Power BI
Understanding Power BI Pro vs. Free
How do I know if I need Power BI Pro?
Power BI comes with two license options:
- The “free” license comes with Office 365 and incurs no additional expense, thus it is available to all faculty and staff.
- The “pro” license incurs an additional expense and provides additional features, mostly related to sharing content.
Feature comparison
| Free | Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Use of Power BI Desktop | ✓ | ✓ |
| Publishing reports to the cloud | ✓ | ✓ |
| Data imported from various sources | ✓ | ✓ |
| Dashboards including SSRS reports | ✓ | ✓ |
| Live connections to on-campus databases | ✓ | |
| Data refreshed more often than 1x daily | ✓ | |
| Scheduled refreshes from on-campus data | ✓ | |
| Data displayed based on individual user’s permissions | ✓ | |
| Collaborate using Office 365 Groups | ✓ | |
| Manage access and sharing through Active Directory | ✓ | |
| Total data storage quota | 1 GB | 10 GB |
| Additional charge per user | $0 | $23/year* |
* Additional charge per user is approximate; precise cost will be provided if you request Pro.
Requesting Power BI Pro
If you would like to use Power BI Pro, please contact Kathy Hinkle. We will provide to you an order form that will request information such as the netids of the individual(s) receiving Pro and the accounts to charge for the annual fee. Pro licenses will typically be provisioned on the first day of the month following the order submission. Pro licenses are renewed annually in January of each year unless cancelled.