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The Power BI Licensing Guide

"Everyone needs Pro" is true for exactly one way of sharing Power BI. This guide maps the other three — and shows which one fits your audience, with the 2026 Microsoft Fabric reality baked in.
Runs on your own domain
No Microsoft accounts for your users needed
No Power BI Pro licenses needed
Works from Microsoft Fabric F2 capacity and up

What you'll learn: the four ways to share Power BI and who actually needs a license in each; how the F64 threshold really works — and where teams quietly misapply it; how embedding (App Owns Data) lets viewers in at zero license cost, at any capacity size; a worked cost example that takes a 100-user licensing bill down 60–70%; and a four-question framework to pick your route.

Why this guide is different: most licensing guides still describe 2022 — per-user seats and legacy Premium P-SKUs. This one is written for the Fabric era (F-SKUs, OneLake, App Owns Data), focuses on the delivery model instead of a feature list, and hands you real numbers and an actionable checklist — not a sales sheet.

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Paco Stoelman

Head of sales

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