I recently was assisting a customer with their Power BI licensing and what I found is that in some instances they were having licenses for Power BI Pro and Power BI Premium Per User.

By going through their licenses and assigning the correct license I was able to save the customer approximately 20% on their Power BI licensing costs per month. And over a year this adds up to quite a bit!

And the additional reason that got me thinking I should write a blog post was when I saw this tweet from @PowerBiguy – Ben

What are the different Power BI License Types

To begin with let me go over the 4 different Power BI License Types

  • This license is to be used with Power BI Premium Capacity App Workspaces

  • This is the license to be used when using and viewing Power BI Reports on App Workspaces that are not using Premium Per User capacity.

  • This license is to be used when a user already has got a Power BI Pro license and needs the add-on to upgrade to Power BI Premium Per user

  • This license to be used by a user who wants to use and access Power BI Premium per User capacity
  • NOTE: This license includes all the features of Power BI Pro.

How to check a user who has got Power BI Pro + Power BI Premium Per User Add-On license

Below are the steps to see if a user has got a Power BI Pro + Power BI Premium Per User Add-On license.

To do this I went into the Microsoft 365 Admin Centre.

I then went to Users and navigated to my user account.

As shown below this is where I would have a Power BI Pro + Power BI Premium Per User Add-On license.

The monthly cost here would be $10 for the Power BI Pro license and $10 for the Power BI Premium Per User Add-On.

This would be a total monthly cost of $20

How to check a user who has got Power BI Pro + Power BI Premium Per User license (Which is costing more!)

Below are the steps to see if a user has got a Power BI Pro + Power BI Premium Per User license.

To do this I went into the Microsoft 365 Admin Centre.

I then went to Users and navigated to my user account.

As shown below this is where I would have a Power BI Pro + Power BI Premium Per User license.

The monthly cost here would be $10 for the Power BI Pro license and $20 for the Power BI Premium Per User.

This would be a total monthly cost of $30

What I would then do is to change the user licenses and remove Power BI Pro license for users who already have the full Power BI Premium Per User license.

This would ensure I have the right license without the additional costs.

This is what it would look like below once applied.

UPDATE (2022-09-01): After reading through the twitter feed I realised that there was one point which I left out which was mentioned by Alex Whittles which was that sometimes you have to check the Apps section for the user account that it has got the same Power BI Premium per User applied.

This is what it looks like for the apps at the bottom of the users licensing details in the Microsoft 365 Admin Centre

Summary

In this blog post I have explained the different Power BI license types.

I have also shown how to find out which license a user has and then how to make the changes, so that the right license can be applied and ensure there are some cost savings.

As always, any questions and suggestions are most welcome, thanks for reading!