Power BI Copilot License: Power BI Copilot Cost, Pricing and Capacity Requirements
Copilot is not in the Pro seat you pay for. If what you wanted was plain-English answers from your database, ask it here: Agentsql writes the SQL, runs it read-only and shows the query.
PostgreSQL · MySQL · Snowflake · BigQuery · no capacity to buy
Ask the demo shop a question, or type your own:
Reading the schema, writing SQL… Writing SQL… Running (read‑only)… SQL Agentsql wrote
▋
A real MySQL shop: customers, products, orders and signups over the last year. Agentsql writes the SQL, runs it read-only, and answers.
Direct answer
Copilot in Power BI has no per-user license of its own, and a Power BI Pro or Premium Per User seat does not include it. Microsoft requires a workspace on paid Fabric capacity F2 or higher or Power BI Premium P1 or higher, and trial capacities do not qualify. The cheapest qualifying capacity, F2, costs $262.80 a month pay-as-you-go or $156.33 a month on a one-year reservation, from Azure's retail price of $0.18 per capacity unit hour on 16 September 2026, on top of $14 per user per month for Pro. Copilot then consumes that capacity per token, shared with every refresh and report query on it.
›_ power bi copilot license requirements
Which Power BI license actually gets you Copilot.
Each row is taken from Microsoft Learn's Copilot for Power BI, Power BI Desktop and Fabric Copilot capacity documentation, read on 16 September 2026.
The confusing part of Copilot licensing is that it is not a license. It is a property of where the report lives. Microsoft checks the workspace, not the person: the workspace has to sit on a qualifying capacity, that capacity has to be in a supported region, and an admin has to have Copilot switched on. The person still needs the right workspace role, and for the standalone experience the tenant setting has to be on at tenant level, not just delegated to the capacity.
| What you have | Copilot? | What Microsoft's documentation says |
|---|---|---|
| Power BI free account | No | Free SKUs are excluded in the requirements table. |
| Power BI Pro seat, Pro workspace | No, unless a Fabric Copilot capacity bills it | Microsoft: a Pro or PPU license alone is not sufficient. A Fabric Copilot capacity can bill Copilot usage from Pro workspaces. |
| Premium Per User seat, PPU workspace | No, unless a Fabric Copilot capacity bills it | The Desktop doc says Copilot does not support PPU workspaces. The Fabric Copilot capacity doc lists PPU workspaces as a supported billing scenario. |
| Fabric trial capacity | No | Trial capacities are excluded. Only paid SKUs are supported. |
| Paid Fabric capacity F2 or higher | Yes | The workspace must sit on the capacity, in a supported region, with Copilot enabled by an admin. |
| Power BI Premium P1 or higher | Yes | Listed alongside F2 as a qualifying capacity. |
| Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on only | Not listed | Microsoft's Copilot for Power BI requirements name capacity, region and admin settings. They do not name a Microsoft 365 Copilot seat as a way in. |
Two Microsoft pages look like they disagree about Premium Per User, and they do not. The Power BI Desktop page says Copilot does not support PPU workspaces. The Fabric Copilot capacity page says a designated Copilot capacity bills usage "from Pro and Premium per-user (PPU) workspaces". Read together: PPU on its own, no; PPU plus a paid F SKU designated as the Copilot capacity, yes.
›_ power bi copilot cost and pricing
What the capacity behind Copilot costs, SKU by SKU.
Azure retail price API, Microsoft Fabric, East US, 16 September 2026. Request counts derived from Microsoft's published consumption rates.
Microsoft's Fabric pricing page lists the SKUs without dollar figures, so the numbers below come from Azure's public retail price API. Every Fabric capacity meter in East US, including the one named Copilot and AI Capacity Usage, is $0.18 per capacity unit hour. The one-year reservation is $938.00 per capacity unit per year. Multiply by the SKU size and you have the bill. As a check, F64 comes out at $5,002.67 a month reserved, which is the F64 reservation price buyers are quoted.
| SKU | Capacity units | Pay-as-you-go per month | 1-year reserved per month | Reserved per year | Copilot requests a day, capacity to itself |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F2 | 2 | $262.80 | $156.33 | $1,876 | 432 |
| F4 | 4 | $525.60 | $312.67 | $3,752 | 864 |
| F8 | 8 | $1,051.20 | $625.33 | $7,504 | 1,728 |
| F16 | 16 | $2,102.40 | $1,250.67 | $15,008 | 3,456 |
| F64 | 64 | $8,409.60 | $5,002.67 | $60,032 | 13,824 |
Pay-as-you-go assumes 730 hours a month. The request column uses Microsoft's own worked example of a request with 2,000 input and 500 output tokens, which it prices at 400 capacity unit seconds. It is a ceiling, not a forecast: your refreshes and report views draw on the same capacity. Prices vary by Azure region. Full Power BI seat and capacity math is on our Power BI pricing page.
