The biggest difference between Free and Pro is that with Pro you can share your data, reports, and dashboards with other users who also have a Power BI Pro license. The same visualizations that are available in Power BI Pro are available in Power BI Free.
You also have connectivity options such as DirectQuery, live connection, and the use of the gateway. However, the free version is great if you are doing your own analysis and don’t need to distribute the analysis to other end users. For example, you can’t do peer-to-peer sharing and you can’t create App workspaces. There are some limitations to the free version. Power BI Free enables you to connect to 70+ data sources, publish to the web, and export to excel. Let’s break down the types of licensing and differences between Power BI Free, Power BI Pro, and Power BI Premium, to understand this better. These are common questions to think of when implementing Power BI. I frequently get asked these types of questions regarding Power BI licenses: What’s the difference between Power BI Pro and Premium? What type of license do I need to share reports with other end users in my organization? I think I’m going to use up all my data storage for Power BI Pro, what else can I do?
