Microsoft Fabric trial
Microsoft Fabric is provided free of charge when you sign up for the Fabric trial. Your use of the Microsoft Fabric trial includes access to the Fabric product workload and the resources to create and host Fabric items. The Fabric trial lasts for 60 days, but Microsoft can extend it, at our discretion.
With a Fabric trial, you get the following features:
Full access to all of the Fabric workloads and features.
OneLake storage up to 1 TB.
Up to five Fabric trial capacities per tenant.
The ability for users to create Fabric items and collaborate with others in the Fabric trial capacity.
Creating and collaborating in Fabric includes:
- Creating Workspaces (folders) for projects that support Fabric capabilities.
- Sharing Fabric items, such as semantic models, warehouses, and notebooks, and collaborating on them with other Fabric users.
- Creating analytics solutions using Fabric items.
When you start a Fabric trial, your trial capacity has 64 capacity units (CU). You don't have access to your capacity until you put something into it. To begin using your Fabric trial, add items to My workspace or create a new workspace. Assign that workspace to your trial capacity using the Trial license mode, and then all the items in that workspace are saved and executed in that capacity.
Your license is upgraded to Premium Per User (PPU) during the trial. Your Account manager still displays your nontrial license. But in order to make full use of Fabric, your trial includes the equivalent of a PPU license. There are a few key PPU features that aren't available on trial capacities. These include Co-Pilot, Trusted workspace access, and VNet.
Existing Power BI users
If you're an existing Power BI user, you can skip to Start the Fabric trial. During the trial if you have a free or Pro license, it's upgraded to PPU.
Users who are new to Power BI
The Fabric trial requires a Power BI license. Navigate to https://app.fabric.microsoft.com to sign up for a Power BI free license. Once you have a Power BI license, you can start the Fabric trial. For the duration of the trial, that license is upgraded to PPU.
You may already have a license and not realize it. For example, some versions of Office 365 include a Fabric free or Power BI Pro license.
Start the Fabric trial
Follow these steps to start your Fabric trial.
Open the Fabric homepage and select the Account manager.
In the Account manager, select Start trial. If you don't see the Start trial button, trials might be disabled for your tenant.
If prompted, agree to the terms and then select Start trial.
Once your trial capacity is ready, you receive a confirmation message. Select Got it to begin working in Fabric.
Open your Account manager again. Notice that you now have a heading for Trial status. Your Account manager keeps track of the number of days remaining in your trial. You also see the countdown in your Fabric menu bar when you work in a product workload.
Congratulations. You now have a Fabric trial that includes a Power BI individual trial (if you didn't already have a Power BI paid license) and a Fabric trial capacity.
Other ways to start a Microsoft Fabric trial
In some situations, your Fabric administrator has enabled Microsoft Fabric for the tenant but you don't have access to a capacity that has Fabric enabled. You have another option for enabling a Fabric trial. When you try to create a Fabric item in a workspace that you own (such as My Workspace) and that workspace doesn't support Fabric items, you're prompted to start a Fabric trial. If you agree, your Fabric trial starts and your workspace is upgraded to a trial capacity workspace. You're now the Capacity administrator and can add workspaces to the trial capacity.
Share trial capacities
Each trial includes up to 5 trial capacities. Each trial capacity can be shared with other users. There are several ways to share.
You're the Capacity administrator (the user who initiated the trial) or the Fabric administrator. You can assign workspaces to a trial capacity. All users with access to those workspaces are now able to use that trial capacity.
You're the workspace creator or a user with the Admin or Member role in that workspace. If you created the workspace, you have the Admin role. You can create the workspace in trial capacity or assign that workspace to a trial capacity.
If the Fabric tenant switch is enabled, users can view, consume, and add Fabric content. If the Fabric tenant switch is disabled, users can only view and consume Fabric content. For more information, see Fabric tenant setting.
Admins can also enable Fabric on a per capacity basis. Enable for a capacity
Look up the Fabric tenant switch setting
If you have permissions, you can view, verify, or change the Fabric tenant setting. If you need help, contact the Capacity administrator directly.
Look up the trial Capacity administrator
Contact your Capacity administrator to request access to a trial capacity or to check whether your organization has the Fabric tenant setting enabled. Use the Admin portal to look up your Capacity administrator.
From the upper right corner of Fabric, select the gear icon. Choose Admin portal. For a Fabric trial, select Capacity settings* and then the Trial tab.
