Power BI Pricing: Power BI Pro Cost, Premium Per User Price and Fabric Capacity Costs
Every per-user price read off Microsoft's pricing page this week, plus the Fabric capacity costs Microsoft does not print anywhere, worked out from Azure's own price API. Or skip the seat math and just ask your database a question.
Verified from microsoft.com 13 August 2026 · nothing estimated, nothing invented · Last updated August 2026
Ask your data a question:
Writing SQL… Running (read‑only)… SQL Agentsql wrote
▋
Click a question. Agentsql writes the SQL, runs it read-only, and answers.
Direct answer
Power BI costs $14 per user per month for Power BI Pro and $24 per user per month for Power BI Premium Per User, both paid yearly, which are the only per-user prices on microsoft.com as of 13 August 2026. A free account exists but cannot share reports. Organizational Fabric capacity is billed at $0.18 per capacity-unit-hour, so F2 works out to $262.80 a month pay-as-you-go and F64, the smallest SKU that lets people view reports without a paid seat, works out to $8,409.60 a month or about $5,003.71 on a one-year reservation. That makes the break-even roughly 357 read-only users: below that, Pro seats are cheaper, and above it, F64 capacity is.
›_ power bi pricing plans
What Microsoft publishes on its own pricing page.
Two per-user prices, one free tier, and two lines that say "variable". Read off the Power BI pricing page on 13 August 2026.
| Plan | Price | What it includes | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free account | $0included in the Microsoft Fabric free account | Build rich interactive reports in Power BI Desktop and the Power BI service. No credit card required. | Microsoft states plainly on the card: upgrade to Pro or Premium to share reports. It is a single-person license. |
| Power BI Pro | $14per user / month, paid yearly | Everything in the free account, plus publishing reports to share and collaborate, access to reports shared with you, and app workspaces. | The default seat. This is what almost every Power BI buyer is actually pricing. |
| Power BI Premium Per User | $24per user / month, paid yearly | Everything in Pro, plus larger model sizes, more frequent refreshes, advanced AI, advanced dataflows, advanced datamarts and XMLA endpoint read/write. | Per-seat access to the enterprise feature set without buying capacity. Everyone touching the content needs it, viewers included. |
| Power BI Embedded | Variablecontact sales | Customer-facing reports, dashboards and analytics inside your own application, branded as your own. | Priced as capacity, not seats. Relevant if you are shipping analytics to your customers rather than your staff. |
| Fabric capacity | Variablereservation or pay-as-you-go | Access to all Fabric workloads, Copilot in Fabric, and at F64 and above, consumption of Power BI content without a paid per-user license. | The organizational option. Microsoft shows no dollar figure for it on the Fabric pricing page. We derive it below. |
Both per-user prices carry the words "paid yearly" on Microsoft's card. There is no month-to-month figure printed next to either one.
›_ the number nobody prints
Microsoft publishes no dollar price for any Fabric capacity SKU.
The SKU table on the Fabric pricing page renders every price as a dash and sends you to a calculator. Here is the rate, and the arithmetic.
On 13 August 2026 the Microsoft Fabric pricing page lists thirteen SKUs from F2 to F8192 with their capacity units, and the pay-as-you-go and reservation columns are both empty. This matters more than it sounds, because Fabric capacity is where Copilot lives and it is the only way to stop paying $14 for every person who reads a dashboard. It is the single biggest line in a large Power BI deployment and it is the one number a buyer cannot look up.
You can get it from Azure directly. Azure's public retail price API returns every Fabric meter for a given region, and in West US 2 every one of them, including "Power BI Capacity Usage" and "Copilot and AI Capacity Usage", is priced at $0.18 per capacity-unit-hour. That single rate is all you need: multiply by the SKU's capacity units for an hourly price, then by 730 hours for a month.
The sanity check works. 64 capacity units at $0.18 is $11.52 an hour, which is the F64 rate quoted publicly for years. Microsoft's own footnote states that an annual reservation saves 40.5% against pay-as-you-go, so the reserved column below is the pay-as-you-go figure multiplied by 0.595. Prices vary by Azure region, so treat West US 2 as the reference point rather than a universal number.
how the math works
- 01$0.18 per capacity-unit-hour, every Fabric meter
- 02Hourly price = capacity units x $0.18
- 03Monthly price = hourly x 730 hours
- 04Reservation = pay-as-you-go x 0.595
- 05Overage bills at $0.54, three times the base
- 06F64 is where viewers stop needing a paid seat
Source: Azure retail price API, service "Microsoft Fabric", region westus2, read 13 August 2026.
