PowerBI Desktop for Report Server - Cost?

[IanBradley]

Is there a cost associated with PowerBI Desktop for Report Server?   I'd heard $10 USD/month/user.  If so, how is this administered? Or, is the only cost associated with SQL Server Enterprise 2016 (and the related SSRS 2016 and PBIRS)

[Greg_Deckler]

So, if you own SQL Server Enterprise 2016 with SA then you own Power BI Report Server, or if you have an Power BI Premium instance, you get a license for Report Server. However, in all cases, people that publish reports require a Power BI Pro license at $10/month/user.

[Anonymous]

---

HI @Greg_Deckler,

Could you just confirm this bit of your answer please :

---

" However, in all cases, people that publish reports require a Power BI Pro license at $10/month/user."

---

Are you saying that if organisations use the PBI Desktop for RS to create PBI reports, and they upload these (PBIX files) to the On-Prem PBI RS server, which is covered by an active SQL Server 2017 Enterprose Lic with Software Assurance, they still need to purcahse a Cloud Power BI Pro lic even though they are not going anywhere near the Cloud service? (Or ever intend to due to data goverance rules)

This is not my understanding, and I would be grateful if you could point me to the relivant MS documentation that says this is the case.  I'm looking at the SQL Server 2017 Licensing Datasheet and it says that PBI RS is a "valuable benefit" of Enterprise Software Assurance, but says nothing about needing PBI Pro subcriptions to use it?

Thanks for your help.

Kind Regards

Rob

---

[Greg_Deckler]

@Anonymous- See this url: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/sqlrsteamblog/2017/05/17/a-closer-look-at-power-bi-report-server/

Specifically:

When you buy Power BI Premium, your subscription includes capacity in the cloud for the Power BI service as well as a license to run Power BI Report Server in your own on-premises capacity. If you buy Power BI Premium P1, for example, you get eight virtual cores (“v-Cores”) of capacity in the cloud, plus a license to run Power BI Report Server on up to eight processor cores on-premises.

Alternatively, if you have SQL Server Enterprise with active Software Assurance, you can use your Enterprise per-core licenses to run Power BI Report Server on-premises. (They don’t give you any capacity in the cloud, though.)

Either way you license Power BI Report Server, “publisher” users who publish Power BI reports to the report server for others to access need Power BI Pro licenses, whereas “reader” users who merely view reports don’t need any per-user licenses.

[Anonymous]

---

Hi @Greg_Deckler,

Thanks for your reply, and the link. Interesting, this is not as I understood things. Though MS licensing is never easy to understand.  Lucky that the Power BI Pro is not so expensive. However, given we have paid many thousands of £ for our PBI RS via SQL SVR lic with SA it seems a little OTT to charge for the pleasure of being able to publish content to it.

I guess if I only publish SSRS reports to it I don't need Power BI Pro? This seems a little nonsensical.

I notice the link is quite old ( in Power BI terms anyway ) and so I wonder if any of the MS staff can comment on the need for both SQL Server Ent with SA and Power BI pro?  @riccardomuti,@mgmeyer  @v-yulgu-msft

Thanks again.

Regards

Rob

---

[Greg_Deckler]

Correct, if you only publish SSRS reports you do not need a Pro license. In addition, I think it is more of a *technically you need a license* versus that it just won't work...

[IanBradley]

You state 'technically you need a license'.  This is to the point of my original question.   I have a customer who is saying how do they actually pay and track licenses? i.e. how do they align a PowerBI Desktop RS license with an actual payment?   It's like anyone can download PowerBI Desktop RS and just use it with no prompts to ever register the license

[Greg_Deckler]

Correct, but technically you are supposed to have a Pro license if you publish to the Report Server. Don't shoot the messenger, I'm just explaining the licensing requirements to the best of my knowledge. There have been licenses like this in the past like the Windows Server "External Connector" license. You were supposed to have it if you had external connections coming into your Windows Server but there was no enforcement mechanism other than audits.

[Anonymous]

---

Hi @Greg_Deckler,

Thanks for your input on this, I appreciate you taking the time to answer the questions, please don't feel we are ungrateful. I'm sure you understand our confusion on this front, it seems very odd ( to me anyway ) that the requirement for a Power BI Pro lic is so poorly documented and monitored,  its a technicality that Microsoft have not properly documented.

There must be many users of the On-Prem solution that do not know about this requirement.

Thanks again.

Rob

---