March 14, 2024

Last year, we introduced Microsoft Fabric—combining the best of Microsoft Power BI, Azure Synapse Analytics, and Azure Data Factory to create a single, unified software as a service (SaaS) platform. Microsoft Fabric is a superset of Power BI Premium; meaning it has all the capabilities of Power BI Premium plus six other core workloads. To make the transition as easy as possible, we have ensured customers can access Fabric capabilities on their existing Power BI Premium capacity P-SKU. 

However, with both a pay-as-you-go and reservation SKUs now available for Microsoft Fabric, we are announcing the eventual end of life for the Power BI Premium per capacity SKUs. Depending on your existing agreement, the retirement will impact you differently:

  • For new customers, the Power BI Premium per capacity SKUs (P-SKU) will be removed from the purchase flow on July 1st, 2024. 
  • Existing customers without an EA agreement will be able to renew their Power BI Premium capacity until January 1st, 2025. Which means customers who have a renewal date after January 1st, 2025, will need to replace their P-SKU purchase with the purchase of an F-SKU at the end of their agreement. 
  • Customers with an existing EA agreement can continue to renew their P-SKU purchase annually until the end of their EA agreement. If the end of the existing EA agreement is after January 1st, 2025, they will have to transition to an F-SKU once the agreement has ended to continue using Microsoft Fabric. 
  • Customers on a sovereign cloud will not be impacted by this retirement as they do not currently have access to Microsoft Fabric. We will provide additional information as soon as it’s available. 

At the time of their next renewal, existing P-SKU customers should work with their Microsoft account representative to transition to a suitable Fabric SKU, which provides more flexibility in SKU size, pay-as-you-go billing options, and the ability to accrue against your Azure commitments.

To learn more, check out the full Important Update to Power BI Premium Licensing blog on the Power BI blog site.