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APPLIES TO: 
Power BI service for business users 
Power BI service for designers & developers
Power BI Desktop
Requires Pro or Premium license
As a Power BI service user with a free license, you explore content (such as reports, apps, scorecards, dashboards, and more) to make business decisions. That content is created by designers who have Power BI Pro or Premium Per User (PPU) licenses. To share it with free users, designers publish that content to a workspace on a qualifying capacity (Fabric F64+ or Premium). A qualifying capacity (Fabric F64+ or Premium P) enables free users to view content shared with them. Sometimes, designers share content by sending you links to content such as a Power BI app Apps in the Power BI service, and sometimes the content automatically installs and appears in Power BI under Apps or Browse > Shared with me.
There are many different ways designers can share content. But this article is for Power BI users with a free license, and therefore only describes how "free users" receive and interact with content. For more information on other ways to share content, see Ways to share your work in Power BI.
Tip
For a list of Fabric features by SKU type, see Microsoft Fabric features parity.
For a list of features that apply to all the Power BI Premium licenses, including Premium Per User (PPU) and Power BI Embedded, see Power BI Premium features.
In Licenses for consumers, you learned that what you can do with dashboards, reports, and apps (content) in the Power BI service depends on three things: your licenses, your roles and permissions, and where content is stored.
This article lists which features in the Power BI service are available to users with Free licenses.
Note
In sovereign cloud environments with capacity (Fabric F64+ or Premium), all users can view content without needing an assigned license. Behavior can vary by sovereign cloud region; consult regional documentation for any exceptions (see ‡ note below the feature table).
Quick review of terminology
Let's review some Power BI concepts before we get to the list. This will be a quick review and if you need more details, visit Licenses for consumers or Basics of the Power BI service.
Workspaces and roles
Collaborating and sharing in workspaces requires that workspace owners, who have Pro or Premium Per User (PPU) licenses, assign you a role in that workspace.
Roles determine who can do what in that workspace. Free users are assigned the Viewer role. Being assigned any other role requires that a free user upgrade to Pro or PPU.
Capacity: Fabric F64+ and Premium
When an organization has a qualifying capacity subscription (Fabric F64+ or Premium), admins and Pro/PPU users can assign workspaces to that capacity. Content in workspaces hosted on a qualifying capacity can be accessed by users with any Power BI license (including free) as long as they have appropriate permissions.
Licenses
Each Power BI service user has at least one of the following: a free license, a Power BI Pro license, or a Premium Per User (PPU) license. As long as your colleagues use capacity workspaces (Fabric F64+ or Premium) to share content, free users can view and interact with that content.
To find out what type of license is assigned to your account, select your profile picture from the page header in Power BI service. If Pro account or Premium Per User account is displayed, you can share content with other users. When Free is shown, you can only create content in My Workspace and consume content that's hosted in a Premium workspace, unless the Enable Microsoft Fabric for your organization admin setting is enabled. When this setting is enabled, you can create Fabric content in capacity workspaces regardless of your license type. Select View account to see more details about your account.
Power BI feature list for users with a free license
The following chart identifies which tasks can be performed by a user with a free license interacting with content in their own My workspace or in a workspace on a capacity (Fabric F64+ or Premium).
Tip
For a list of Fabric features by SKU type, see Microsoft Fabric features parity.
For a list of features that apply to all the Power BI Premium licenses, including Premium Per User (PPU) and Power BI Embedded, see Power BI Premium features.
The first column represents a free user only working with content in My workspace. This user cannot collaborate with colleagues in the Power BI service. Colleagues cannot directly share content with this user, and this user cannot share from My workspace.
The second column represents a free user working with content in a workspace that is saved on a capacity (Fabric F64+ or Premium). This free user:
- has a free user license type
- is part of an organization that has a capacity subscription (Fabric F or Premium)
- gets content (apps, dashboards, reports, etc.) from Pro or PPU users who share that content using workspaces on capacity.
- is assigned the Viewer role to those app workspaces.
Note
Content hosted in a PPU workspace can only be used by users with PPU licenses.
Legend
Feature is available in the current scenario
Feature is not available in the current scenario
Feature availability is limited to My workspace. Content in My workspace is for the owner's personal use and cannot be viewed by anyone else in Power BI.
