Microsoft Power BI Pricing
- Analytics pricing
- $14/mo at the smallest
- Free plan
Microsoft Power BI pricing starts at $14 a month, which is $168 over twelve months. There is a free plan, and a trial on the paid tiers: 60 days on Pro. Every figure below was read from the vendor's pricing page on 9 August 2026.
Opens the vendor's own pricing page. Figures here were read from it on 9 August 2026.
Microsoft Power BI ranking and coverage
- In Analytics
- #1 of 4
- Overall
- #29 of 122 tied
- Terms score
- 6.8 /10
- Referenced here
- 2 pages
Cost position 7.5 · Portability 5 · Subscription flexibility 8 - Ranked on published terms only: entry price against category peers, portability and subscription flexibility, equally weighted. This is not a quality score.How the rank is calculated.
Microsoft Power BI pricing at a glance
| Entry price | Pro from $14.00 per user/month |
|---|---|
| Smallest invoice | $14 a month, or $168 a year |
| How that is reached | Power BI Pro at $14 a month |
| Seat minimum | None on the entry plan |
| Free plan | Yes |
| Free trial | 60 days on Pro |
| How it charges | subscription |
| Priced plans published | 4 rows on the vendor's page |
| Affiliate programme | No |
| Prices read from | The vendor's own pricing page |
| Last checked | 9 August 2026 |
Every Microsoft Power BI plan and what it costs
Read from the vendor's own pricing page on 9 August 2026. Charged as subscription. Free trial: 60 days on Pro.
| Plan | Price | Billing | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | per month | Included with a Microsoft Fabric free account. Cannot share reports |
| Power BI Pro | $14.00 | per month | per user - Publish and share reports, collaborate in workspaces |
| Power BI Premium Per User | $24.00 | per month | per user - Larger models, more frequent refreshes, paginated reports |
| Fabric Capacity | Custom | Negotiated | Reserved capacity, so report consumers do not each need a licence |
What Microsoft Power BI actually costs over a year
A monthly price is not the same thing as a monthly contract. These are the plans above resolved both ways, per seat or unit where the plan is charged that way. Where a vendor quotes only a yearly figure it is divided by twelve rather than left out, and the Quoted column says which figure the vendor actually publishes.
| Plan | Quoted | Monthly | Over 12 months |
|---|---|---|---|
| Power BI Proper user | per month | $14 | $168 |
| Power BI Premium Per Userper user | per month | $24 | $288 |
Microsoft Power BI pricing over time
Read from 18 archived captures of the vendor's pricing page , spanning June 2024 to September 2026. Every figure below links to the capture it came from, so you can check it against the page as it stood on the day.
- Power BI Premium Per User changed once between 7 June 2024 and 14 September 2026, from $20.00 per user to $24.00 per user, up 20% overall.
- Power BI Pro changed once between 7 June 2024 and 14 September 2026, from $10.00 per user to $14.00 per user, up 40% overall.
Power BI Premium Per User
Power BI Pro
Compiled 18 September 2026 from the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. Plan names were matched against the archived page text and the first currency-anchored figure within 160 characters was recorded, rejecting any figure with a competing plan name standing between it and the name it was matched to. The currency and the unit were read from each capture rather than assumed: captures served in a currency other than $, and captures where no plan name sat beside a figure, are listed as unread rather than dropped. Archived pages show the price as served to the archive's crawler, which may differ by region from the price you are shown.
Which Microsoft Power BI plan should you buy?
| Your situation | Recommended | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You want to build reports for yourself only | Free | Included with a Fabric free account, but you cannot share reports, which is usually the point. |
| You need to publish and share reports | Power BI Pro | $14 per user a month, and the cheapest credible BI seat in the market. |
| You need large models and frequent refreshes | Premium Per User | $24 per user, bought for model size and refresh frequency rather than visuals. |
| Many people consume reports but few build them | Fabric Capacity | Reserved capacity means consumers do not each need a licence, which is far cheaper at scale than buying Pro for everyone. |
| Your analysts use macOS | Reconsider | Power BI Desktop is Windows only, which is a hard blocker for Mac-based teams. |
| You want open-ended visual exploration | Consider Tableau instead | Tableau is materially better when the question changes as you look at the data. |
Verdict by who you are
Microsoft 365 organisationYes
$14 a seat, strong DAX modelling, and it arrives inside an estate you already own. Hard to argue against.
Finance or operations reporting teamYes
Excel-shaped data and governed reporting is exactly what Power BI is best at.
macOS-based analyst teamNo
Power BI Desktop does not run on macOS. This alone disqualifies it for many teams.
