Power BI has four ways to license a person: Free, Pro, Premium Per User, and no license at all under an Embedded app. Which one a specific person needs depends on their role, not on your organization's size. This post walks through the license each role actually needs. For the full tier-by-tier comparison of what each license costs and includes, see our Power BI licensing guide.

The report viewer

Someone who only opens dashboards and reports, and never publishes or edits, needs one of two things:

• A Pro or PPU license, matching whoever published the content, or

• No paid license at all, if the report sits in a workspace on a Fabric capacity of F64 or larger (or a legacy Premium P capacity) and they have the viewer role on that workspace.

There is no middle ground. A viewer on a Fabric capacity smaller than F64, such as F32, still needs Pro or PPU even though the organization owns a Fabric capacity. This is the single most expensive misunderstanding in Power BI licensing: buying a small capacity does not remove the need for viewer licenses. See our full breakdown of Free vs Pro for what a Free-license viewer can and cannot do without a capacity.

The report builder or analyst

Anyone who builds reports in Power BI Desktop and publishes them somewhere other people can see needs Pro at minimum. Pro lets them publish to a shared workspace, share with other Pro or PPU users, and build apps. If their models regularly exceed 1 GB, or they need more than 8 refreshes a day, they need PPU instead. See Power BI Pro vs Premium for the exact signals that mean it is time to move up.

A Free license is only enough for a builder if they never publish outside their own My workspace. That covers someone learning the tool, not someone delivering reports to a team.

The workspace admin

A workspace admin needs at least Pro, the same as any other publisher, plus the Admin role on the workspace itself. The Admin role is a workspace permission, not a separate license tier. See Power BI workspaces and apps for what each workspace role, Admin, Member, Contributor and Viewer, can actually do.

Developers embedding Power BI in another application

Power BI Embedded uses Azure A-SKU capacities to put reports inside your own application rather than the Power BI service. Licensing here depends on who is looking at the report:

• Embedding for your own staff (an internal tool, "user owns data" model): each internal viewer still needs Pro or PPU, the same as if they opened the report in the Power BI service directly. The A-SKU capacity does not remove that requirement.

• Embedding for external customers ("app owns data" model): the application authenticates as a service principal, not as the end user, so external viewers need no Power BI license at all.

A-SKU pricing is billed through Azure and depends on the node size and number of nodes deployed. It changes over time, so check Microsoft's own Power BI Embedded pricing page for current numbers rather than a fixed figure quoted here.

FAQs

Which license does a report viewer need?

Pro or PPU, unless the report sits on a Fabric capacity of F64 or larger (or a legacy Premium P capacity) and the viewer has the viewer role on that workspace, in which case a Free license is enough.

Which license does a Power BI developer or report builder need?

Pro at minimum, to publish outside their own My workspace. PPU if their models exceed 1 GB or they need more than 8 refreshes a day.

Do users of an externally embedded Power BI report need a license?

No, when the application uses the "app owns data" model and authenticates as a service principal on their behalf. Internal staff viewing an embedded report under the "user owns data" model still need Pro or PPU.

Sources

• Understand Microsoft Fabric licenses and capacity - Microsoft Learn

• Roles in workspaces in Power BI - Microsoft Learn

• Capacity and SKUs in Power BI embedded analytics - Microsoft Learn