End a Fabric trial
Your Fabric trial ends after 60 days or when you cancel. If you don't upgrade to a paid Fabric capacity at the end of the trial period, non-Power BI Fabric items are removed according to the retention policy upon removal.
If you cancel your free Fabric trial, the trial capacity, with all of its workspaces and their contents, is deleted. Your license returns to the original version. In addition, you can't:
Create workspaces that support Fabric capabilities.
Share Fabric items, such as machine learning models, warehouses, and notebooks, and collaborate on them with other Fabric users.
Create analytics solutions using these Fabric items.
To cancel your free Fabric trial, open your Account Manager and select Cancel trial.
If you cancel your trial, you might not be able to start another trial. If you want to retain your data and continue to use Microsoft Fabric, you can purchase a capacity and migrate your workspaces to that capacity. To learn more about workspaces and license mode settings, see Workspaces.
Considerations and limitations
I am unable to start a trial
If you don't see the Start trial button in your Account manager:
Your Fabric administrator might disable access, and you can't start a Fabric trial. To request access, contact your Fabric administrator. You can also start a trial using your own tenant. For more information, see Sign up for Power BI with a new Microsoft 365 account.
You're an existing Power BI trial user, and you don't see Start trial in your Account manager. You can start a Fabric trial by attempting to create a Fabric item. When you attempt to create a Fabric item, you're prompted to start a Fabric trial. If you don't see this prompt, it's possible that this action is deactivated by your Fabric administrator.
If you do see the Start trial button in your Account manager:
You might not be able to start a trial if your tenant exhausted its limit of trial capacities. If that is the case, you have the following options:
- Request another trial capacity user to share their trial capacity workspace with you. Give users access to workspaces
- Purchase a Fabric capacity from Azure by performing a search for Microsoft Fabric.
- To increase tenant trial capacity limits, reach out to your Fabric administrator to create a Microsoft support ticket.
In Workplace settings, I can't assign a workspace to the trial capacity
This bug occurs when the Fabric administrator turns off trials after you start a trial. To add your workspace to the trial capacity, open the Admin portal by selecting it from the gear icon in the top menu bar. Then, select Trial > Capacity settings and choose the name of the capacity. If you don't see your workspace assigned, add it here.
What is the region for my Fabric trial capacity?
If you start the trial using the Account manager, your trial capacity is located in the home region for your tenant. See Find your Fabric home region for information about how to find your home region, where your data is stored.
What impact does region have on my Fabric trial?
Not all regions are available for the Fabric trial. Start by looking up your home region and then check to see if your region is supported for the Fabric trial. If your home region doesn't have Fabric enabled, don't use the Account manager to start a trial. To start a trial in a region that isn't your home region, follow the steps in Other ways to start a Fabric trial. If you already started a trial from Account manager, cancel that trial and follow the steps in Other ways to start a Fabric trial instead.
Can I move my tenant to another region?
You can't move your organization's tenant between regions by yourself. If you need to change your organization's default data location from the current region to another region, you must contact support to manage the migration for you. For more information, see Move between regions.
Fabric Trial Capacity Availability by Azure Region
To learn more about regional availability for Fabric trials, see Fabric trial capacities are available in all regions.
How is the Fabric trial different from an individual trial of Power BI paid?
A per-user trial of Power BI paid allows access to the Fabric landing page. Once you sign up for the Fabric trial, you can use the trial capacity for storing Fabric workspaces and items and for running Fabric workloads. All rules guiding Power BI licenses and what you can do in the Power BI workload remain the same. The key difference is that a Fabric capacity is required to access non-Power BI workloads and items.
Autoscale
The Fabric trial capacity doesn't support autoscale. If you need more compute capacity, you can purchase a Fabric capacity in Azure.
For existing Synapse users
The Fabric trial is different from a Proof of Concept (POC). A Proof of Concept (POC) is standard enterprise vetting that requires financial investment and months' worth of work customizing the platform and using fed data. The Fabric trial is free for users and doesn't require customization. Users can sign up for a free trial and start running product workloads immediately, within the confines of available capacity units.
You don't need an Azure subscription to start a Fabric trial. If you have an existing Azure subscription, you can purchase a (paid) Fabric capacity.
For existing Power BI users
You can migrate your existing workspaces into a trial capacity using workspace settings and choosing "Trial" as the license mode. To learn how to migrate workspaces, see create workspaces.
Related content
Learn about licenses
Review Fabric terminology
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