Feature list
| Features | Scenario 1: Free user who has no access to content hosted in capacity (Fabric F64+ or Premium). | Scenario 2: Free user with Viewer permissions to content stored in capacity (Fabric F64+ or Premium). |
|---|---|---|
| Apps | ||
| Installs automatically | |
* |
| Open | |
|
| Favorite | |
|
| Edit, update, republish | |
|
| Create new app | |
|
| AppSource: download and open | |
|
| Organization store: download and open | |
|
| Reshare an app | |
|
| Workspaces on capacity (Fabric F64+ or Premium) | ||
| Create, edit, or delete workspace or content | |
|
| Add endorsements | |
|
| Open and view | |
|
| Read data stored in workspace dataflows | |
|
| Dashboards | ||
| Receive, view, and interact with dashboards from colleagues | |
|
| Add alerts to tiles | |
|
| View and respond to comments from others: add your own comments | |
* |
| Save a copy | |
|
| Copy visual as an image* | |
* |
| Create, edit, update, delete | |
|
| Export tile to .csv | |
|
| Favorite | |
|
| Full screen and focus modes | |
|
| Global search | * |
* |
| Insights on tiles | |
* |
| Q&A: use on dashboard | * |
* |
| Q&A: add featured and saved questions | |
|
| Q&A: review asked questions | |
|
| Pin tiles from Q&A or reports | |
|
| * |
* |
|
| Refresh | |
|
| Reshare | |
|
| Subscribe yourself | * |
* |
| Subscribe others | |
|
| View dashboards that have been embedded into PowerApps or SharePoint pages | |
|
| Datasets | ||
| Add, delete, edit | |
|
| Create a report in another workspace based on a dataset in this workspace | |
|
| Create a report in "My Workspace" using a dataset located in a Fabric Capacity Workspace | |
|
| Insights on datasets | |
|
| Schedule refresh | |
|
| Analyze in Excel† | |
|
| Create a report | |
|
| Create a paginated report | |
|
| Share | |
|
| Manage permissions | |
|
| Save a copy | |
|
| Create from template | |
|
| Reports | ||
| Receive reports from colleagues | |
|
| Analyze report in Excel† | |
|
| View bookmarks created by others, and add your own bookmarks | |
|
| View and respond to comments from others: add new comments | |
|
| Change display dimensions | |
|
| Save a copy | |
|
| Copy visual as an image* | * |
* |
| Cross-highlight and cross-filter report visuals | |
|
| Drill | |
|
| Drillthrough | * |
* |
| Embed (publish to web, public)§ | |
|
| Export summarized data from report visuals* | |
|
| Export underlying data from report visuals* | |
|
| Favorite the report | |
|
| Filters: change types | * |
* |
| Filters: interact | |
|
| Filters: persistent | * |
* |
| Search on the filter pane | * |
* |
| Full screen and focus modes | |
|
| Insights on reports | |
|
| Lineage view | |
|
| Export to PDF* | |
|
| Performance Inspector | |
|
| Export to PowerPoint* | |
|
| Promote content to Home | |
|
| Print report pages* | |
|
| Interact with Q&A visual | |
|
| QR Code | |
|
| Refresh | |
|
| Share content with external users | |
|
| Share: allow others to reshare items | |
|
| Show as table (show data) | |
|
| Slicers: add or delete | |
|
| Interact with slicers | |
|
| Sort report visuals | |
|
| Subscribe yourself to reports* | |
|
| Subscribe others to reports | |
|
| View related | |
|
| View reports that have been embedded into PowerApps or SharePoint pages | |
|
| Visuals: change types in reports | * |
* |
| Change visual interactions | |
|
| Visuals: add new | |
|
| Visuals: add new fields | |
|
| Visuals: change type | |
|
| Visuals: hover to reveal details and tooltips | |
|
* An admin or tenant setting can enable or disable the feature for some or all users.
† Analyze in Excel (and related Excel live connection experiences) also requires Build permission on the semantic model and the relevant tenant settings to be enabled.
‡ Sovereign (national/regional) cloud behavior can differ; some capabilities may lag or have alternate licensing enforcement.
§ Publish to web embed code creation requires Pro or PPU. Free users cannot create embed codes; anyone can view an already-published public link (subject to admin enablement and governance policies).