Power BI Pricing in Euros (2026): How Free, Pro and Premium Per User Really Differ

Scenario: A Dutch analytics team stuck on Free workspaces

Picture a small analytics team in a Dutch company:

• They build datasets in Power BI Desktop.
• Reports are published to the Power BI service, mostly in shared workspaces.
• Business users want:
  • Row-level security (RLS) for departments.
  • Scheduled refresh from on‑prem SQL and SharePoint.
  • A few paginated reports.

Right now, most people are on Power BI Free. Reports are shared via personal workspaces, or exported to PDF and emailed. IT is pushing for “one licence model” but doesn’t want to overspend on Premium capacity.

We’ll use this team as the running example:

• What exactly can they do with Free?
• When is Pro enough?
• When does Premium Per User make sense, and when is it a trap compared to Premium capacity?

Current prices in euros (2026) – what you actually pay

Pricing changes, so always re‑check before committing. As of late 2026, the Dutch Microsoft Power BI pages show:

• Power BI Pro
  • Listed as a per‑user subscription in euros.
  • Typical range historically has been around the equivalent of ~US$10 per user/month; the Dutch page shows the euro amount explicitly.
• Premium Per User (PPU)
  • Dutch Microsoft page lists PPU as a per‑user/month licence in euros.
  • In practice you’ll see it offered as a single PPU price per user/month in the portal; the key point is: it’s more expensive than Pro and unlocks Premium features for that user.
• Power BI Free
  • Included with many Microsoft 365 plans or available as a standalone free licence.
  • No explicit euro price because it’s free, but it’s heavily constrained for sharing.

For budgeting, teams usually model:

• Pro: base licence for most creators and consumers.
• PPU: a smaller subset of advanced users who need Premium features without buying a full capacity.

Premium capacity (P‑SKUs / F‑SKUs) is a separate discussion with 4‑figure monthly euro spend; we’ll only touch it where it matters for choosing PPU.

Capability matrix: Free vs Pro vs Premium Per User

Let’s map licences to core capabilities that matter in practice.

1. Power BI Free

You can:

• Use Power BI Desktop fully for modelling and report authoring.
• Publish to your personal workspace (My workspace).
• View content shared with you in Premium capacity workspaces, if your organisation has Premium capacity and the admin has enabled access for you.

You cannot:

• Publish to or collaborate in shared workspaces in the service.
• Share reports or dashboards with other users in the service.
• Use Apps for structured deployment.
• Use most advanced features that are tied to Pro or PPU (e.g. deployment pipelines, some advanced dataflow scenarios).

Effect on our scenario team:

• Analysts on Free can build models locally.
• Business users on Free can only reliably consume content if it’s deployed to a Premium capacity and the admin has enabled access for them.
• No straightforward self‑service sharing via apps; this is why teams quickly hit a wall on Free.

2. Power BI Pro

Pro is the default licence for organisational use.

With Power BI Pro, a user can:

• Create and publish reports and datasets to shared workspaces.
• Share dashboards, reports and apps with other Pro users.
• Use Apps to distribute content to groups.
• Participate in collaboration in workspaces (co‑authoring, lineage view, etc.).
• Schedule data refresh for imported datasets within service limits.
• Use Row‑Level Security (RLS) in shared workspaces.
• Use deployment pipelines.

Constraints:

• Pro users can consume content in Premium capacity workspaces without needing PPU.
• For non‑Premium workspaces (shared or app workspaces), every viewer must have Pro.

For our scenario team:

• Moving the analysts and business users to Pro enables:
  • Proper shared workspaces for dev/test/prod.
  • RLS for departmental views.
  • Apps for structured rollout instead of emailing PDFs.
• They still don’t get Premium‑only features (e.g. advanced AI, larger dataset limits, paginated reports) unless content is hosted on Premium capacity or PPU.

3. Premium Per User (PPU)

Premium Per User is a licence that gives a user Premium features without requiring a dedicated Premium capacity.

A PPU user can:

• Do everything a Pro user can.
• Create and consume content in PPU workspaces (Premium Per User workspaces).
• Use Premium features such as:
  • Larger dataset size limits (within PPU constraints).
  • Enhanced refresh and some advanced performance features.
  • Certain AI features and advanced dataflows.
  • Paginated reports in PPU workspaces.

Important behaviour:

• PPU workspaces are marked as such in the service.
• Only PPU users can consume Premium features in PPU workspaces.
• Pro‑only users cannot access content in PPU workspaces.

For our scenario team:

• If they choose PPU for the analytics team only:
  • Analysts get Premium features in PPU workspaces.
  • Business users need PPU licences if they are to consume content from PPU workspaces.
• If business users stay on Pro:
  • They can consume content from non‑PPU (Pro) workspaces.
  • They miss out on PPU‑only features and content in PPU workspaces.

This is the key trade‑off: PPU is great for small groups that need Premium features; it becomes expensive if you need all consumers on PPU.

Applying this to the scenario: licence patterns that actually work

Let’s look at realistic licence mixes for our Dutch analytics team.

