Power BI Pro and Premium Per User licences will include Fabric apps and Fabric Database at no extra cost, from a preview in the coming weeks

Power BI Pro and Premium Per User licences will include Fabric apps and Fabric Database at no extra cost, from a preview in the coming weeks

2 October 2026 — Microsoft is widening what its cheapest Power BI licences include. In a post of 28 September 2026, Arun Ulag, Microsoft's executive vice-president for Azure Data, wrote that Power BI Pro and Power BI Premium Per User customers, "at no additional cost, will also have access to Fabric Apps and Fabric Database capabilities—up to 1 GB per app", with enterprise-grade security and hosting. Apps in Power BI "will be available in preview in the coming weeks" to Pro, Premium Per User and Fabric capacity customers. The Register reported the change on 29 September.

Not yet independently verified. Microsoft gives no date for the preview, and no change to the Pro or Premium Per User price was stated. The Fabric Community post with the detailed terms was behind a bot check and was not read. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

What changes

Until now, building data applications on Microsoft Fabric meant paying for Fabric capacity. Under this change, a business user with a Power BI Pro or Premium Per User licence will be able to build an app with its own database inside the tenant, up to 1 GB per app. According to The Register, Microsoft puts the Power BI base at about 425,000 organisations and more than 35 million monthly business users, against about 40,000 Fabric customers, and offers an open-source kit for building such apps with coding agents.

Why it matters

The cost barrier that kept app-building in the hands of a central data team goes away. That is useful, and it also means apps that write data back and keep their own state can appear across the organisation, built by people who have never had to think about retention, access control or personal data in a database. The same pattern appeared with spreadsheets, Access databases and earlier low-code tools.

What to do

• Decide before the preview arrives who may create Fabric apps and databases, in which workspaces, and with what review.
• Check the tenant settings for Fabric items when the preview lands, and whether they are on by default for Pro and Premium Per User users.
• Extend data classification, retention and data-protection rules to the new databases, including where personal data may be stored.
• Watch capacity and storage: 1 GB per app adds up across hundreds of apps.
• Revisit licence plans: if you were about to buy Fabric capacity only for small apps, wait for the preview terms.

Sources

• Microsoft Azure blog (Arun Ulag): FabCon and SQLCon 2026 in Barcelona, building the data foundation for Microsoft Copilot and agents — 28 September 2026
• The Register: Redmond to millions of Power BI users: you’re Fabric app devs now — 29 September 2026