Power BI Pro vs. Power BI Premium: Power BI Service by License Type
Compare Power BI Pro and Power BI Premium pricing and features. Get clear insights on Power BI plans to meet your business needs.
Which Business Intelligence Version is Right for Your Organization?
Business intelligence (BI) is essential for organizations as it transforms data into actionable insights to enable informed decision-making and strategic planning. By leveraging BI, companies can understand data patterns, identify market trends, and gain a competitive edge. It allows for better decision-making by providing a complete picture of data, rather than relying on subjective or incomplete information.
BI tools help in organizing, analyzing, and reporting data in a way that is accessible and understandable, even for those with less technical expertise. This leads to improved operational efficiency, customer understanding, and financial performance. BI empowers businesses to make data-driven decisions that can lead to increased profitability and business growth.
Business Intelligence Tools
Popular Business Intelligence (BI) tools include a variety of solutions that cater to various aspects of data analysis and visualization. Key players in the market are Tableau, known for its user-friendly interface and powerful data visualization capabilities; Microsoft Power BI, which integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft products and offers robust analytics features; and Qlik, which provides flexible, self-service analytics.
Other notable BI tools are SAS Business Intelligence, offering a comprehensive suite of analytics products; Oracle Business Intelligence, delivering a full range of capabilities; and IBM Cognos Analytics, which incorporates AI to help uncover deeper insights. Additionally, tools like Domo and Zoho Analytics are gaining popularity for their cloud-based platforms and ease of use. Each of these tools has its unique strengths, making them suitable for various business needs and user expertise levels.
Discovering Microsoft Power BI
Microsoft Power BI is a comprehensive business intelligence platform that provides a suite of tools, apps, and connectors to transform disparate data sources into coherent, visually immersive, and interactive insights. It’s designed to empower users to connect to their data sources, whether they are simple Excel spreadsheets or complex hybrid data warehouses and visualize the data to discover significant trends and share findings with others.
Power BI encompasses a desktop application, online Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), and mobile apps for various devices, allowing for flexibility in how data is accessed and analyzed. Additionally, it includes Power BI Report Builder for creating detailed reports and Power BI Report Server for publishing reports on-premises. The platform caters to different roles within an organization, offering tailored experiences whether you’re viewing reports, crunching numbers, or developing new data models.
Key Features:
- Ability to connect to a wide variety of data sources, which provides flexibility in data management.
- Robust data modeling and transformation capabilities, allowing users to craft and refine data sets for more accurate analysis.
- Customizable visualizations and dashboards, enabling users to create tailored reports that visually communicate data insights effectively.
- Collaboration and sharing capabilities which facilitate teamwork and decision-making processes.
- AI-powered insights and recommendations, which can help uncover patterns and predictions that might not be immediately apparent.
Power BI License Type: Pro and Premium
Power BI offers different subscription levels to cater to various user needs and organizations.
Power BI Pro is a user-based subscription service, ideal for individual users or small to medium-sized businesses. This allows for the creation and consumption of content on the Power BI service platform. The service also enables users to discover deeper insights by connecting to hundreds of data sources and embedding rich, interactive reports in apps, websites, and portals.
Additionally, Power BI Pro integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft products, enhancing productivity and providing familiar tools for users to govern their data securely. With real-time dashboard updates, data modeling capabilities, and custom visualizations, Power BI Pro is a powerful tool for self-service analytics that supports informed decision-making across various business contexts.
While Power BI Pro offers a range of features for data analytics and reporting, it does have certain limitations for larger organizations. There’s a data size limit of 1 GB per file or dataset and a total of 10 GB of storage per user, which may be insufficient for organizations with extensive data analysis needs. Sharing capabilities are restricted to those within the organization or with other Pro users, potentially limiting collaboration with external stakeholders.
Additionally, Power BI Pro users share computational resources, which can be a concern for businesses requiring dedicated resources for enhanced security and efficiency. The data refresh rate is limited to eight times per day, which may not be adequate for organizations needing more frequent updates.
Lastly, Power BI Pro does not provide access to Power BI Report Server, limiting options for on-premise data storage and control over data security. Carefully consider these limitations when evaluating Power BI Pro for business intelligence solutions.
Power BI Pro Pricing: $10 per user/per month
- Access Power BI reports shared with you and publish your own.
- Included in Microsoft 365 E5 and Office 365 E5
Power BI Premium provides a capacity-based subscription, which is suited for larger organizations that require dedicated resources for their Power BI workloads, regardless of the number of users. 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. Premium also offers advanced AI capabilities, larger data storage, and higher refresh rates, making it a robust solution for enterprises with extensive reporting and analytics needs.
Power BI Premium offers a suite of enhanced capabilities designed for enterprise-scale analytics and reporting. It provides dedicated capacity, ensuring consistent performance and the ability to manage larger data volumes (100 TB) without impacting other users.
With Power BI Premium, organizations can benefit from advanced AI features, such as machine learning and cognitive services, to gain deeper insights from their data. The service also includes greater data refresh rates (48 per day), allowing for up-to-date information and timely decision-making. Additionally, Power BI Premium supports the deployment of reports across an organization without requiring individual user licenses, making it cost-effective for widespread report distribution.
It also includes Power BI Report Server, giving organizations the flexibility to host reports on-premises and maintain control over their data security and compliance. Premium users can also take advantage of features like autoscaling, which automatically adds resources during high demand periods to maintain performance levels. Overall, Power BI Premium is designed to meet the needs of large organizations seeking a powerful, scalable business intelligence solution.
Power BI Premium Pricing: $20 per user/per month (also available capacity-based without a paid-per-user license)
- Includes all the features available with Power BI Pro
- Access larger model sizes
- More frequent refreshes
The choice between Pro and Premium will depend on the scale of the business intelligence requirements and the desired level of service.
Pro vs. Premium: Compare Power BI Pricing and Features
Get clear insights on Power BI pricings, key features, and essential information to help you make informed decisions for your business solutions.
| Power BI Pro $10 user/month | Power BI Premium $20 user/month |
| Create reports with desktop7 | Create reports with desktop7 |
| Publish reports to share and collaborate | Publish reports to share and collaborate |
| Advanced AI | |
| Advanced dataflows | |
| Advanced datamarts | |
| XMLA endpoint read/write | |
| Model memory size limit9 1 GB | Model memory size limit9 Varies |
| Refresh rate for Power BI datasets 8/day | Refresh rate for Power BI datasets 48/day |
| Maximum storage (native storage)10 10 GB/user | Maximum storage (native storage)10 100 TB |
| Data security and encryption | Data security and encryption |
| Copilot in Fabric |
Kidder Mathews uses Power BI to Bridge the Gap Between Data and Decision-making
Kidder Mathews is the largest independent commercial real estate firm on the West Coast. With over 900 local market specialists and top-producing professionals, Kidder Mathews has 20 offices in Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, and Arizona. The expertise of each local office is reinforced by the relationships, intelligence, and experience of the entire firm. The firm has an annual transaction volume of over $12B.
At Kidder Mathews, Power BI helps bridge the gap between data and decision-making. Velosio implemented APIs and links which allow Power BI users to pull in data from different sources. “We find Power BI easy to work with and pull tables,” says Regina Golonka, senior corporate accounting & finance manager for Kidder Mathews. Check out the full case study here.
Try before you buy
Power BI is available for a free trial so you can try it before you buy it. Velosio can help set up the trial version or answer any questions you may have about Power BI or the different versions. Contact us and start getting data-driven insights from Power BI today.