BLOB and Azure SQL Database, respectively.
Power BI Architecture
The WFE cluster uses Microsoft Entra ID to authenticate clients, and provide tokens for subsequent client connections to the Power BI service. Power BI uses the Azure Traffic Manager (Traffic Manager) to direct user traffic to the nearest datacenter. Traffic Manager directs requests using the DNS record of the client attempting to connect, authenticate, and to download static content and files. Power BI uses the Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) to efficiently distribute the necessary static content and files to users based on geographical locale.
The Back-End cluster determines how authenticated clients interact with the Power BI service. The Back-End cluster manages visualizations, user dashboards, semantic models, reports, data storage, data connections, data refresh, and other aspects of interacting with the Power BI service. The Gateway Role acts as a gateway between user requests and the Power BI service. Users don't interact directly with any roles other than the Gateway Role. Azure API Management eventually handles the Gateway Role.
Data Storage Security
Power BI uses two primary repositories for storing and managing data:
Data uploaded from users is typically sent to Azure Blob Storage.
All metadata including items for the system itself are stored in the Azure SQL Database.
The dotted line shown in the Back-End cluster diagram, clarifies the boundary between the two components that are accessible by users shown on the left of the dotted line. Roles that are only accessible by the system are shown on the right. When an authenticated user connects to the Power BI Service, the connection and any request by the client is accepted and managed by the Gateway Role which then interacts on the user's behalf with the rest of the Power BI Service. For example, when a client attempts to view a dashboard, the Gateway Role accepts that request, and then separately sends a request to the Presentation Role to retrieve the data needed by the browser to display the dashboard. Eventually, connections and client requests are handled by Azure API Management.
User Authentication
Power BI uses Microsoft Entra ID to authenticate users who sign in to the Power BI service. Sign in credentials are required whenever a user attempts to access secure resources. Users sign in to the Power BI service using the email address with which they established their Power BI account. Power BI uses the same credentials as the effective username and passes it to resources whenever a user attempts to connect to data. The effective username is then mapped to a User Principal Name and resolves to the associated Windows domain account against which authentication is applied.
For organizations that used work email addresses for Power BI sign-in, for example [email protected], the effective username to UPN mapping is straightforward. For organizations that didn't use work email addresses, for example [email protected] mapping between Microsoft Entra ID and on-premises credentials requires directory synchronization to work properly.
Platform security for Power BI also includes multi-tenant environment security, networking security, and the ability to add other Microsoft Entra ID-based security measures.
Data and Service Security
As described earlier, on-premises AD servers use a Power BI sign-in to map to a UPN for credentials. However, users must understand the sensitivity of the data they share. After you securely connect to a data source, and then share reports, dashboards, or semantic models with others, the recipients are granted access to the report. Recipients don't have to sign in to the data source.
An exception is connecting to SQL Server Analysis Services using the On-premises data gateway. Dashboards are cached in Power BI, but access to underlying reports or semantic models initiates authentication for each user that attempts to access the report or semantic model. Access will only be granted if the user has sufficient credentials to access the data. For more information, see On-premises data gateway in-depth.
Enforcing TLS version usage
Network and IT administrators can enforce the requirement for using current Transport Layer Security (TLS) for any secured communication on their network. Windows provides support for TLS versions over the Microsoft Schannel Provider, for more information, see Protocols in the TLS/SSL (Schannel SSP).
This enforcement is implemented by administratively setting registry keys. For enforcement details, see Managing SSL/TLS Protocols and Cipher Suites for AD FS.
Power BI Desktop requires TLS (Transport Layer Security) version 1.2 (or higher) to secure your endpoints. Web browsers and other client applications that use TLS versions earlier than TLS 1.2 won't be able to connect. If newer versions of TLS is required, Power BI Desktop respects the registry key settings described in those articles, and only creates connections meeting the version requirement of TLS allowed based on those registry settings, when present.
FAQs
What is Power BI?
Power BI is a unified, scalable platform for self-service and enterprise business intelligence (BI). Connect to and visualize any data, and seamlessly infuse the visuals into the apps you use every day.
How should I choose a Power BI license for my organization?
Power BI licenses aren’t exclusive—there are several ways to mix and match plans and licenses. For example, you could purchase Premium (P-SKU) or Microsoft Fabric (F-SKU) capacity to host the most popular reports, and then buy Power BI Pro licenses (or get them through Microsoft 365 E5) for your users who need to create and publish reports. Contact a sales expert to learn more.
What is Power BI Embedded?
Microsoft Power BI Embedded is a pay-as-you-go Azure platform as a service (PaaS) offering. It allows app developers to embed fully interactive reports into their apps without having to build their own data visuals and controls. Power BI Embedded costs as little as $1 per hour for analytics, with no requirement for end-user licensing.
What is Microsoft Fabric?
Microsoft Fabric is an end-to-end analytics solution with full-service capabilities including data movement, data lakes, data engineering, data integration, data science, real-time analytics, data monitoring, and business intelligence—all backed by a shared platform providing robust data security, governance, and compliance.
How does Power BI fit into Microsoft Fabric?
Power BI provides the industry-leading BI in Microsoft Fabric that enables you to gain insights from data. Power BI Premium per capacity customers can simply turn on the Fabric tenant setting and access the rest of the product in a unified experience. And with its unified capacity model, Power BI Premium per capacity can be used against any Microsoft Fabric workload.
Can I access Microsoft Fabric if I'm a Power BI Pro customer?
Power BI Pro customers can access Fabric workloads only through the Microsoft Fabric trial experience.
