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Purchase Power BI Premium for testing

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This article describes how to purchase Power BI Premium A SKUs for testing scenarios, and for cases where you don't have the permissions necessary to purchase P SKUs (Microsoft 365 Global Administrator role or Billing Administrator role). A SKUs require no time commitment, and are billed hourly. You purchase A SKUs in the Azure portal.

For more information about Power BI Premium, see What is Power BI Premium. For current pricing and planning information, see the Power BI pricing page. Content creators still need a Power BI Pro license, even if your organization uses Power BI Premium. Make sure to purchase at least one Power BI Pro license for your organization. With A SKUs, all users who consume content also require Pro licenses.

Note

If a Premium subscription expires, you have 30 days of full access to your capacity. After that, your content reverts to a shared capacity. Models that are greater than 1 GB aren't supported in shared capacity.

Purchase A SKUs for testing and other scenarios

A SKUs are available through the Azure Power BI Embedded service. You can use A SKUs in the following ways:

  • Enable embedding of Power BI in third party applications. For more information, see Power BI Embedded.

  • Test Premium functionality before you buy a P SKU.

  • Create development and test environments with a production environment that uses P SKUs.

  • Purchase Power BI Premium even though you don't have a Microsoft 365 Global Administrator role or Billing Administrator role.

Note

If you purchase an A4 or higher SKU, you can take advantage of all Premium features except for unlimited sharing of content. With A SKUs, all users who consume content require Pro licenses.

Follow these steps to purchase A SKUs in the Azure portal:

  1. Sign in to the Azure portal with an account that has at least capacity admin permissions in Power BI.

  2. Search for Power BI Embedded and select the service in the search results.

    Screenshot of the Azure portal search with Power BI Embedded highlighted.

  3. Select Create Power BI Embedded.

    Screenshot with the create Power BI Embedded button highlighted.

  4. On the Power BI Embedded create screen, specify the following:

    • The Subscription in which to create the Power BI Embedded service.

    • The physical Location in which to create the resource group that contains the service. For better performance, this location should be close to the location of your Azure Active Directory tenant for Power BI.

    • An existing Resource group to use, or create a new one as shown in the example.

    • The Power BI capacity administrator. The capacity admin must be a member user or a service principal in your Azure AD tenant.

    Screenshot of the Power BI Embedded Basics window with subscription, create new resource group, and the capacity administrator fields highlighted.

  5. If you want to use all features of Power BI Premium (except unlimited sharing), you need at least an A4 SKU. Select Change size.

    Screenshot of the Power BI Embedded Basics window with size details highlighted.

  6. Select a capacity size of A4, A5, or A6, which correspond to P1, P2, and P3. Prices in the following image are examples only.

    Screenshot of the resource size selection window showing the A4 SKU detail row and select highlighted.

  7. Select Review + Create, review the options you chose, then select Create.

    Screenshot of the Basics details review page with create highlighted.

  8. It can take a few minutes to complete the deployment. When it's ready, select Go to resource.

    Screenshot of the deployment complete dialog showing deployment details and go to resource highlighted.

  9. On the management screen, review the options you have for managing the service, including pausing the service when you're not using it.

    Screenshot of the capacity resource details page.

After you purchase a capacity, see Manage a capacity and Assign a workspace to a capacity.

Next steps

More questions? Ask the Power BI Community