Optimizing Microsoft Fabric Lakehouse and Power BI costs: Save up to 60% with DataTako

Microsoft Fabric is an integrated analytics platform combining data integration, engineering, data science, real-time analytics, and business intelligence in one unified environment. It enables seamless collaboration and simplifies managing data workloads by centralizing tools and services on a single SaaS platform.

What is Fabric Lakehouse?

Fabric Lakehouse is a unified data platform within Microsoft Fabric that combines the capabilities of data lakes and data warehouses, allowing you to store, process, and analyze both structured and unstructured data seamlessly in one location. It simplifies data management and analytics by eliminating the need for separate systems, supporting scalable storage, SQL querying, and integration with various analytics tools.

Fabric capacity

If you’re already using Microsoft Fabric Lakehouse, you have a Fabric capacity available for analytics workload. Are you also using Power BI for reporting and still paying extra for Power BI Pro licenses for all your report consumers? There’s a significant opportunity to reduce costs here.

By integrating DataTako with your existing Fabric capacity, you only require Power BI licenses for your report creators and publishers—not your consumers. This is because Power BI Embedded, leveraged by DataTako, removes the need for consumers to hold individual Pro licenses. DataTako provides this functionality through a fully whitelabel web portal that runs on your own domain and aligns seamlessly with your company’s branding.

Smart capacity management with DataTako

Additionally, DataTako supports intelligent capacity management, allowing you to schedule active times and automatically pause your Fabric capacity when it’s not needed, further optimizing your expenses.

A Fabric capacity is billed by the second, whether you are actively using it or not. However, when a capacity is paused, it occurs no costs. DataTako can automatically pause and resume your capacities based on set schedules or with smart management.

Smart management automatically enables your capacity when a user wants to view a Power BI report. When no one is viewing reports, it automatically switches off the capacity.

For example, if your company works during business hours, you can pause Fabric overnight and on weekends. This way you will not pay for continuous usage. You will only pay for active use. This strategy can cut Fabric-related costs by up to 70%.

Cost savings example

Let’s highlight the concept with an example:

The company:

• 5 report creators/publishers
• 60 report consumers
• F2 Fabric capacity

Bottom Line

By combining Microsoft Fabric Lakehouse with DataTako, organizations can drastically reduce Power BI costs. DataTako eliminates the need for Pro licenses for report consumers and introduces smart capacity management to avoid paying for idle usage. With scheduled or on-demand pausing of Fabric capacity, businesses can save up to 60% on monthly expenses—without compromising on performance or branding.