So first of all i just want to say that know that you're not the only one who may be confused about this and i really think you can't be blamed for this confusion so let's uh go about how.
Somebody might get started on power bi now you may think that oh you hear about power bi and you're really excited and you know i'm going to go to powerbi.com but if you try that.
You're going to get to this somewhat confusing signup page and i don't want you to start here this is not the right place to start so if you don't do that well maybe you're going to do the next.
Best thing which is what we all do when we're trying to find microsoft software we google it so you go to google and you google power bi now with that you're gonna get to this page and let's say you.
Want it for free and i'm like yes i already told you so and you click on that and you get another slightly confusing sign of screen which is asking you for your email address and.
Again this is not the right place to start and i'll tell you why now after all this maybe gonna go back to google and google power bi pricing and which is going to take you to this page and you.
Open that and you go whoa what happened to free you had been promising me free all this time and now you're telling me i got to pay money for this well take a deep breath.
I'll get you all the answers my friend now hey so before we dive in if you're new to the channel and if you're a power bi beginner or still feel like a beginner then know that this channel is.
For you so make sure to subscribe and yes click that bell so you're notified whenever we answer your power bi questions okay so now to answer this question is.
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Power bi free or paid we got to take a
Step back and let's understand and look at what power bi is and how it works so generally it works in these three cycles author publish consume and there are two.Main tools involved here the first one is the power bi desktop and the next one is the powerbi.com platform right now there are two roles that we've been talking about first if you're a learner.
I would assume that's why you are that's why you're watching my youtube video it's trying to learn power bi and in that case your big focus should be on the power bi desktop tool probably.
Eighty percent of the focus should be there but you also would need uh to use power bi.com on the other hand if you are a user of power bi then you're gonna need the power bi.com platform.
Uh so let's talk about the licensing for that but if you are interested in learning more about how power bi works and how you can get started on it the author published consume cycle that i.
Mentioned then definitely check out my number one ranked 60 minute power bi tutorial with more than 4 million views we're going to link to that in the corner or in and in the description down.
Below but again right now we're focused on licensing so let's recap if you're in the learning mode you need power bi desktop for sure you also need.
Powerbi.com if you're a user well then powerbi desktop doesn't apply to you but you're going to need to be on powerbi.com so now is the big question is it free or is it paid.
Let's start with some good news in fact this is great news if you're learning power bi then both of these are 100 absolutely free for you so you may be asking okay well how do i.
Get that so let me show you how you can
Get the power bi desktop for free so for that my best suggestion would be that you go to our friend google.com and type in power.Bi desktop download that would be my recommendation to you you can click on the results click download and that's where you can download and install now if you're really interested in it then.
You can also check out my full video on this which takes you step by step on how you can download and install now there's a little bit of nuance here there are actually two ways to download the.
Desktop one that i just showed you another one is using uh the microsoft store and this one compares and contrasts both of them tells you the pros and cons and so you can choose.
Which one you prefer so again for that watch this full video again we're going to link to this video as well so for the next one uh how do you get the powerbi.com.
Account for free now remember the earlier the signup pages that i was warning you from staying away because that's not the right place to get started well you need to go back to that.
One now now why was i warning you away earlier because as i mentioned that the power bi desktop is is the right place for beginners to focus on that's where at least 80 of your focus should be and.
Again the tutorial that i mentioned covers a lot more on that but when you're ready you can go to powerbi.com and the same signup screen that you had uh.
You know you should you can easily complete the sign up there if you have a work email address now if you have something like a gmail address you can try it but it's not going to work.
So but you know i have something for you so if you are in a spot where you don't have a work email address maybe you only have a.
Gmail then i'm going to link to you to another video which shows you how you can still create a power bi.com account even if you don't have a work email address so watch that video if you need.
More but again uh the uh you know either way you should be able to create your powerbi.com account for free if you're looking to learn power bi.
But of course let's talk about the other scenario which is what about all these users we would have in our system so eventually if you're learning power bi at some point you're going to deploy.
This report and you want other users to be able to see this report that's what that's the purpose of power bi reports right now for this for sharing power bi.
Reports you need a paid power bi.com license for each user who's going to see the report and yep they don't have to you know even if they're just reading the report viewing.
The report they will still need a paid license so now of course your question is how much is it going to cost well that's a great question so if you have anywhere from one to 500 users roughly.
Using this then my recommendation would be to go for the pro license which just cost you just 9.99 per user per month and again start small i would say start with a small set of users just trying.
Out power bi and let's see how that goes in fact for starting out you don't even have to pay 9.99 because when you sign up on that signup screen that i showed earlier you get started with a 60 day.
Free trial so make use of that to kind of test power bi and use power bi to you know you're ready to get the pro license now if you have.
More than 500 users then it might be a better option for you to get the premium license which starts from about five thousand dollars per month but that may be a better option if you have lots and.
Lots of users so that's the final summary my friend uh for learners is absolutely free for users who showed you how much it's going to cost you and again if you want to now.
Dive deeper and and really learn okay i understand the licensing but now i want to understand how does barbier work how can i use it how can i use it to start building reports and and build some.