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Power BI free user features in the service
APPLIES TO: 👁 Image
Power BI service for business users 👁 Image
Power BI service for designers & developers 👁 Image
Power BI Desktop 👁 Image
Requires Pro or Premium license
If you have a free Power BI license, you can view and interact with reports, dashboards, apps, and other content that colleagues share with you—as long as that content is hosted on a qualifying capacity (Fabric F64+ or Premium). What you can do depends on three factors:
- Your license type
- Your role or permissions
- Where the content is stored
Use the feature table below to quickly find out whether a specific task is available to you. For more information on other ways designers share content, see Ways to share your work in Power BI.
Tip
For a list of Fabric features by SKU type, see Microsoft Fabric features parity.
For a list of features that apply to all the Power BI Premium licenses, including Premium Per User (PPU) and Power BI Embedded, see Power BI Premium features.
👁 Screenshot of the Power BI service navigation pane showing shared content available to free users.
Licenses
In Licenses for consumers, 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 capacity (Fabric F64+ or Premium), all users can view content without needing an assigned license. Behavior can vary by sovereign cloud region; consult regional documentation for any exceptions (see ‡ note below the feature table).
Quick review of terminology
Before you use the feature table, review these key Power BI concepts. For more details, see Licenses for consumers or Basics of the Power BI service.
| Concept | What it means |
|---|---|
| Workspaces and roles | Workspace owners assign you a role that determines what you can do. Free users get the Viewer role. To get any other role, upgrade to Pro or PPU. |
| Capacity (Fabric F64+ or Premium) | When an organization has a qualifying capacity subscription, users with any license (including free) can access content hosted on that capacity, given appropriate permissions. |
| Licenses | Each user has a free, Pro, or PPU license. Free users can view content hosted on Premium capacity workspaces. Select your profile picture in Power BI service to check your license type. |
Power BI feature list for users with a free license
The following chart shows which tasks a user with a free license can perform when interacting with content in their own My workspace or in a workspace on a capacity (Fabric F64+ or Premium).
Tip
For a list of Fabric features by SKU type, see Microsoft Fabric features parity.
For a list of features that apply to all the Power BI Premium licenses, including Premium Per User (PPU) and Power BI Embedded, see Power BI Premium features.
The first column represents a free user who works only with content in My workspace. This user can't collaborate with colleagues in the Power BI service. Colleagues can't directly share content with this user, and this user can't share from My workspace.
The second column represents a free user who works with content in a workspace that's saved on a capacity (Fabric F64+ or Premium). This free user:
- has a free user license type
- is part of an organization that has a capacity subscription (Fabric F or Premium)
- gets content (apps, dashboards, reports, and more) from Pro or PPU users who share that content by using workspaces on capacity.
- is assigned the Viewer role to those app workspaces.
Note
Users with PPU licenses are the only ones who can use content hosted in a PPU workspace.
Legend
👁 Image
Feature is available in the current scenario
👁 Image
Feature is not available in the current scenario
👁 Image
Feature availability is limited to My workspace. Content in My workspace is for the owner's personal use and can't be viewed by anyone else in Power BI.
Feature list
| Features | Scenario 1: Free user accessing Power BI content not completely hosted on Fabric F64+ or Premium capacity. For example, both the report and the semantic model need to be hosted on Fabric F64+ or Premium capacity. | Scenario 2: Free user with Viewer permissions on the workspace accessing Power BI content completely hosted on Fabric F64+ or Premium capacity. For example, both the report and the semantic model need to be hosted on Fabric F64+ or 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 |
👁 orange x |
| Workspaces on capacity (Fabric F64+ or Premium) | ||
| 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 |
| 👁 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 |
| Create a report in "My Workspace" using a dataset located in a different 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* | 👁 green myw * |
👁 green dot * |
| 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)§ | 👁 orange x |
👁 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 reports | 👁 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 myw |
👁 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 |
* An admin or tenant setting can enable or disable the feature for some or all users.
† Analyze in Excel (and related Excel live connection experiences) also requires Build permission on the semantic model and the relevant tenant settings to be enabled.
‡ Sovereign (national/regional) cloud behavior can differ; some capabilities may lag or have alternate licensing enforcement.
§ Publish to web embed code creation requires Pro or PPU. Free users cannot create embed codes; anyone can view an already-published public link (subject to admin enablement and governance policies).
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