Power BI Embedded is a capacity-based subscription license. This means that increments of capacity in the form of virtual CPU cores and memory are purchased on an hourly basis. These increments of capacity are called node types and range in size from an A1 with a single virtual core and 3 GB of RAM for approximately $750/month to an A6 with 32 virtual cores and 100 GB of RAM for approximately $24,000/month. Power BI A SKUs are billed hourly; the approximate monthly prices are provided here. Power BI Embedded A SKUs are purchased via the Azure Portal. In addition to this capacity licensing, report authors also need to license Power BI Pro for the standard license cost of $9.99 per user per month.

Power BI Embedded is intended for use by developers and independent software vendors that use APIs in order to embed Power BI visuals, reports, and dashboards within their custom web applications. These applications can then be accessed by external customers. While Power BI's embedding technology can be used to create applications that are accessed by internal users, different SKUs are required, the Power BI Premium SKUs that include EM at the end.

Finally, it is worth noting that A1 and A2 nodes run on non-dedicated capacity while A3 to A6 nodes run on dedicated capacity. This is important as dedicated capacity can avoid noisy neighbor scenarios that may impact overall performance.