💁 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
The real question people are asking
Most Power BI licensing questions don’t start with architecture, but frustration.
“We built something useful in Power BI. Now more people want to see it. Why is this suddenly complicated?”
From there, teams start pulling on threads:
Can we share this without licenses?
Can we embed it somewhere else?
Can we put it on a TV?
Can we make it feel more like a product?
That’s how Power BI Premium, Power BI Embedded, Power BI in PowerPoint, and digital signage all end up in the same conversation even though they solve very different problems.
Let’s separate them cleanly.
Power BI Embedded: not cheaper Power BI, but programmable Power BI
Power BI Embedded is an official Microsoft product, but it’s a developer platform, not a distribution feature.
Its purpose is simple in theory: Let applications use Power BI as a rendering engine, without requiring each end user to have a Power BI account.
That’s why Embedded exists at all.
What Embedded actually enables
Power BI Embedded allows you to:
Embed reports inside custom web or mobile applications
Use your own authentication system instead of Microsoft Entra
Treat Power BI visuals as part of a broader product experience
Support user-specific views, bookmarks, comments, and writeback
Expose analytics to customers, partners, or subscribers
This is why it shows up in:
SaaS products
Customer portals
Subscription platforms
ISV offerings
In those contexts, Embedded can feel transformative because it turns Power BI from a tool into a component.
Why Embedded feels expensive and confusing
Embedded pricing isn’t “per user.” It’s per capacity, and that’s where confusion starts.
Costs depend on:
Capacity SKU (A-series or Fabric F-series)
Model size
Refresh frequency
Concurrent usage
Query complexity
This is why Reddit threads are full of wildly different numbers:
Some teams run Embedded comfortably on F2
Others blow through capacity and hit four figures fast
Some never needed Premium at all
Others accidentally stacked costs they didn’t need
The key point: Embedded shifts complexity from licensing to engineering.
If you don’t have web development resources - or don’t want to build and maintain auth, tokens, scaling, and UX - Embedded often creates more work, not less.
That’s why many teams evaluate it, then quietly walk away.
Power BI Premium: scaling internal consumption, not embedding
Power BI Premium (now delivered through Fabric capacity, e.g. F64+) solves a very different problem:
How do we let lots of internal users view reports without licensing each one individually?
Premium:
Keeps Power BI usage inside Microsoft’s ecosystem
Uses Entra ID authentication
Preserves RLS and governance
Allows free-license users to consume content
It does not:
Remove Power BI from the browser
Create a product-like experience
Help with external users
Solve physical display scenarios
Premium is best understood as Power BI at enterprise scale, not as a distribution workaround.
That’s why it often makes sense only after:
Viewer counts reach the hundreds
Power BI is already a core internal platform
Governance and performance matter more than cost minimization
Power BI in PowerPoint: the first workaround everyone tries
Power BI’s PowerPoint integration isn’t a sharing model, and it isn’t meant to replace Premium or Embedded.
It exists for presented environments:
Meetings
Reviews
Workshops
Walkthroughs where someone is actively driving the narrative
In that context, it works well:
Live data
Interactive visuals
Familiar PowerPoint workflow
No additional infrastructure
Where it breaks down is persistence.
PowerPoint:
Requires a logged-in user
Depends on a running session
Doesn’t recover well from restarts
Isn’t designed for unattended playback
Once a report is expected to:
Run all day
Stay visible without human input
Live on a shared screen
PowerPoint will feel like a pseudo-solution.
Digital signage: a delivery layer Power BI never tried to be
This is where digital signage enters and why it shouldn’t be compared directly to Embedded or Premium.
Digital signage doesn’t solve:
Licensing
Modeling
Analytics
Auth complexity
It solves visibility.
A TV screen:
Isn’t a user
Doesn’t log in
Doesn’t click refresh
Doesn’t troubleshoot itself
Power BI assumes a human at the keyboard. Digital signage assumes nobody is watching the screen all the time.
That’s a fundamentally different design constraint.
Where Fugo fits (and where it deliberately doesn’t)
Fugo is not:
An alternative to Embedded
A replacement for Premium
A BI tool
A way around Power BI licensing
Fugo is a display and orchestration layer. It exists to answer a question Power BI doesn’t try to: How do we keep dashboards reliably visible in shared physical spaces?
Concretely, Fugo:
Authenticates once and manages session lifecycles
Handles token refresh automatically
Supports low-powered or locked-down devices
Keeps dashboards running unattended
Allows scheduling, rotation, and layout control
Uses Power BI APIs without bypassing security
It does for screens what Power BI Embedded does for applications without turning your team into a software vendor.
The pattern that actually works in practice
In mature setups, these tools will stack instead of compete.
A common progression looks like this:
Power BI Service for analysis and modeling
PowerPoint for meetings and storytelling
Digital signage (Fugo) for ambient visibility
Embedded only when analytics must become productized
The problems start when teams try to use:
Embedded to avoid licenses
Premium to power TVs
PowerPoint to run unattended
Publish to Web for private data
A simple decision lens for when to which use which tool
Instead of asking “Which is cheaper?”, ask:
Question | Tool that answers it |
Who is allowed to see this data? | Power BI |
How many internal viewers do we have? | Premium |
Is this part of a product? | Embedded |
Is this for meetings? | PowerPoint |
Does this need to live on screens all day? | Digital signage |
When each tool stays in its lane, the system stops fighting you.