Pattern 1: All‑Pro, no Premium

• Who gets what:
  • All analysts: Pro.
  • All business consumers: Pro.
• Costs:
  • Simple per‑user Pro price in euros × number of users.
• Capabilities:
  • Shared workspaces and apps.
  • RLS and scheduled refresh.
  • No Premium features, no PPU workspaces.

When this works:

• Organisation size is modest and Pro licences for all consumers are acceptable.
• Datasets are within Pro limits (size, refresh frequency).
• No strong need for paginated reports or Premium‑only features.

For our scenario team, this is usually the first viable step away from Free.

Pattern 2: Mixed Pro + PPU for advanced workloads

• Who gets what:
  • Core analytics team: PPU.
  • Wider business consumers: Pro.
• Costs:
  • Pro price in euros for each consumer.
  • PPU price in euros for each advanced analytics user.
• Capabilities:
  • Pro workspaces for general content, consumed by all Pro users.
  • PPU workspaces for advanced content, consumed by PPU users only.

When this works:

• You have a small group doing heavy modelling, larger datasets, or paginated reports.
• Only a limited audience needs those Premium features.

In our scenario:

• Team creates standard departmental dashboards in Pro workspaces for everyone.
• For a complex financial planning model with paginated output:
  • Model and paginated reports live in a PPU workspace.
  • Only finance power users (with PPU) access them.

This keeps Premium costs focused while most users stay on Pro.

Pattern 3: Premium capacity + mix of Free and Pro

This goes beyond the article’s core scope, but matters when comparing PPU.

• Who gets what:
  • Organisation buys a Premium capacity SKU.
  • Creators: Pro.
  • Many consumers: Free.
• Capabilities:
  • Content hosted on Premium capacity workspaces can be consumed by Free users (subject to admin settings).
  • Premium features available at capacity level.

When this beats PPU:

• Large numbers of consumers.
• You want to minimise per‑user licensing and host most content in Premium capacity.

For the scenario team, Premium capacity is usually overkill unless they are serving a very large audience.

Key technical differences that affect your choice

Beyond price, these behavioural differences decide which licence you need.

Sharing and collaboration

• Free:
  • No sharing via shared workspaces or apps.
  • Collaboration limited to personal workspaces and Premium capacity scenarios where content is simply consumed.
• Pro:
  • Full collaboration in shared workspaces.
  • App distribution is standard.
• PPU:
  • Same as Pro for non‑PPU workspaces.
  • PPU‑only access to PPU workspaces.

For the scenario team, moving to Pro is what unlocks structured collaboration; PPU is about feature depth, not basic sharing.

Dataset size and refresh

Exact limits are version‑ and SKU‑specific, but the pattern is stable:

• Pro has lower dataset size limits than Premium / PPU.
• Premium / PPU offer higher limits and more flexible refresh options.

So if your team is pushing dataset size boundaries or needs more frequent refresh than Pro allows, PPU is a way to get those features without buying a full capacity.

Paginated reports

Paginated reports are a common reason teams look at Premium.

• Pro only:
  • Paginated reports require Premium capacity or PPU; purely Pro environments cannot host them in standard workspaces.
• PPU:
  • Paginated reports are supported in PPU workspaces.

In our scenario, the finance team’s requirement for paginated reports is a strong argument for at least some PPU licences.

Consumption vs creation licensing logic

Keep these rules straight:

• In non‑Premium (Pro) workspaces:
  • Creators and viewers need Pro.
• In PPU workspaces:
  • Creators and viewers need PPU.
• In Premium capacity workspaces:
  • Creators typically need Pro.
  • Many viewers can be Free, depending on admin settings.

This is why PPU is good for small, specialised groups, and Premium capacity is better for broad distribution.

Practical decision steps for your team

When choosing between Free, Pro and PPU, walk through these questions:

1. How many people need to create content?

   • If more than a handful: plan on Pro for all creators.

2. How many people need to view content regularly?

   • If the number is modest and you can afford Pro for them, start with Pro.
   • If you have hundreds or thousands of viewers, evaluate Premium capacity.

3. Do you have workloads that clearly need Premium features?

   • Larger models, higher refresh frequency, paginated reports, advanced dataflows.
   • If yes, decide whether those workloads have a small audience (PPU) or large audience (Premium capacity).

4. Do you need strict isolation between advanced and standard content?

   • PPU workspaces give a clean boundary: only PPU users see that content.

5. What’s your governance story?

   • Pro‑only environments are simpler to reason about.
   • Mixed Pro/PPU environments need clear workspace naming and licence guidance.

For our scenario team, a typical evolution path is:

1. Move all analysts and key consumers from Free to Pro.
2. Identify 5–10 power users who need Premium features and give them PPU.
3. Keep most departmental dashboards in Pro workspaces; reserve PPU workspaces for heavy models and paginated reports.

One concrete takeaway

Before you buy anything beyond Pro, list specific reports or datasets that genuinely need Premium features and count how many users must access them; if that audience is small, PPU at the current per‑user/month euro price is usually the cleanest next step, and if it’s large, you should pause and seriously evaluate Premium capacity instead.