The token meter
100, 10 and 400
Microsoft bills Copilot at 100 capacity unit seconds per 1,000 input tokens, 10 per 1,000 cached input tokens, and 400 per 1,000 output tokens. Output costs four times input, so long written summaries cost more than short answers.
One request in dollars
About $0.02
Microsoft's example request is 400 capacity unit seconds, a ninth of a capacity unit hour. At $0.18 per hour that is two cents. Cheap per question, but you do not buy questions: you buy the whole capacity, all month.
Overage
$0.54, three times base
The same price API lists a Capacity Overage meter at $0.54 per capacity unit hour in East US. A Copilot rollout that pushes a small SKU past its limit is billed at triple the base rate for the excess, or throttled.
›_ what most copilot licensing guides get wrong
Six things to check before you buy capacity for Copilot.
You do not need F64
Plenty of guides still say Copilot starts at F64. Microsoft's requirements table today reads F2 or higher. F64 still matters for a different reason: it is where report viewers stop needing a Pro seat.
A Pro seat is not a Copilot seat
Microsoft puts it plainly: a Power BI Pro or Premium Per User license alone is not sufficient. The $14 you already pay does not switch Copilot on, at any headcount.
PPU is not a flat no
A PPU workspace cannot run Copilot on its own. But a Fabric Copilot capacity can bill Copilot usage from Pro and PPU workspaces and from Desktop, so a small F2 designated as the Copilot capacity covers those users.
The trial will not tell you
Copilot is not supported on trial capacities, so you cannot test it for free on a Fabric trial before buying. The cheapest real test is an F2 on pay-as-you-go, paused when you are not using it.
Running out stops everything
Copilot shares the capacity with refreshes and report queries. Microsoft's consumption doc warns that once the capacity is exhausted, all operations shut down. On a busy F2, Copilot can starve your dashboards.
Copilot answers from the model
When a question is about data in the semantic model, Copilot uses the model. Otherwise, Microsoft says, it answers from the language model's general knowledge. A table nobody modeled is not in reach.
The last card is the one buyers find out about late. Copilot is very good inside a well built semantic model: summarizing a report page, drafting DAX, answering a question about measures that already exist. It is not a way around the model. If the reason you started pricing Copilot is that people keep asking for numbers no report covers, the capacity bill buys the wrong thing. That gap is the subject of our self service BI software comparison, which quotes Microsoft's Build permission rules on the same point.
›_ power bi copilot cost for a real team
What a 10-person team pays to ask questions in plain English.
Derived from the prices above. Power BI Pro at $14 per user per month billed yearly, per microsoft.com.
Option A
Pro seats plus F2 reserved
$3,556 a year
10 Pro seats at $1,680 a year plus F2 reserved at $1,876. Copilot works inside published models. The reservation is a year's commitment whether or not adoption happens.
Option B
Pro seats plus F2 pay-as-you-go
$4,834 a year
$1,680 in seats plus $3,153.60 for an F2 left running. Pausing overnight and at weekends cuts the capacity line, but a paused capacity serves no reports either.
Option C
Agentsql Team on the database
$1,188 a year
$99 a month billed yearly, up to 10 seats, 5 connections including Snowflake and BigQuery. Answers come from the database itself. Keep Pro if you still want Power BI dashboards; this replaces the capacity line, not the seats.
Option C is not a like-for-like swap and it would be dishonest to present it as one. Copilot writes DAX, drafts report pages and summarizes reports; Agentsql does none of that. The comparison holds for one job only, which is also the job most people have in mind when they ask about Copilot: someone who is not an analyst types a question and gets a number they can check. For that job the database is the shorter path, and the text to SQL approach shows its query so the number can be verified before it lands in a deck.
