💁 About this article
This article is part of Fugo’s Power BI knowledge base: a collection of resources answering common Power BI questions. We include notes throughout where Fugo’s integration may be helpful for displaying dashboards on digital signage.
Table of contents
Short answer
You can share Power BI reports for free only if you’re willing to give up security, interactivity, or centralized control.
There is no supported way to privately share live Power BI reports with many users without either:
assigning licenses, or
paying for capacity.
Understanding that upfront will save you a lot of trial and error.
What people usually mean by “free”
Most users aren’t asking for zero cost forever. They’re asking:
“Is there a way to let others see my Power BI reports without buying licenses for everyone?”
That’s a reasonable question, especially when Power BI Desktop itself is free. But Desktop and sharing are licensed very differently.
Legitimate free options (and their limits)
Power BI’s Publish to web feature makes a report accessible via a public URL.
What works
Completely free
No login required
Easy to embed in websites
What breaks
Anyone on the internet can access the data
URLs are discoverable
No row-level security
Not appropriate for internal or sensitive data
This is why it’s usually ruled out quickly.
You can email or store the .pbix file in SharePoint and let others open it in Power BI Desktop.
What works
No Power BI Service licenses required
Full interactivity for the person opening the file
What breaks
Everyone can edit the report
No central version control
No scheduled refresh
Requires Power BI Desktop installed everywhere
This behaves more like sharing an Excel file than a dashboard.
You can export reports on a schedule and email them as PDFs or spreadsheets.
What works
No viewer licenses required
Secure distribution via email or SharePoint
What breaks
No interactivity
No live data
Manual workflows creep in quickly
Useful as a stopgap, not a long-term solution.
Why this question keeps coming up
Power BI Desktop being free creates a mental model that sharing should also be free. But Power BI is fundamentally a cloud analytics service, not a file viewer.
Every view consumes compute, memory, and security resources and that’s what licensing covers.
The common middle step: Power BI in PowerPoint
Many teams embed Power BI reports into PowerPoint and present or loop them on a screen.
This works because:
PowerPoint becomes the host
Reports can auto-refresh during slideshow mode
Only the presenting account needs Power BI access
But it comes with limits:
Requires a laptop connected to the screen
Needs babysitting if the slideshow stops
Doesn’t scale across many screens or locations
For meetings, it’s fine. For always-on visibility, it starts to crack.
Power BI on shared TV screens with Fugo
Digital signage platforms like Fugo connect securely to Power BI, authenticate once, and keep dashboards running on TVs without laptops, HDMI cables, or manual restarts.
Power BI still handles:
Data access
Security
Refresh logic
Fugo handles:
Screen playback
Reliability
Scheduling
Multi-screen management
It doesn’t make Power BI “free” but it does make Power BI usable at scale in shared environments.
Viewing vs distributing Power BI reports
A common point of confusion in these discussions is the difference between access and distribution.
Power BI controls who can open a report.
It does not control how that report is physically displayed or where it runs.
For example:
A report embedded in PowerPoint may still require licenses, but it can be displayed in meetings or on a screen without asking every viewer to log in.
A report displayed via digital signage can be visible to many people at once without each person needing individual access, because the screen itself is the consumer.
This doesn’t bypass Power BI licensing but it changes the consumption model.
The bottom line
If “free” is your only requirement, your options are limited and fragile.
If visibility, reliability, and scale matter, the real question isn’t licensing but how your reports are delivered once they leave a browser.