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APPLIES TO: 
Power BI service for business users 
Power BI service for designers & developers
Power BI Desktop
Requires Pro or Premium license
If you have a free Power BI license, you can view and interact with reports, dashboards, apps, and other content that colleagues share with you—as long as that content is hosted on a qualifying capacity (Fabric F64+ or Premium). What you can do depends on three factors:
- Your license type
- Your role or permissions
- Where the content is stored
Use the feature table below to quickly find out whether a specific task is available to you. For more information on other ways designers share content, see Ways to share your work in Power BI.
Tip
For a list of Fabric features by SKU type, see Microsoft Fabric features parity.
For a list of features that apply to all the Power BI Premium licenses, including Premium Per User (PPU) and Power BI Embedded, see Power BI Premium features.
Licenses
In Licenses for consumers, you learned that what you can do with dashboards, reports, and apps (content) in the Power BI service depends on three things: your licenses, your roles and permissions, and where content is stored.
This article lists which features in the Power BI service are available to users with free licenses.
Note
In sovereign cloud environments with capacity (Fabric F64+ or Premium), all users can view content without needing an assigned license. Behavior can vary by sovereign cloud region; consult regional documentation for any exceptions (see ‡ note below the feature table).
Quick review of terminology
Before you use the feature table, review these key Power BI concepts. For more details, see Licenses for consumers or Basics of the Power BI service.
| Concept | What it means |
|---|---|
| Workspaces and roles | Workspace owners assign you a role that determines what you can do. Free users get the Viewer role. To get any other role, upgrade to Pro or PPU. |
| Capacity (Fabric F64+ or Premium) | When an organization has a qualifying capacity subscription, users with any license (including free) can access content hosted on that capacity, given appropriate permissions. |
| Licenses | Each user has a free, Pro, or PPU license. Free users can view content hosted on Premium capacity workspaces. Select your profile picture in Power BI service to check your license type. |
Power BI feature list for users with a free license
The following chart shows which tasks a user with a free license can perform when interacting with content in their own My workspace or in a workspace on a capacity (Fabric F64+ or Premium).
Tip
For a list of Fabric features by SKU type, see Microsoft Fabric features parity.
For a list of features that apply to all the Power BI Premium licenses, including Premium Per User (PPU) and Power BI Embedded, see Power BI Premium features.
The first column represents a free user who works only with content in My workspace. This user can't collaborate with colleagues in the Power BI service. Colleagues can't directly share content with this user, and this user can't share from My workspace.
The second column represents a free user who works with content in a workspace that's saved on a capacity (Fabric F64+ or Premium). This free user:
- has a free user license type
- is part of an organization that has a capacity subscription (Fabric F or Premium)
- gets content (apps, dashboards, reports, and more) from Pro or PPU users who share that content by using workspaces on capacity.
- is assigned the Viewer role to those app workspaces.
Note
Users with PPU licenses are the only ones who can use content hosted in a PPU workspace.
Legend
Feature is available in the current scenario
Feature is not available in the current scenario
Feature availability is limited to My workspace. Content in My workspace is for the owner's personal use and can't be viewed by anyone else in Power BI.
Feature list
| Features | Scenario 1: Free user accessing Power BI content not completely hosted on Fabric F64+ or Premium capacity. For example, both the report and the semantic model need to be hosted on Fabric F64+ or Premium capacity. | Scenario 2: Free user with Viewer permissions on the workspace accessing Power BI content completely hosted on Fabric F64+ or Premium capacity. For example, both the report and the semantic model need to be hosted on Fabric F64+ or Premium capacity. |
|---|---|---|
| Apps | ||
| Installs automatically | |
* |
| Open | |
|
| Favorite | |
|
| Edit, update, republish | |
|
| Create new app | |
|
| AppSource: download and open | |
|
| Organization store: download and open | |
|
| Reshare an app | |
|
| Workspaces on capacity (Fabric F64+ or Premium) | ||
| Create, edit, or delete workspace or content | |
|
| Add endorsements | |
|
| Open and view | |
|
| Read data stored in workspace dataflows | |
|
| Dashboards | ||
| Receive, view, and interact with dashboards from colleagues | |
|
| Add alerts to tiles | |
|
| View and respond to comments from others: add your own comments | |
* |
| Save a copy | |
|
| Copy visual as an image* | |
* |
| Create, edit, update, delete | |
|
| Export tile to .csv | |
|
| Favorite | |
|
| Full screen and focus modes | |
|
| Global search | * |
* |
| Insights on tiles | |
* |
| Q&A: use on dashboard | * |
* |
| Q&A: add featured and saved questions | |
|
| Q&A: review asked questions | |
|
| Pin tiles from Q&A or reports | |
|
| * |
* |
|
| Refresh | |
|
| Reshare | |
|
| Subscribe yourself | * |
* |
| Subscribe others | |
|
| View dashboards that have been embedded into PowerApps or SharePoint pages | |
|
| Datasets | ||
| Add, delete, edit | |
|
| Create a report in another workspace based on a dataset in this workspace | |
|
| Create a report in "My Workspace" using a dataset located in a different Workspace | |
|
| Insights on datasets | |
|
| Schedule refresh | |
|
| Analyze in Excel† | |
|
| Create a report | |
|
| Create a paginated report | |
|
| Share | |
|
| Manage permissions | |
|
| Save a copy | |
|
| Create from template | |
|
| Reports | ||
| Receive reports from colleagues | |
|
| Analyze report in Excel† | |
|
| View bookmarks created by others, and add your own bookmarks | |
|
| View and respond to comments from others: add new comments | |
|
| Change display dimensions | |
|
| Save a copy | |
|
| Copy visual as an image* | * |
* |
| Cross-highlight and cross-filter report visuals | |
|
| Drill | |
|
| Drillthrough | * |
* |
| Embed (publish to web, public)§ | |
|
| Export summarized data from report visuals* | |
|
| Export underlying data from report visuals* | |
|
| Favorite the report | |
|
| Filters: change types | * |
* |
| Filters: interact | |
|
| Filters: persistent | * |
* |
| Search on the filter pane | * |
* |
| Full screen and focus modes | |
|
| Insights on reports | |
|
| Lineage view | |
|
| Export to PDF* | |
|
| Performance Inspector | |
|
| Export to PowerPoint* | |
|
| Promote content to Home | |
|
| Print report pages* | |
|
| Interact with Q&A visual | |
|
| QR Code | |
|
| Refresh | |
|
| Share content with external users | |
|
| Share: allow others to reshare items | |
|
| Show as table (show data) | |
|
| Slicers: add or delete | |
|
| Interact with slicers | |
|
| Sort report visuals | |
|
| Subscribe yourself to reports* | |
|
| Subscribe others to reports | |
|
| View related | |
|
| View reports that have been embedded into PowerApps or SharePoint pages | |
|
| Visuals: change types in reports | * |
* |
| Change visual interactions | |
|
| Visuals: add new | |
|
| Visuals: add new fields | |
|
| Visuals: change type | |
|
| Visuals: hover to reveal details and tooltips | |
|
* An admin or tenant setting can enable or disable the feature for some or all users.
† Analyze in Excel (and related Excel live connection experiences) also requires Build permission on the semantic model and the relevant tenant settings to be enabled.
‡ Sovereign (national/regional) cloud behavior can differ; some capabilities may lag or have alternate licensing enforcement.
§ Publish to web embed code creation requires Pro or PPU. Free users cannot create embed codes; anyone can view an already-published public link (subject to admin enablement and governance policies).