›_ power bi copilot alternative
Copilot in Power BI and Agentsql, side by side.
| Copilot in Power BI | Agentsql | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price for plain-English questions | F2 capacity, $156.33 a month reserved or $262.80 pay-as-you-go, on top of Pro seats | $39 a month billed yearly (Starter), $99 for Team with up to 10 seats |
| What it answers from | A Power BI semantic model someone has published | Your live database schema, read directly |
| Sources | Anything Power BI can model | PostgreSQL, MySQL, Snowflake and BigQuery only |
| Shows its working | DAX for authors in some experiences | The generated SQL beside every answer |
| Builds Power BI report pages and DAX | Yes, this is where it is strongest | No. It does not touch Power BI |
| Metering | Tokens converted to capacity units, shared with every other Fabric workload | Flat subscription |
| Trial | Not available on trial capacities | The console on this page runs real questions |
Pick Copilot if your organization already runs Fabric capacity for other reasons, your questions live inside well maintained semantic models, and your authors want help writing DAX. Pick a database-first analyst if the questions reach tables no model covers, you are on Pro and would be buying capacity only for this, or finance needs to see the query behind a number. Plenty of teams end up with both. For a broader view of the platforms, see the BI tools comparison and our Power BI alternatives guide.
›_ plain-english questions without fabric capacity
Four steps from a question to a number you can check.
Step 1
Connect read-only
Point Agentsql at the same PostgreSQL, MySQL, Snowflake or BigQuery database your Power BI models import from, with a SELECT-only user.
Step 2
Ask the question
Type it the way you would ask an analyst. No workspace, no capacity assignment, no tenant setting to find.
Step 3
SQL for your engine
The query is written in your database's own dialect and run read-only, so nothing anyone asks can change data.
Step 4
Answer, chart and SQL
You get a one-line answer, a table and a chart, with the SQL beside them for anyone who wants to check the logic.
›_ frequently asked
Power BI Copilot license questions, answered.
Is Copilot included in Power BI Pro?
No. Microsoft states that a Power BI Pro or Premium Per User license alone is not sufficient for Copilot, because Copilot requires organizational capacity. You need a workspace on paid Fabric capacity F2 or higher or Premium P1 or higher, or a Fabric Copilot capacity that bills your usage. The Pro seat stays necessary for sharing, it just does not unlock Copilot.
How much does Copilot in Power BI cost?
The cheapest route is an F2 Fabric capacity: $262.80 a month pay-as-you-go or $156.33 a month on a one-year reservation, from Azure's retail price API at $0.18 per capacity unit hour in East US on 16 September 2026. That is on top of Power BI Pro at $14 per user per month. Copilot itself has no separate seat price; it burns capacity units.
Does Power BI Copilot require F64?
No. Microsoft's current requirements table lists paid Fabric capacity F2 or higher, or Power BI Premium P1 or higher. Older guides quote F64 because that was the original threshold. F64 is still the size at which report viewers no longer need a paid Pro seat, which is a separate reason some organizations buy it.
Can I use Copilot with Power BI Premium Per User?
Not on a PPU workspace by itself: Microsoft's Desktop documentation says Copilot does not support workspaces that use Premium Per User. The workaround Microsoft documents is a Fabric Copilot capacity, a paid F SKU designated to bill Copilot usage, which covers usage from Pro and PPU workspaces and from Power BI Desktop.
Can I try Copilot on a Fabric trial capacity?
No. Microsoft excludes trial capacities and free SKUs from Copilot. The lowest cost way to evaluate it is a pay-as-you-go F2 at $0.36 an hour, paused between tests so you are billed only while it runs. Remember that a new or resized capacity can take up to 24 hours before Copilot recognizes it.
Why is the Copilot button greyed out in Power BI Desktop?
Usually because you have no admin, member or contributor access to a workspace on F2 or higher or P1 or higher with Copilot enabled, or because the tenant-level Copilot setting is off. Microsoft notes the Desktop button always appears in the ribbon but stays disabled when the tenant setting is off, which is why it looks broken rather than missing.
How many Copilot questions does an F2 capacity handle?
About 432 a day at Microsoft's own example request size of 2,000 input and 500 output tokens, if nothing else runs on the capacity. That figure is derived from Microsoft's published rates: 400 capacity unit seconds per request against the 48 capacity unit hours an F2 has in a day. Refreshes and report queries share the same pool.
What is the best Power BI Copilot alternative for asking questions of a database?
If the questions are about data in PostgreSQL, MySQL, Snowflake or BigQuery rather than about a Power BI report, a text-to-SQL analyst that reads the database directly avoids buying capacity. Agentsql connects read-only, writes SQL in your engine's dialect, runs it and shows the query, from $39 a month billed yearly. Keep Copilot if you need it to build report pages and DAX.
›_ power bi costs
›_ ask your database directly
Plain-English answers, no capacity to buy.
Connect read-only to Postgres, MySQL, Snowflake or BigQuery and get the answer with the SQL beside it, from $39 a month billed yearly.