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Power BI Lite License

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on 09 May 2017 00:25:49

Power BI should have a Lite License for people that only consume dashboards or reports every now and then. This is for people that don't create reports but need to see the dashboards and may need to use the "report level" to be able to export output to PowerPoint (since you can't export the dashboard to PowerPoint but can only do it at Report level).

Administrator on 22 Oct 2017 01:35:52

With the introduction of Power BI Premium earlier this year, there are now two licensing options for Power BI: Power BI Pro and Power BI Premium. This provides the flexibility to select the model that best meets the needs of individual users and entire organizations – whether that’s equipping users with access to self-service BI, broadening the reach of BI content for users occasionally viewing dashboards and reports, or elevating storage sizes, increasing refresh rates and introducing other performance capabilities based on workload requirements. The right choice, Pro or Premium, depends on your particular situation. We've been listening to your questions on UserVoice, the community, and other forums about what option to choose, and have developed a FAQ on our blog that answers the most common questions. Check it out at https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/power-bi-pro-power-bi-premium-flexibility-to-choose-the-licensing-best-for-you-and-your-organization/.

Comments (139)
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Johan Schelin on 06 Jul 2020 00:08:50

RE: Power BI Lite License

We still need a lite-license to get a realistic price for smaller companies, where maybe 5 users need full function/drilling etx, and another 35 users only needs a "diagram in sharepoint" without drilling etc.

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Raymond Boone on 05 Jul 2020 23:37:31

RE: Power BI Lite License

Still trying to get folks here talked into the Premium Capacity thing but it's a bit of an uphill battle for sure. I'd love a lite/read-only license for Power BI. We don't need dedicated capacity, just a way for people to be able to read stuff that gets shared by Pro users (without screenshotting, printing to PDF, exporting or emailing).

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Lotta on 05 Jul 2020 23:23:54

RE: Power BI Lite License

And the idea has ben closed???
What about listening to the customers?
Customers that may now leave the MS plattform.

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Lotta on 05 Jul 2020 23:23:54

RE: Power BI Lite License

Idea posted again:
https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas/suggestions/34742632-power-bi-lite-licens

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jordan on 05 Jul 2020 23:23:18

RE: Power BI Lite License

With the future addition of incremental refreshes, connecting to workspaces as analysis services instances with SSDT's SSAS project designer and being able to host SSRS files within Power BI being exclusive to Premium, there should be a Premium Lite version that doesn't have dedicated capacity but provides those capabilities.

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ChowderChef on 05 Jul 2020 23:19:12

RE: Power BI Lite License

In public education, we have principals and district-level administrators who only occasionally need reports to measure student growth and proficiency, in various configurations that's easiest on PBI to construct and present. Reports they request are ad-hoc reports, typically used once or a handful of times, and relevant only for that current school year.

The PBI Pro model of $x per user per month makes no sense if the majority of our user base only needs access for a sum of 1-2 months at any given time, and are not actually manipulating the data model (that's MY job).

The PBI Premium model of $x,XXX per month is untenable for public education. Even at edu discount of $2,000/month? No. That's more than what our SIS costs annually, which is the lifeblood of any school.

No matter how many marketing pamphlets are printed, MTC training courses offered, or "whitepapers" written, the ROI is wholly unfavorable with the current pricing scheme.

Therefore, our workaround is to use PBI Desktop to build the viz then do screen-captures and share out the static images instead. Or rely on Excel's data modeling and visualization capabilities, which aren't great compared to PBI but is a hell of a lot more cost-effective.

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BobF on 05 Jul 2020 23:18:17

RE: Power BI Lite License

This issue is not going away! Currently I work for an SME, most of our customers are non-profit or charities. Many of them have decided on other reporting solutions and now use them. Power BI is either cheap for a handful of users. Then the pricing jumps to HUGELY expensive. There is nothing in between, for SME’s. Great if you are a very large enterprise with a large budget. Many of SME’s do not have a large budget and there is a massive market just waiting for the right pricing model.

Neither the P or EM sku are anywhere near the pricing that is required. A viewer licence would go a long way to addressing this issue.

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Power BI User on 05 Jul 2020 23:18:12

RE: Power BI Lite License

I work in Retail and we have 1000 users of these we only have 8 users that really would be Pro users while the rest will just be consumers. As a result of the Pro pricing model we cannot roll-out Power BI across the company and this is a real loss of value to us. Please introduce a consumer only licen wsing model for us!

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Power BI User on 05 Jul 2020 23:17:48

RE: Power BI Lite License

I work for a low margin customer service company which has 300 customer service employees. I personally love Power BI, having seen incredible applications of it at a different company. We have some awesome data we want to share with our staff - showing them their performance in real time, which we feel will be a massive benefit to their performance. However, I'll let you do the maths, 300 users at £7.50 a month = £2,250 * 12 = £27,000 a year. £27,000 per year to share reports with staff which they will only view. Please wake up Microsoft, this cost is crazy meaning Power BI will never be viable in SMEs such as ours. If you offered a view only membership at £1-3 per month or so, think of the new customers you'd attract.

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Dan Nichols on 05 Jul 2020 23:13:45

RE: Power BI Lite License

Had been planning to transition from Power Pivot for Excel MS business stack to Power BI. Work in a large midwestern state university in which Tableau is very established. Am convinced Power BI is the technically superior solution to our analytics needs and it excels in data modeling. But I don't think I could ever make the business case to our IT or financial leadership based on cost when Tableau does not charge for Reader and we utilize Tableau Server for report delivery/consumption. I am passionate about the technical excellence of this product and it's huge potential to displace Tableau but the licensing model will be a huge impediment - even if Tableau Desktop developer licenses are expensive.