Microsoft Fabric pricing per SKU, worked out
Capacity units are Microsoft's. Dollar figures are the arithmetic above, at 730 hours a month. Nothing here is an estimate or a vendor quote.
| SKU | Capacity units | Per hour | Pay-as-you-go / month | 1-year reservation / month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| F2 | 2 | $0.36 | $262.80 | $156.37 |
| F4 | 4 | $0.72 | $525.60 | $312.73 |
| F8 | 8 | $1.44 | $1,051.20 | $625.46 |
| F16 | 16 | $2.88 | $2,102.40 | $1,250.93 |
| F32 | 32 | $5.76 | $4,204.80 | $2,501.86 |
| F64 | 64 | $11.52 | $8,409.60 | $5,003.71 |
| F128 | 128 | $23.04 | $16,819.20 | $10,007.42 |
F64 replaces what used to be called P1. Microsoft also grants free OneLake mirroring storage matching the SKU number in terabytes, so an F64 includes 64 TB of replica storage.
›_ power bi license cost at scale
When Fabric capacity becomes cheaper than Power BI Pro seats.
The decision that actually sets your bill, and the one no pricing page answers for you.
Microsoft waives the per-user license for consuming Power BI content at F64 and above. Below F64 there is no such waiver, so every reader needs a $14 Pro seat regardless of how much capacity you own. That turns the whole question into one division: an F64 reservation at $5,003.71 a month divided by $14 a seat is 357.4, so the crossover sits at roughly 357 read-only people. Authors need a Pro seat under either model, which is why they drop out of the comparison entirely.
| Read-only audience | All on Power BI Pro | F64 reservation | Cheaper option |
|---|---|---|---|
| 25 read-only users | $350 / mo | $5,003.71 / mo | Power BI Pro |
| 100 read-only users | $1,400 / mo | $5,003.71 / mo | Power BI Pro |
| 250 read-only users | $3,500 / mo | $5,003.71 / mo | Power BI Pro |
| 357 read-only users | $4,998 / mo | $5,003.71 / mo | Power BI Pro, barely |
| 400 read-only users | $5,600 / mo | $5,003.71 / mo | F64 capacity |
| 1,000 read-only users | $14,000 / mo | $5,003.71 / mo | F64 capacity |
| 5,000 read-only users | $70,000 / mo | $5,003.71 / mo | F64 capacity |
Two caveats that move the line. If you need Copilot, capacity is mandatory at any headcount, so the comparison stops being about price. And if a smaller SKU covers your compute but you still want free viewers, you cannot have it, because the waiver starts at F64 and not before.
Power BI cost per team size
Straight multiplication on the $14 Pro and $24 Premium Per User list prices. Almost every team under a few hundred people lands somewhere in this table and never touches capacity.
| Team | Pro / month | Pro / year | Premium Per User / year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 people | $70 | $840 | $1,440 |
| 10 people | $140 | $1,680 | $2,880 |
| 25 people | $350 | $4,200 | $7,200 |
| 50 people | $700 | $8,400 | $14,400 |
| 100 people | $1,400 | $16,800 | $28,800 |
| 250 people | $3,500 | $42,000 | $72,000 |
›_ power bi pro cost vs premium per user price
What the extra $10 a month actually buys.
The numeric limits are from Microsoft's own compare-plans table, read on 13 August 2026.
| Capability | Pro, $14 | Premium Per User, $24 | Fabric capacity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Model memory size limit | 1 GB | 100 GB | Varies by SKU |
| Refresh rate for Power BI semantic models | 8 per day | 48 per day | 48 per day |
| Maximum native storage | 10 GB per license | 100 TB | 100 TB |
| Publish reports to share and collaborate | Yes | Yes | Still needs a Pro license |
| Advanced AI, dataflows, datamarts, XMLA read/write | No | Yes | Yes |
| Copilot in Fabric | No | No | Yes |
| Viewers without a paid per-user license | No | No | F64 and above only |
The row that catches people out is the last one. Buying capacity does not make Power BI free for your organization until that capacity reaches F64, and it never makes it free for the people who publish.
