How to Publish Power BI for Free

Creating a dynamic report in Power BI is a great first step, but its real value comes when you can share it with others. If you're wondering how to get your insights in front of an audience without paying for a Pro license, you're in the right place. This article will walk you through the practical, free methods for publishing and sharing your Power BI reports.

First, Let's Understand Power BI's Free Options

Microsoft offers a surprisingly powerful free tier, but it's important to know the difference between the main components:

• Power BI Desktop: This is the free application you download to your computer. It’s where you connect to data, transform it, create your data model, and design your reports with visuals. Think of it as your creation studio. It is 100% free, forever.
• Power BI Service (Free Account): This is the cloud-based service (app.powerbi.com) where you can publish, view, and interact with reports. A free account gives you a personal "My Workspace" where you can publish reports for your own use or for public sharing.

Publishing your report for free primarily involves getting your report from the Desktop application to the Service and then distributing it from there. Let's look at the best ways to do this.

Method 1: Share Publicly with "Publish to Web"

The ‘Publish to web’ feature is the most common way to share an interactive Power BI report for free. It generates a public link and an embed code that you can share with anyone, anywhere. They do not need a Power BI account to view it.

IMPORTANT: When we say "public," we mean it. Anyone on the internet with the link can access your report. Do NOT use this method for confidential or sensitive company data. This is for data you are comfortable with everyone seeing.

When to Use This Method:

• Embedding an interactive visualization on your blog or public website.
• Sharing a data journalism project or academic research findings.
• Showcasing your work in a public portfolio when applying for data analyst jobs.
• Displaying non-sensitive information like general product catalogs or public announcements.

Step-by-Step Guide to Publish to Web

Here’s how to create a public link for your report:

1. Create and Save Your Report: Finalize your report in the Power BI Desktop application.
2. Publish to Your Workspace: In the 'Home' tab of the ribbon in Power BI Desktop, click 'Publish'. You’ll be prompted to sign in to your Power BI Service account. Once signed in, select 'My Workspace' as the destination and click 'Select'.
3. Navigate to the Power BI Service: Open your web browser and go to https://app.powerbi.com. Sign in with the same account.
4. Find Your Report: In the navigation pane on the left, click on 'My Workspace' and then find the report you just published under the 'Reports' tab. Click to open it.
5. Generate the Public Link: Once your report is open, go to the top menu bar and click File > Embed report > Publish to web (public).
6. Review the Warning: Power BI will show you a serious-looking dialog box. Read it carefully. It’s reminding you that you’re about to make your report data public on the web. This is your final chance to back out if you're dealing with sensitive information. If you're ready, click 'Create embed code'.
7. Publish: In the next window, click 'Publish'. Power BI will prepare your public link.
8. Copy Your Link or Embed Code: You’ll now be given a new dialog box with two options. The first is a direct URL link you can send to people. The second is an HTML iframe code that you can copy and paste into a website or blog's HTML editor to embed the report directly on a page.

That’s it! Your interactive report is now live for anyone to see. Keep in mind that data refreshes can be slower on the free plan compared to paid tiers.

Method 2: Share the Master File (.pbix)

Think of this method as sharing an Excel workbook or a PowerPoint presentation. You are simply sending the source file of your report to another person. This approach is completely offline and keeps your data secure between you and the recipient.

When to Use This Method:

• Collaborating with a colleague who also has Power BI Desktop installed and needs to edit or review the report design.
• Sending a report to someone who has the technical ability and proper access to refresh the data on their own machine.
• Creating a backup or template of your report.

How It Works and Its Limitations

To do this, you just save your report in Power BI Desktop, which creates a file with a .pbix extension. You can then attach this file to an email or share it via a cloud-based service like Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive.

The giant catch is this: the recipient must also have Power BI Desktop installed on their computer to open it. They can't just open it in a web browser. This can be a significant roadblock for non-technical stakeholders.

Furthermore, the data in the report is only as fresh as the last time you saved it. The recipient receives a static copy. For them to see updated information, they would need to manually refresh the data within their Power BI Desktop application, which means they’d also need direct access to all the original data sources (like the database, SharePoint lists, or Excel files) that your report uses.

Method 3: The Old-Fashioned Way with Screenshots and PDFs

Sometimes you don't need interactivity. If your audience only needs a static snapshot of the key metrics, exporting a view of your report is perfectly fine - and free.

Power BI Desktop makes this easy:

• Export to PDF: Go to File > Export > Export to PDF. This will generate a static, presentation-ready PDF of your report pages. It's clean, simple, and universally readable.
• Take a Screenshot: For a quick visual to drop into an email or a slide, a simple screenshot (using Windows's Snipping Tool or a third-party app) often does the trick.

Of course, the major downside here is the complete loss of interactivity. Viewers can't filter, drill down, or hover over elements to see more detail. You lose the dynamic analysis that makes Power BI so valuable, but for a quick update in a presentation or email, it can be the perfectly practical choice.

What You Can't Do for Free

Understanding the limitations of the free tier is just as important as knowing its capabilities. Without a paid Power BI Pro or Premium license, you will not be able to:

• Share privately with other users in the Power BI Service. The core collaborative feature of sharing reports and dashboards directly to a colleague's workspace requires a Pro license for both you and them.
• Use 'App Workspaces'. These are collaborative sandboxes for teams to co-develop reports. They’re a central feature for team-based BI and require a Pro license.
• Receive automated data refreshes more than once a day. Paid tiers offer much more frequent scheduled refreshes to keep your data current.
• Share content using Power BI Apps. You can't bundle up reports and dashboards into a neat 'App' for clean and governed distribution to a wider team.

Final Thoughts

You can absolutely publish and share useful Power BI reports for free. Public sharing through ‘Publish to Web’ is great for non-sensitive data, and sharing the .pbix file works well for technical collaborators. However, these methods come with clear trade-offs in security and convenience, especially when it comes to collaborative work inside a business.

Ultimately, a lot of the work isn't just in publishing, but in the time spent connecting data sources and manually building dashboards in the first place. This is where modern analytics tools are changing the game. At https://www.graphed.com/register, we created a way to skip the steepest parts of the learning curve. We allow you to connect all your sales and marketing data sources with one click, then use simple, natural language to build and securely share the real-time dashboards you need — no complex setup required.