Microsoft Power BI Pro vs. Free vs. Premium

In 2025, data is moving faster than ever, and your business intelligence tools must keep up.

Forbes says that the digital data generated will be 175 ZB by 2025. That means your data visualization tools must move faster, scale smarter, and deliver real-time insights without delay.

If you're not using a data visualization tool, then start using it!

It will give you crucial information from the complicated data you have.

But, which version of Power BI actually makes sense for you? Power BI Pro or Free?

Well, Microsoft offers three versions: Power BI Free, Pro, and Premium.

In this blog, we’ll explain the extract differences between all three versions so you can invest wisely and build a Power BI setup that scales with your business.

• What is Microsoft Power BI?
• Overview of Power BI Licensing Plans
• Power BI Free vs Pro vs Premium: Key Differences Explained
• What’s the Best Power BI Option for You?
• Invest in the Right Power BI Tool Now
• Microsoft Power BI Pro vs Free vs Premium: FAQs

Let’s clear the basics before diving into the differences between Power BI Free, Pro, and Premium.

Microsoft Power BI is a cloud-based interactive data visualization platform designed for everyone, from solo data analysts to enterprise teams. It allows you to analyze raw data, visualize it through interactive reports and dashboards, and share real-time insights.

Don’t confuse it with MS-Excel. Understand the difference between Power BI and Excel. While both support data analysis, Power BI is purposefully built for scalable, interactive, and real-time data visualization across teams.

Whether your data is from Excel, SQL Server, Azure, or Salesforce, Power BI can connect to it, clean it, model it, and give you impactful insights.

Each Power BI version has its own capabilities, limits, and price tags. We suggest you continue reading this blog until the end. You’ll surely make the best decision for your business. 

Many teams get stuck between “what looks affordable” and “what actually works long-term”. You’ll get an answer once you understand what each one offers. Here’s a clear breakdown of the three plans.

Now that you have a brief understanding of each version and its pricing, it’s time to understand what you’ll get and what limitations might slow you down later. So, let’s break down what each version brings and what it doesn’t.

1. Power BI Free 

If you're just beginning your data journey or want to experiment with Power BI Desktop, the Free version does the job for a while.

What Features Do You Get In Power BI Free?

1. Report creation: Gives you access to Power BI Desktop for report creation.
2. Data sources: You can connect to 70+ data sources, including Excel, SQL Server, and SharePoint.
3. Data modeling: Full support for Power Query, basic DAX, and visualizations.
4. Report publishing: You can publish reports to the Power BI Service (web) for personal use.
5. Mobile app: You can use the Power BI Mobile App.
   

What are the Power BI Free Limitations?

1. No collaboration. 
2. 1 GB per user storage. Quite tight if you’re using larger datasets or embedded visuals.
3. No support for App Workspaces, Power BI Dataflows, paginated reports, or advanced AI capabilities.
4. Only one scheduled data refresh per day

The Catch: Power BI Free is great for building and testing, but the moment your team asks for a dashboard, or you need to share insights, the cracks start to show.

2. Power BI Pro

Most growing organizations start with Power BI Pro when collaboration becomes necessary. You get the integration facility with Microsoft 365 and manage access through Azure AD. You must understand the Power BI Pro features and limitations to decide whether to get this. 

What Features Do You Get In Power BI Pro?

1. Storage: 10 GB per user storage capacity, which is 10x more than Free.
2. Daily refresh limit: 8 daily scheduled data refreshes per dataset.
3. Content sharing: Full support for workspace-based content sharing.
4. Reports publishing: Allows publishing reports to App Workspaces and Power BI Apps for distribution.
5. Governance: You get row-level security, usage metrics, and dataset certification for governance.
6. Integrations: Allows integrations with Excel, Teams, and SharePoint Online.

What Are The Limitations of Power BI Pro?

1. Large datasets (100+ GB) and complex models will still hit size and performance limits.
2. You don’t get paginated reports, data marts, or AI features like Cognitive Services.
3. All Pro content runs on shared capacity so performance can suffer with high concurrency.
   
   

3. Power BI Premium

The Premium version is an enterprise-grade version that supports large-scale data. It offers a full suite of enterprise analytics capabilities, including higher capacity, enhanced governance, and advanced AI.  It is further available in Per User (PPU) and Capacity-based models. 

What Features Do You Get In Power BI Premium?

1. All the features of Power BI Pro
2. Flexible licensing: Available as Per User (PPU) or Per Capacity via Microsoft Fabric.
3. Dataset limit: Support large datasets up to 100 GB per dataset and 100 TB per tenant.
4. Daily refresh Limit: Up to 48 refreshes per day.
5. Advanced Reporting: Access to paginated reports, data marts, and deployment pipelines.
6. Integrations: AI, Auto ML tools, Azure Synapse, and Microsoft Fabric integration.
7. XMLA Access and Modeling: Read/write XMLA endpoint to connect with third-party BI tools and build semantic models.
8. Content sharing: Content can be shared with Power BI Free users, which is a huge plus for external sharing or wide-scale distribution.

What Are The Limitations Of Power BI Premium?

1. Cost can scale quickly, especially with Capacity SKUs.
2. Requires strong governance.
3. Fabric integration brings amazing features, but may require revamping your architecture and team skills.

The Catch: Premium is built for scale and performance. But unless your team manages large data volumes, complex reports, or embedded analytics, you might not need all of it immediately.

It depends on how you use data and how fast you want to scale.

Power BI Free gives you just enough to build and learn if you're a solo analyst or entrepreneur exploring dashboards. But the moment collaboration, security, or automation enters the picture, you’ll need Power BI Pro.

On the other hand, if you are a team working across departments, handling high-volume data, or needing enterprise-grade control, Power BI Premium is what you need. It unlocks the speed, scale, and features needed to go big, especially with the Microsoft Fabric ecosystem behind it.

Think of it this way:

• Free gets you started.
• Pro gets your team aligned.
• Premium gets your business future-ready.

Data visualization tools like Power BI offer a plan that fits every stage of your operations.

Free looks easy, Pro feels safe, and Premium sounds powerful (and expensive). But once you understand what each plan offers, it gets clearer.

But remember, your data foundation needs to be solid to get the most out of Power BI, and you will need expert guidance for that.

At Augmented Systems, we offer end-to-end data management services, such as data migration, analytics, visualization, and warehousing. Our experts have spent years in this industry and know Power BI and other top data visualization tools inside and out.

So, if you want your data strategy to work smarter, contact us today!

1. Is Power BI free forever?

Yes, Power BI Desktop is completely free to download and use. However, you cannot share reports, collaborate, or use other advanced features. For that, you’ll require a Power BI Pro or Premium license.

2. How many Power BI Premium capacities do I need for my organisation?

It depends on your organization's user volume, data size, and report complexity. Microsoft recommends starting with one capacity and scaling based on performance metrics like refresh time, concurrency, and memory usage.

3. What’s the difference between Power BI Desktop and Power BI Pro?

Power BI Desktop is a free tool for building reports locally. Power BI Pro adds cloud-based sharing, collaboration, scheduled refresh, and access control for users across your organization.

4. What are the benefits of Power BI Free vs Pro?

Power BI Free is great for creating and analyzing individual reports. Power BI Pro enables secure sharing, collaboration, app workspaces, and full integration with Microsoft 365, making it ideal for team and enterprise use.