Power BI: Who Needs a User Subscription License?

• Power BI user licensing is determined by whether the user is a creator or consumer of content, and where the content is hosted.
• Content creators always require a User Subscription License, but licensing for content consumers is not as straightforward.
• Organizations should educate administrators and creators on Power BI licensing to control costs.

Power BI user licensing is determined by which back-end service is used to share content and whether the user creates content or merely consumes content. Confusion about which users need Power BI licenses typically arises from a misunderstanding of the licensing rules, the ability to deploy different types of Power BI back-end services with different rules, and confusion about which service should be hosting content. These problems often result in customers purchasing more User Subscription Licenses (User SLs) than they need. On the plus side, Power BI does provide built-in compliance controls that restricts access to licensed users and tools to help customers resolve compliance issues.