›_ power bi license cost, in full
Six costs that are not on the price card.
None of these are hidden in a dishonest sense. They are simply priced somewhere other than the pricing page.
Annual billing only
No monthly price quoted
Every per-user figure on the Power BI pricing page carries the words "paid yearly". Microsoft no longer shows a month-to-month number next to Pro or Premium Per User, so the smallest commitment you can plan around is twelve months of whatever seat count you pick on day one.
Copilot needs capacity
From $156.37 a month
Copilot in Fabric sits in the Fabric capacity column of Microsoft's own compare table, not in Pro and not in Premium Per User. A Pro seat alone will not get you Copilot. The cheapest paid capacity that unlocks it is F2, which is $156.37 a month on a reservation.
Authors still need Pro on capacity
$14 per author / month
Buying Fabric capacity does not remove per-user licensing for the people who build things. Microsoft's Fabric column says publishing reports to share and collaborate "requires additional Power BI Pro license". Capacity buys free viewers at F64, not free authors.
The Premium Per User step-up
$14 per user / month
A footnote on the pricing page offers a $14 per user per month add-on, paid yearly, that steps users with Power BI Pro, Microsoft 365 E5 or Office 365 E5 up to Premium Per User. If your organization already runs E5, that route to PPU costs $14 rather than the $24 list price.
Capacity overage
$0.54 per CU-hour
Azure's retail price API lists Fabric capacity overage at $0.54 per CU-hour, three times the $0.18 base rate. If your workload spikes past the SKU you reserved, the excess is billed at triple. Surge protection exists to cap this, but it is off unless an admin turns it on.
The 1 GB model ceiling on Pro
Forces a $24 or capacity upgrade
Power BI Pro caps a semantic model at 1 GB in memory and 8 refreshes a day. Teams usually discover this the week a model outgrows it, and the fix is Premium Per User at $24 or a capacity SKU. Budget for the upgrade rather than being surprised by it.
›_ microsoft power bi cost, in practice
What a real Power BI deployment costs.
The license is usually the smallest line in the budget. Here is the rest of it.
Take a 30-person company where five people build reports and 25 read them. On Pro that is 30 seats, $420 a month, $5,040 a year. Nothing alarming. Then the actual costs arrive. Someone has to learn DAX, and DAX is not a formula bar, it is a language with filter context and evaluation order and genuine depth. Getting an analyst productive past basic reporting takes months. If that person earns $90,000, a few months of partial ramp is worth several times the entire annual license bill.
After that comes the queue. One person understands the semantic model, so every question routes through them, and the self-service tool you bought has exactly one server. Then the consultants, if you go that way, because plenty of Power BI rollouts end with an implementation partner and a five-figure statement of work.
None of this makes Power BI a bad buy. At $14 a seat it is the cheapest credible way to give a company governed dashboards, and against Tableau's reported $75 Creator seat it is not close. It just means the license price is the smallest number in the conversation, and the ones that matter are not on any pricing page.
four ways to spend less
- 01Audit who really needs a seat. Licenses accumulate on leavers and on people who opened a dashboard once in March.
- 02Check your E5 entitlement first. Microsoft 365 E5 already carries Pro. Buying standalone seats on top is paying twice.
- 03Do the capacity math before you assume. The crossover is around 357 readers, not 50, and not 2,000.
- 04Count the training. A team that never learns DAX properly builds reports that return wrong numbers confidently, which costs more than any license.
›_ honest read
When Power BI pricing is worth it, and when it is not.
We build a competing tool, so weigh this accordingly. Every figure above is Microsoft's own or arithmetic on Microsoft's own, and you can check all of it.
It is the cheapest serious BI seat on the market
At $14, a Pro seat both builds and views. Tableau charges roughly $75 for the equivalent authoring license and $15 for a seat that can only look. If your organization already pays for Microsoft 365, Power BI is close to unbeatable on price alone, and the skills are easy to hire for.
The jump from seats to capacity is a cliff, not a ramp
There is nothing between $14 a head and roughly $5,000 a month. A 400-person rollout has a clean answer, and a 150-person rollout that needs Copilot does not: you pay for capacity you do not need in order to get a feature. Model that step before you commit to a direction.
