When clients inquire about enterprise business intelligence (BI) platform pricing, I always advise them to simply divide the annual contract price by the number of expected users. If the resulting number is around $10 per user per month, I tell the client they are in a good spot. Why?
For platforms with pricey develop/admin licenses, these expensive licenses are a tiny fraction of the overall user base and have little impact on total cost. The predominance of inexpensive licenses keeps the average cost at around $10 per user per month.
Generative AI — specifically, conversational interactions with data — is changing the way that BI vendors are pricing. There is a trend away from licensing with more expensive “author” licenses and inexpensive or free “consumer” licenses as genAI erases some of the distinctions. Again, this is shifting the average cost toward the $10 per user per month benchmark.
Most importantly, a Microsoft Power BI Pro license has been $10 per user per month for a long time. Some estimates indicate that there are more than 300 million Microsoft 365 users (all with a Power BI Pro license). Therefore, other BI vendors have no choice but to compete with that number.
Well, things are changing. Inflation isn’t just impacting the cost of groceries; it is now coming for enterprise BI buyers. For the last year or so, Forrester has been hearing complaints from customers that their BI vendors are taking advantage of contract expirations to jack up the prices. Now it’s Microsoft’s turn. Today, Microsoft announced that it is raising Power BI Pro licenses to $14 (from $10) per user per month and Power BI Premium to $24 (from $20).
Looks like we have a new benchmark for enterprise BI licenses.
