With the release of Microsoft Fabric and the Fabric capacity stock keeping units (SKUs) last year, Microsoft is consolidating purchase options and retiring the Power BI Premium per capacity SKUs (P-SKUs).
The Power BI Premium product capabilities will not change and there is no immediate action required. You can continue using your existing Power BI Premium capacity until the time of your next renewal.
After January 1, 2025, existing Power BI Premium per capacity customers should work with their Microsoft account representative to transition to a suitable Fabric capacity and pricing plan at the time of their next renewal, which provides more flexibility in SKU size, pay-as-you-go billing options, access to Azure-only features, and is eligible for Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC).
Retiring Power BI Premium per capacity pricing options
Last year, microsoft introduced Microsoft Fabric—combining the best of Microsoft Power BI, Azure Synapse Analytics, and Azure Data Factory to create a single, unified software as a service (SaaS) platform. Microsoft Fabric is a superset of Power BI Premium; which means that it has all the capabilities of Power BI Premium plus six other core workloads. To make the transition as easy as possible, customers can access Fabric capabilities on their existing Power BI Premium per capacity.
With both pay-as-you-go and reservation options now available for Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft announced the eventual end of life for the Power BI Premium capacity SKUs. Depending on your existing agreement, the retirement will impact you differently:
- New customers will not be able to purchase Power BI Premium per capacity after July 1, 2024.
- Existing customers without an Enterprise Agreement (EA) will be able to renew their Power BI Premium capacity subscriptions until January 1, 2025.
- Customers who have a renewal date after January 1, 2025 will need to replace their Power BI Premium capacity subscription purchase with the purchase of Fabric capacity at the end of their agreement.
- Customers with an existing EA agreement can continue to renew their Power BI Premium capacity purchase annually until the end of their EA agreement. If the end of the existing EA agreement is after January 1st, 2025, then they will have to transition to Fabric capacity once the agreement has ended to continue using Microsoft Fabric.
- Customers on a sovereign cloud will not be impacted by this retirement because they do not currently have access to Microsoft Fabric..
All existing customers will be able to purchase more Power BI Premium capacity on their current agreement until its end date.
The benefits of Microsoft Fabric capacity
Customers that migrate their purchase to Fabric capacity will enjoy additional benefits. Fabric capacity is eligible for MACC which means Fabric customers can apply their Fabric spend against their MACC commitment. There is also a pay-as-you-go option for Fabric to dynamically scale up or scale down and pause capacity as needed. Fabric capacity customers can also take advantage of smaller compute SKUs that start far below the entry level Power BI Premium SKU.
Fabric capacity customers will also get access to Azure-only features like trusted workspace access for OneLake shortcuts and Managed Private Endpoints for Spark. These features are native to Azure and are not available to Power BI Premium capacity customers.
Microsoft Fabric SKUs available in your Azure region on the Microsoft Fabric pricing page.
Migrate to Microsoft Fabric capacity
To migrate your Power BI and Fabric artifacts, simply reassign your workspaces to the new Fabric capacity. Administrators can bulk assign workspaces to accelerate the process.
You will be able to access your Power BI and Fabric artifacts for at least 90 days after Power BI Premium capacity subscription ends. During these 90 days, you will be able to migrate workspaces to your new Fabric capacity without losing access to your existing work.
Learn more about managing and reassigning your workspaces in the Microsoft Fabric documentation.
Impact on other Power BI licensing
Power BI Pro and Power BI Premium per user (PPU) are not impacted by this retirement.
- For Power BI Embedded, Microsoft Fabric capacity is compatible with Power BI Embedded and can be used to run all of your embedded activities.
- Microsoft Fabric capacity is not compatible with Power BI Report Server. To continue to access Power BI Report Server, you can insteadacquire it through SQL Server Enterprise Edition with Software Assurance. This option is the most popular way of acquiring Power BI Report Server.
To learn more about this change and how to migrate your Power BI capacity to purchases to Fabric capacity, view the Power BI Premium FAQ.
You can also view your Fabric capacity pricing options on the Microsoft Fabric pricing page.
