Power BI Desktop is the free Windows application where Power BI reports are designed and built. The Power BI service is the companion cloud platform, opened in a web browser, where finished reports are published, shared and viewed. In short: you build in Desktop, then publish to the service so other people can use your work.
What Power BI Desktop does
Power BI Desktop is the workshop: a free Windows application, installed on your computer, where the real building happens. A report author uses it to do four things:
- Connect to data, whether that is an Excel file, a database or an online service.
- Shape that data into a tidy form, using the built-in Power Query tool.
- Model it, joining tables together and writing calculations in the DAX formula language.
- Design the report, arranging charts, tables and filters across one or more pages.
Desktop is free to download and use, with monthly updates. The one catch is the operating system: it runs on Windows only. There is no Mac or Linux version, so Mac users work in the service instead or run Desktop in a Windows virtual machine.
What the Power BI service does
The Power BI service is the shop window. It is a cloud platform reached through a web browser. Its job is everything that happens to a report once it has been built:
- Publishing and storage: finished reports live here, in shared areas called workspaces.
- Sharing: you publish reports into workspaces and control who can open each one.
- Dashboards: single-screen summaries that pull together visuals from several reports.
- Scheduled refresh: the service updates the data on its own, so reports stay current.
The service is also where Power BI meets Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft's wider analytics platform. Power BI is one of Fabric's core workloads, so the Power BI service now runs within Fabric, though the day-to-day experience of using Power BI is much the same.
How they work together: build, then publish
Desktop and the service are two stages of one process, not rivals. The normal path runs in three steps:
- Build in Desktop. An author connects to the data, models it and designs the report, then saves the work as a
.pbixfile. - Publish to the service. A single click sends the report up to a workspace in the Power BI service.
- Share and use in the service. Colleagues open the report in their browser, dashboards are built from its visuals and a scheduled refresh keeps the data current.
Power BI Mobile, the third part of Power BI, sits on the end of this chain: it is the phone and tablet app for viewing what the service holds. The short version is simple: Desktop creates, the service distributes.
Which one do you need, and what does it cost?
In practice, almost everyone who builds reports needs both. You author in Desktop because that is where the modelling tools are. You publish to the service because that is the only way to put the report in front of other people.
The cost sits with the service, not with Desktop. Power BI Desktop is free. The Power BI service has a free tier for working on your own reports, but the moment you want to share a report with a colleague, someone needs a paid per-user licence. Microsoft's licensing documentation sets out the tiers: a free licence covers personal use, while Power BI Pro or Premium Per User is needed to publish to shared workspaces and share reports with others. Our Is Power BI free? entry breaks the cost down in full.
Want to see the whole workflow in action? Power BI Desktop and the service make far more sense once you have built something in one and published it to the other. Our two-day, hands-on Power BI Masterclass walks through the full journey, from a blank Desktop canvas to a live report shared in the service. To compare your options across the wider market, our guide to choosing Power BI training in the UK is a good place to start.
