Differences Between Power BI Free and Pro

Power BI Desktop is a basic version of Power BI, where we can download the software like any other and install it on our computer. However, it does not support mobile apps or embedded APIs and is limited to analyzing 10,000 data rows per hour. In contrast, Power BI Pro is the full version of Power BI that costs $9.99 per month and comes with many more advanced features like a mobile app, email subscription, sharing ability, and analysis of 1 million data rows per hour.

Key Differences

  • Cost: This is the main difference every user wants to be aware of. Power BI Desktop comes free of cost. All the users in your team do not require to pay anything.Power BI Pro comes at $9.99 per user per month. So, everybody using the Pro version must pay $9.99 per month.Features: Some important features like workspace in the mobile app and analysis in Excel are not available with the Power BI Desktop version but with the Pro version.Storage Capacity: When the data is large, the Power BI Desktop or free version seems to run in space where it can support only 1 GB of data. But, the Power BI Pro version can support 10 GB per Power BI Pro license.

Power BI Free vs Pro Version Comparative Table

Below are head-to-head comparisons and features supported by both versions of Power BI.

Conclusion

At the bottom line, confusion is about which one to take up and whether to go for a free or Pro version. If you are not sharing the report with anybody and doing the analysis yourself, then better use the free version. On the other hand, if you are using a high volume of data, especially online real-time data. If you require better refreshment of the real-time data on your dashboard, you must buy the Pro version of Power BI.

Not many people need the Pro version because the free version comes with enough features to create dashboards for our data.

This article has been a guide to Power BI Free vs. Pro. Here, we discuss the top 13 differences between Power BI free and Pro, infographics, and a comparison table. You may also have a look at the following articles: –

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