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There are two ways for users to get a license, from an administrator or by using self-service. This article is for the administrators, who purchase and manage services and licenses.
Billing administrators can sign up for the Power BI service and Fabric. After signing up and purchasing a subscription or a free trial, Billing, License, and User administrators assign licenses to users in their organization.
If you give them permissions, users in your organization can get one of the organization's licenses simply by signing in to Power BI (app.powerbi.com) or Fabric (app.fabric.microsoft.com). When a user signs in, they automatically receive a license. Administrators can set these permissions by following Enable and disable self-service.
Note
If you're an individual, you can sign up for your own free, Pro, Premium Per User, trial licenses or trial of a Fabric capacity. This process is called self-service. To learn more, see the self-service process.
Power BI is available as a standalone SaaS service and as one of the services integrated with Microsoft Fabric. Administration and licensing of the Power BI service is now integrated with Microsoft Fabric.
Fabric and the Power BI service are both SaaS platforms and require licenses and at least one capacity subscription. There are some differences in how these licenses and capacities are acquired.
Use of the Power BI service requires a license and a capacity.
Per user license - Per user licenses, allow users to work in the Power BI service. The options are Fabric (Free), Pro, and Premium Per User (PPU).
Capacity subscription - There are two types of Power BI subscriptions for organizations: standard and Premium. Premium provides enhancements to Power BI, and a comprehensive portfolio of Premium features. Power BI Premium is a tenant-level Microsoft 365 subscription, available in a choice of SKUs (Stock Keeping Units).
Each Microsoft 365 E5 subscription includes standard capacity and a Pro license.
To access the Fabric SaaS platform, you need a license and a capacity.
You must belong to the Billing admin role to purchase or assign licenses for your organization. Admin roles are assigned from the Microsoft Entra admin center or the Microsoft 365 admin center. For more information about admin roles in Microsoft Entra ID, see View and assign administrator roles in Microsoft Entra ID. To learn more about admin roles in Microsoft 365, including best practices, see About admin roles.
After the licenses and subscriptions are purchased, License, or User admins can manage licenses for an organization. For details about these admin roles, see Admin roles.
Fabric and the Power BI service are available for organizations to purchase and to try for free. For detailed instructions, select the option you prefer.
Tip
If you're ready to make a purchase, use these links to find up-to-date pricing information.
Purchase a Fabric subscription. If you're ready to purchase, your options include bulk purchasing for your organization or enabling your users to upgrade their own licenses.
After you purchase a Fabric subscription, enable Fabric for your organization. Enabling Fabric includes setting up tenants and capacities.
Purchase a Power BI subscription and licenses. Power BI Pro is included in Microsoft 365 E5. Otherwise, you can purchase Pro or PPU licenses from the Microsoft pricing site, through Microsoft 365, or through a Microsoft partner. After your purchase, you can assign licenses to individual users or use self-service. For more information, see enabling your users to upgrade their own licenses.
Go directly to the sign-up wizard for Power BI Pro.
Start a free 60-day Fabric trial for your organization. The trial includes a trial capacity, 1 TB of storage, and access to all of the Fabric experiences and features.
Get free licenses for all of your users. The Fabric (Free) license doesn't include a Fabric capacity. The Fabric (Free) license includes access to the paid features of the Power BI service. Sign up on app.fabric.microsoft.com.
Start a free 30-day trial of Power BI Pro. The trial includes up to 25 licenses. When the trial expires, you receive a charge for the licenses.
To see which users in your organization already have a license, see View and manage user licenses.
You purchased licenses or signed up for an organizational trial. Now, decide whether your users can assign themselves a license or give themselves an automatic license upgrade. Here are links to help you decide which settings to use.
Self-service
You might want to distribute content to users who are outside of your organization. You can share content with external users by inviting them to view content as a guest. Microsoft Entra Business-to-business (Microsoft Entra B2B) enables sharing with external guest users. Prerequisites:
The ability to share content with external users must be enabled.
The guest user must have the proper licensing in place to view the shared content.
For more information about guest user access, see Distribute Power BI content to external guest users with Microsoft Entra B2B.
There are many other admin tasks related to licenses and subscriptions. Some of them are listed and linked here.
There's a grace period after a Power BI license expires. For licenses that are part of a volume license purchase, the grace period is 90 days. If you bought the license directly, the grace period is 30 days. For license trials, there is no grace period.
Power BI has the same license lifecycle as Microsoft 365. For more information, see What happens to my data and access when my Microsoft 365 for business subscription ends.
A Microsoft 365 E5 subscription includes Power BI Pro licenses. To learn how to manage licenses, see Administration overview.
Events
Mar 31, 11 PM - Apr 2, 11 PM
The ultimate Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, SQL, and AI community-led event. March 31 to April 2, 2025.
Register todayTraining
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