Power BI Licensing: Sharing Reports with Outside Users

• Power BI and Fabric customers can share Power BI reports outside of the organization while remaining compliant.
• Classifying outside users as either guests or internal users is key to navigating feature limitations and security controls.
• Customers should understand the trade-offs and choose classifications that balance features, security, and cost.
• The introduction of Fabric does not change Power BI user licensing requirements.

Organizations often want to share Power BI reports with users outside of the organization, such as partners, vendors, and customers. The various Power BI and Fabric back-end platforms provide several sharing methods, but the features, security, and licensing depend on whether the outside user is classified as a guest or treated like an internal user. Guests have limited rights and features but can use their own Power BI license. However, outside users treated as internal users have full rights and features but must be licensed by the organization that hosts reports, even if the outside users have their own Power BI licenses from another organization.