Determines which kind of capacity hosts a workspace, whether Fabric (F SKU), Fabric Trial, Premium (P SKU), Pro, Premium Per User or Embedded. Microsoft renamed it from license mode without altering behaviour.
Also called formerly license mode, License mode.
Read more: Microsoft Learn
In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains Workspace type in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- Capacity
A reserved block of compute for a tenant whose size is fixed by its SKU; Fabric F SKUs express it in capacity units (CUs). Workspaces assigned to it unlock features like Copilot, and from F64 upwards people with free licences can view Power BI content.
- Workspace
Teams in Power BI and Microsoft Fabric collaborate in this folder-style container, which groups items such as reports, semantic models and lakehouses, controls who can access them and is assigned a capacity.
- F SKU
Fabric capacity purchased through Azure and measured in capacity units, ranging from F2 up to F8192. It is charged by the second without any commitment, can be resized or paused, and Microsoft Learn describes these SKUs as the recommended Fabric capacities.
- Premium
Hosting plan for Azure Functions that keeps instances pre-warmed to avoid cold starts and supports VNet integration. Executions time out after 30 minutes by default, which host.json can extend.
- Power BI Premium capacity
Microsoft has stopped selling its P1 to P5 Power BI capacity licences and retires each one as the customer's agreement term expires; Fabric F SKUs take their place. Per-user Pro and Premium Per User licences carry on unchanged.
- PPU
Premium Per User. Licensed person by person, it adds most Premium capacity features on top of everything Pro offers. Items in a PPU workspace are shareable only with other PPU licence holders, and no Fabric capacity comes with it.