The AI is not in the license you are pricing
Copilot sits in the Fabric capacity column, not in Pro and not in Premium Per User. If plain-English analysis is why you started shopping, the $14 and $24 figures do not cover it and the real entry price is a capacity SKU on top. Plenty of buyers find this out late.
You might be pricing the wrong category
If the job is a governed dashboard suite a hundred people read every Monday, buy BI. If the job is the ad-hoc question nobody built a report for, an AI data analyst answers it directly against your database with no semantic model to build first. Plenty of teams run one of each, which is usually the honest answer.
Agentsql connects read-only to the Postgres, MySQL, Snowflake or BigQuery database you already run, turns a plain-English question into SQL, executes it and shows the SQL every time so an analyst can check the logic. Work out what the free tier really covers in is Power BI free, compare the two biggest vendors on Power BI vs Tableau, put every vendor's list price side by side on our BI tools comparison, check what Tableau pricing looks like next to it, weigh the switch on Power BI alternatives, or read how the text-to-SQL layer works.
›_ frequently asked
Power BI pricing questions, answered.
How much does Power BI cost?
Power BI Pro costs $14 per user per month and Power BI Premium Per User costs $24 per user per month, both paid yearly, per microsoft.com on 13 August 2026. There is a free account for one person. Organizational Fabric capacity is separate and starts around $156 a month for F2 on a reservation.
Is Power BI free?
Power BI Desktop and a free Power BI account cost nothing, but the free account cannot share. Microsoft states on its own pricing card that you must upgrade to Pro or Premium to share reports. So Power BI is free for one person analyzing data alone, and $14 per user per month the moment a colleague needs to see the result.
How much does a Power BI license cost?
A Power BI Pro license costs $14 per user per month, which is $168 per user per year, billed annually. A Premium Per User license costs $24 per user per month, or $288 a year. Those are the only two per-user licenses Microsoft sells for internal use; everything else is capacity.
What is the difference between Power BI Pro and Premium Per User?
Premium Per User costs $10 more per month and lifts the ceilings. Pro caps semantic models at 1 GB and 8 refreshes a day with 10 GB of storage per license. Premium Per User raises that to 100 GB models, 48 refreshes a day and 100 TB, and adds advanced AI, advanced dataflows, datamarts and XMLA read/write.
Do I need Power BI Pro to view reports?
Yes, unless the content sits on Fabric capacity of F64 or larger. Microsoft only waives the per-user license for consuming Power BI content at F64 and above. Below that, every person who opens a report needs their own $14 Pro seat, even if they never build anything.
How much does Power BI Premium cost?
Premium now comes in two shapes. Premium Per User is $24 per user per month paid yearly. Premium as capacity is now sold as Microsoft Fabric SKUs, where F64 (the old P1 equivalent) works out to about $5,003.71 a month on a one-year reservation, or $8,409.60 a month pay-as-you-go.
Can you pay for Power BI monthly?
Microsoft's pricing page quotes Pro and Premium Per User only as "paid yearly" and shows no month-to-month figure as of 13 August 2026. Fabric capacity can be bought pay-as-you-go and billed hourly, which is the closest thing to a monthly commitment, and it costs about 68% more than reserving the same SKU.
How much does Power BI cost for 10 users?
Ten Power BI Pro seats cost $140 a month, or $1,680 a year at the $14 list price. On Premium Per User the same ten people cost $240 a month, or $2,880 a year. Neither figure includes Fabric capacity, which a ten-person team almost never needs.
Does Power BI Copilot cost extra?
Yes. Copilot appears only in the Fabric capacity column of Microsoft's compare-plans table, so a Pro or Premium Per User license on its own does not include it. You need paid Fabric capacity, and the smallest is F2 at about $156.37 a month on a reservation or $262.80 pay-as-you-go.
Is Power BI cheaper than Tableau?
For most teams, yes. A Power BI Pro seat is $14 a month and can both build and view. Tableau publishes entry prices of $15 for Standard and $35 for Enterprise, and the widely reported Creator price that lets someone actually build is around $75 a month. The gap narrows once you add Fabric capacity for Copilot.
›_ pricing and comparisons
›_ connect your database