Power BI has become the default business intelligence tool for small and medium businesses: the same platform Fortune 500 companies use, with a free desktop app and a Pro tier that costs $10 per user per month. This guide gets you from a clean install to your first working dashboard.
Picking the Right License
Power BI Desktop is free forever and enough to build unlimited dashboards for yourself. Power BI Pro, at $10 a user monthly, is what most small teams actually need once they want to share dashboards and collaborate. Premium, at $4,995 a month, only makes sense past 250 users or very large datasets, which is not most small businesses.
From Install to First Dashboard
The guide walks through installing Power BI Desktop, setting up a Microsoft account, understanding the three core views (Report, Data, and Model), and building a first sales dashboard from sample data in 30 to 45 minutes.
About this post
Written by
Justin Szilard
Published
July 15, 2026