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Interact with the Power BI service as a Free user

APPLIES TO: Power BI service for business users Power BI service for designers & developers Power BI Desktop Requires Pro or Premium license

As a Power BI service user with a free license, you explore content (such as reports, apps, scorecards, dashboards, and more) in order to make business decisions. That content is created by designers who have Power BI Pro or Premium Per User (PPU) licenses. In order to share it with users with free licenses, designers need to publish that content to a group workspace backed by a Premium capacity. Premium capacity provides the benefit of unlimited content sharing. Sometimes, designers share content by sending you links to content such as a Power BI app Apps in the Power BI service, and sometimes the content automatically installs and appears in Power BI under Apps or Browse > Shared with me.

There are many different ways designers can share content. But this article is for Power BI users with a free license, and therefore only describes how "free users" receive and interact with content. For more information on other ways to share content, see Ways to share your work in Power BI.

Power BI navigation pane

In the previous article, 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 Power BI Premium capacity, all users can view content without needing an assigned license.

Quick review of terminology

Let's review some Power BI concepts before we get to the list. This will be a quick review and if you need more details, visit Licenses for consumers or Power BI basic concepts.

Workspaces and roles

Collaborating and sharing in workspaces requires that workspace owners, who have Pro or Premium Per User (PPU) licenses, assign you a role in that workspace.

Roles determine who can do what in that workspace. Free users are assigned the Viewer role. Being assigned any other role requires that a free user upgrade to Pro or PPU.

Premium capacity

When an organization has a Premium capacity subscription, admins and Pro users can assign workspaces to the Premium capacity. Content in workspaces hosted in Premium capacity can be accessed by users with any Power BI license as long as they have appropriate permissions to access the content.

Licenses

Each Power BI service user has at least one of the following: a free license, a Power BI Pro license, a Premium Per user license. As long as your colleagues use Premium capacity workspaces to share content, free users can view and interact with that content.

To find out what type of license is assigned to your account, select your profile picture from the page header in Power BI service. If Pro account or Premium Per User account is displayed, you can share content with other users. When Free is shown, you can only create content in My Workspace and consume content that is hosted in a Premium workspace. Select View account to see more details about your account.

Screenshot showing license type displayed with account profile.

Power BI feature list for users with a free license

The following chart identifies which tasks can be performed by a user with a free license interacting with content in their own My Workspace or in Premium capacity.

The first column represents a free user only working with content in My workspace. This user cannot collaborate with colleagues in the Power BI service. Colleagues cannot directly share content with this user, and this user cannot share from My workspace.

The second column represents a free user working with content in a workspace that is saved in Premium capacity. This free user:

  • has a free user license type
  • is part of an organization that has a Premium capacity subscription
  • gets content (apps, dashboards, reports, etc.) from Pro or PPU users who share that content using group workspaces in Premium capacity.
  • is assigned the Viewer role to those app workspaces.

Note

Content hosted in a PPU workspace can only be used by users with PPU licenses.

Legend

green dot feature is available in the current scenario
orange x feature is not available in the current scenario
green mw feature availability is limited to My workspace. Content in My workspace is for the owner's personal use and cannot be viewed by anyone else in Power BI.
* access to this feature can be turned on or off by a Pro user or an admin.


Feature list

Features Scenario 1: Power BI Free user who has no access to content hosted in Premium capacity. Scenario 2: Power BI Free user with Viewer permissions to content stored in Premium capacity.
Apps
Installs automatically orange x green dot*
Open orange x green dot
Favorite orange x green dot
Edit, update, republish orange x orange x
Create new app orange x orange x
AppSource: download and open orange x orange x
Organization store: download and open orange x green dot
Reshare an app orange x green dot
Workspaces in Premium capacity
Create, edit, or delete workspace or content orange x orange x
Add endorsements orange x orange x
Open and view orange x green dot
Read data stored in workspace dataflows orange x green dot
Dashboards
Receive, view, and interact with dashboards from colleagues orange x green dot
Add alerts to tiles green myw green dot
View and respond to comments from others: add your own comments orange x green dot*
Save a copy green myw orange x
Copy visual as an image? green myw green dot
Create, edit, update, delete green myw orange x
Export tile to .csv green myw green dot
Favorite green myw green dot
Full screen and focus modes green myw green dot
Global search green dot* green dot*
Insights on tiles green myw green dot*
Q&A: use on dashboard green myw* green dot*
Q&A: add featured and saved questions orange x orange x
Q&A: review asked questions orange x orange x
Pin tiles from Q&A or reports green myw orange x
Print green myw* green dot*
Refresh green myw green dot
Reshare orange x orange x
Subscribe yourself green myw* green dot*
Subscribe others orange x orange x
View dashboards that have been embedded into PowerApps or SharePoint pages orange x green dot
Datasets
Add, delete, edit green myw orange x
Create a report in another workspace based on a dataset in this workspace orange x orange x
Insights on datasets green myw orange x
Schedule refresh green myw orange x
Analyze in Excel green myw green dot*
Create a report green myw orange x
Create a paginated report green myw orange x
Share orange x orange x
Manage permissions orange x orange x
Save a copy orange x orange x
Create from template orange x orange x
Reports
Receive reports from colleagues orange x green dot
Analyze report in Excel green myw* green dot*
View bookmarks created by others, and add your own bookmarks orange x green dot
View and respond to comments from others: add new comments orange x green dot
Change display dimensions green myw green dot
Save a copy orange x orange x
Copy visual as an image*
Cross-highlight and cross-filter report visuals green myw green dot
Drill green myw green dot
Drillthrough green myw* green dot*
Embed (publish to web, public) green myw* orange x
Export summarized data from report visuals* green myw green dot
Export underlying data from report visuals* green myw green dot
Favorite the report green myw green dot
Filters: change types green myw* green dot*
Filters: interact green myw green dot
Filters: persistent green myw* green dot*
Search on the filter pane green myw* green dot*
Full screen and focus modes green myw green dot
Insights on reports1 green myw green dot
Lineage view green myw orange x
Export to PDF* green myw green dot
Performance Inspector green myw green dot
Export to PowerPoint* green myw green dot
Promote content to Home orange x orange x
Print report pages* green dot green dot
Interact with Q&A visual green myw green dot
QR Code green myw green dot
Refresh green myw green dot
Share content with external users orange x orange x
Share: allow others to reshare items orange x orange x
Show as table (show data) green myw green dot
Slicers: add or delete green myw orange x
Interact with slicers green myw green dot
Sort report visuals green myw green dot
Subscribe yourself to reports* green myw green dot
Subscribe others to reports orange x orange x
View related green myw green dot
View reports that have been embedded into PowerApps or SharePoint pages orange x green dot
Visuals: change types in reports green myw* green dot*
Change visual interactions green myw orange x
Visuals: add new green myw orange x
Visuals: add new fields green myw orange x
Visuals: change type green myw green dot
Visuals: hover to reveal details and tooltips green myw green dot