Power BI Premium Licensing Retiring, Migration Required

Power BI is retiring Premium capacity licensing and purchasing options, effective Jan. 2025, and removing new purchase rights starting July 1, 2024.

(Updated in Sept. 2024)

The retirement affects customers using Power BI Premium P, Premium EM, and Azure Power BI Embedded A SKUs. Power BI Pro, Premium Per-User, Premium EM, Azure Power BI Embedded, and all Power BI licensing in sovereign government clouds are not affected. The licensing change does not affect functionality, but it will require customers to migrate workspaces in Power BI capacities to Fabric capacities.

Enterprise Agreement (EA) customers can wait until renewal, but all other customers must migrate by the end of their subscription date. The change also removes dual-use rights for Power BI Report Server on-premises and severely impacts Premium EM and A embedded customers because most equivalent Fabric capacities do not cover Power BI read-only users, requiring new Power BI Pro licenses.

A detailed discussion of the licensing change is discussed in the Directions Blog post https://www.directionsonmicrosoft.com/members/blog/2024-03-27/microsoft-fabric-takes-control-power-bi-licensing. Microsoft’s announcement is at https://powerbi.microsoft.com/blog/important-update-coming-to-power-bi-premium-licensing. Power BI licensing is covered in the Licensing Reference Set at https://www.directionsonmicrosoft.com/members/licensing/power-bi.