Analyst doing exploratory researchCompare first
Capable, but Tableau's fluidity for open-ended exploration is genuinely better.
Organisation with many report consumersCompare first
Price Fabric Capacity rather than buying Pro seats for everyone who only reads.
Should you buy Microsoft Power BI?
Buy Microsoft Power BI if…
- Organisations already running Microsoft 365 and Azure
- Finance and operations reporting from Excel-shaped data
- Teams needing dashboards shared widely at low per-seat cost
Do not buy Microsoft Power BI if…
- Analysts who prefer a code-first workflow
- macOS-heavy teams, since Power BI Desktop is Windows only
- Organisations wanting embedded analytics without capacity planning
What leaving Microsoft Power BI would cost
moderate lock-in
Microsoft Power BI scores on public API. Portability 5/10 ; lock-in is the inverse. How this is calculated.
The viewer problem
This is the detail that reshapes budgets. On Pro, everyone who views a report needs a Pro licence, not just the people who build them. A dashboard for 200 people is 200 licences. The alternative is Fabric capacity, where you buy compute and viewers consume without individual licences, which is cheaper past a threshold and considerably more complex to size.
Work out your consumer count early. It determines the licensing model, and getting it wrong is the most common reason Power BI ends up costing more than budgeted.
Pro or Premium Per User?
Premium Per User at $24 buys larger semantic models, more frequent scheduled refreshes and paginated reports. If your datasets are modest and refresh a few times a day, Pro is sufficient. Teams working with large models or needing near-real-time refresh will hit Pro’s ceilings quickly.
DAX is the actual learning curve
Connecting data is easy and the first chart takes minutes. Producing correct measures across relationships, filter contexts and time intelligence is not, and DAX is where analysts spend their first six months. Budget training rather than assuming the tool’s approachability extends to its formula language.
Where it fits against the alternatives
Against Tableau, Power BI wins on cost and Microsoft integration and loses on fluid visual exploration. Against Looker Studio, it wins on modelling and governance and loses on being free. If your data already lives in Azure or Excel and your organisation runs on Microsoft 365, the decision is largely made for you.
Microsoft Power BI questions, answered
- Is Microsoft Power BI worth it?
- Power BI's dominance is a pricing story as much as a product one.
- How much does Microsoft Power BI cost?
- Pro from $14.00 per user/month. The cheapest paid tier we recorded is Power BI Pro, published at $14 a month, which works out at $14 a month or $168 over a year. Verified against the vendor's pricing page.
- Does Microsoft Power BI have a free plan or free trial?
- Microsoft Power BI has a free plan. A free trial is available: 60 days on Pro.
- What is the best Microsoft Power BI alternative?
- It depends on the job. Tableau: Better visual analysis and exploration, at a considerably higher price. Looker Studio: Free and adequate for marketing dashboards on Google data. Metabase: Open source and self-hostable, with a far gentler learning curve.
- Can I self-host Microsoft Power BI?
- No. Microsoft Power BI is a hosted service only, so your data lives on the vendor's infrastructure.
Opens the vendor's own pricing page. Figures here were read from it on 9 August 2026.
What this profile is based on
Every claim below is about our work, not about Microsoft Power BI. A "no" is recorded rather than omitted, because the difference between a tested review and careful desk research is the reader's to weigh. How we research a profile.
-
Prices read from the vendor : yes
Read from Microsoft Power BI's own pricing page on 9 August 2026
-
Plans and terms recorded : yes
4 rows, each with its billing period
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Original screenshots : yes
2 captured by us: pricing page, homepage
-
Sources cited and dated : yes
1 primary source, each with the date it was read
-
Product used first-hand : no
Not tested. This profile is desk research from primary sources
-
Alternatives used first-hand : no
None, so comparisons here rest on published facts rather than use
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Vendor contacted : no
Not contacted for this profile
Where Microsoft Power BI appears on this site
2 other pages here reference Microsoft Power BI. Every one is listed below, so the figure can be checked rather than taken.
Counts pages on this site that name the product by choice - price guides, pricing question pages, deal records and other profiles. Category and directory indexes list everything automatically and are not counted.
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Provenance and freshness
When each fact was last checked
- Pricing ·
- Plans ·
- Free trial
- Features
- Platforms
- Integrations
- Affiliate programme
- Company details
What has changed
-
August 2026
- Per-user pricing verified
- Added plan picker and verdicts
Sources & verification
Facts on this page were read from the sources below on the dates shown. Where a vendor does not publish a figure, we record it as not disclosed rather than estimating it.
- Power BI pricing - checked 9 August 2026
Spotted something out of date? Email [email protected] and we will re-check it. Corrections are logged on the page.
