Difference Between Power BI Service vs Power BI Desktop?
Power BI Service is a cloud-based platform provided by Microsoft which can be used to perform report amendment, collaborate, and share reports with different users while Power BI Desktop is a free-to-use tool for data visualization. Power BI Service allows you to connect with different data sources and create dashboards, data analytics, data exploration, and building apps while Desktop allows you to connect to various data sources, transform them into a data model and create reports based on it. Mostly, Power BI Desktop creates the reports and Power BI Service distributes the reports. Now, let us look at the two in detail and their uses.
Table of Contents
Key Differences to Note
Both Power BI Service and Power BI Desktop offer excellent functionalities to support data analysis, transformation, modeling, and visualization. However, there are several key differences between these two tools as per the different criteria outlined below:
- Tool Purpose
- Power BI Service is a web-based platform hosted in the Microsoft Azure cloud. It is designed for sharing, publishing, and collaborating on Power BI content. Users can publish reports and dashboards created in Power BI Desktop to Power BI Service and share them with others.
- Power BI Desktop is a Windows application that is primarily used for creating and designing data models, reports, and dashboards. It provides a robust environment for data preparation, transformation, and visualization. Users can connect to various data sources, transform data, build relationships between tables, and create interactive reports and visualizations.
- Application Accessibility
- Power BI Service is accessible through a web browser, which means you can access your reports and dashboards from anywhere with an internet connection. One uses them for consuming and interacting with reports, and are accessible to a wider audience, including business users, executives, and stakeholders.
- Power BI Desktop is a desktop application which you must install on your computer. One can use it for authoring and designing reports and also by data analysts and report creators.
- Collaboration and Sharing across different users
- We use the Power BI Service for sharing and collaboration. You can publish reports to the service, set up access controls, share reports with specific users or groups, and collaborate on reports in real-time. Users can also interact with reports, explore data, and make comments and annotations.
- While you can create reports in Power BI Desktop, there is a limit to sharing them with others. You can save report files and share them manually; however, to see the content, you need a licensed version.
- Data Refresh
- Power BI Service offers more robust data refresh capabilities. One can refresh data in the cloud service, and you can set up automatic refresh schedules for published reports. This allows for up-to-date data availability for users.
- One can refresh data in Power BI Desktop reports manually or schedule to refresh them at specified intervals on your local machine.
- Tool License and Pricing Options
- Power BI Service has both free and paid licensing options. Paid licenses, such as Power BI Pro and Power BI Premium, offer additional features and capabilities, including collaboration and sharing features.
- Power BI Desktop is a free application and doesn’t require a separate license.
What is Power BI Service?
Power BI Service is a tool that comprises various software services, applications, and connectors. The combination of all these three ecosystems allows you to create reports and dashboards, collaborate, and share the visualization with your users for data insights. You can access Power BI Services by navigating the URL: https://app.powerbi.com.
You can avail of the free trial service to access Power BI Service to start using it. However, to view any Power BI content created by a designer/author, you need to have a Power BI Pro or Power BI Premium Per User license. Power BI Service also provides sample reports, dashboards, and self-service training materials so that you can start creating reports, dashboards, etc.
Some of the key features of Power BI Service include:
| Key Functionalities | Description |
|---|---|
| Data Visualization and Reporting | Allows to create interactive visuals and dashboards using data from multiple sources. You can apply customization in terms of the look and feel and design of the reports and dashboards. |
| Collaboration | Enables to collaborate on data analysis and reporting by allowing multiple users to work on the same reports and dashboards |
| Data Refresh and Automation | Supports data refresh and automation keeping the reports and dashboards up-to-date |
| Report Sharing and Distribution | Allows you to share the reports to various stakeholders (internal and external) to an organization as a secured web link, embedded in email or various applications |
| Support for Mobile Application | Supports creation of reports and dashboards for mobile applications such as smartphones and tablets |
| Data Security and Governance | Allows you to define the roles and permissions, row-level security, and encryption |
| Integration with Microsoft Suite of Products | Provides seamless integration to various Microsoft suites of products such as Teams, Azure, etc. |
| Scalability | Can handle large volumes of datasets and support both on-premises databases and cloud services |
| Paginated Reports | You can create Paginated Reports |
| Data Lineage | Supports data lineage for data used in your reports |
| Metrics | Allows you to create different metrics |
What is Power BI Desktop?
Power BI Desktop is a Business Intelligence tool that is a free-to-use and easy-to-navigate desktop application. It allows you to connect several data sources, append or merge them, create reports or visualizations, and share the report with different users.
Power BI provides three different views which include
- Report View – View to create reports and visuals
- Data View – View of the underlying dataset, measures, columns, and other datasets associated with your reports
- Model View – View of relationships between the table. You can also manage relationships using this view
Power BI Desktop comes with three different product variants. They include Power BI Desktop, Power BI Pro, and Power BI Premium Per User.
Note: Power BI Pro and Power BI Premium Per User are the licensed versions.
Power BI Desktop comes with several features that include:
| Key Functionality | Description |
|---|---|
| Data Integration | Enabled connectivity to multiple data sources including cloud, databases, SharePoint, big data, and much more. |
| Data Modelling | Allows to create data models and define relationships between different tables such as one-to-many, many-to-many, etc. |
| Data Visualization | Supports many data visualization options with built-in visuals and integration to third-party apps through Appsource. You can also create custom visuals and use it for your reports |
| Reports | Allows you to create multi-page reports, and supports interactive user features such as slicers, filters, etc. |
| DAX (Data Analysis Expression) | Provides DAX formula language to create calculated columns, measures, and data aggregations to perform complex data analysis and calculation for reporting requirements |
| Power Query Editor | Using Power Query Editor, you can perform data transformation |
| Ability to perform Data Refresh | Allows you to schedule data refresh at certain intervals to keep your reports up-to-date |
| Collaboration | Allows you to collaborate by publishing the visuals or reports in the Power BI Service |
| Advanced AI capabilities | Supports integration to machine learning models with scripting languages such as R and Python |
| Integration to Microsoft tools | Provides seamless integration to Microsoft Suites of products such as Excel, Sharepoint, Azure, etc. |
| Mobile Layouts | You can create reports and visuals in Mobile Layout for different mobile applications |
| Customization | Provides several options in terms of Themes, custom formatting options, and much more |
| Drill-down capabilities | Enables drill-down capabilities to granular level information for data analysis |
Next, we will focus on the key differences between the Power BI Service and Power BI Desktop. We will compare them across different parameters with a comparison table.
Comparative Table (Key Differences)
There are several similarities and differences between Power BI Service and Power BI Desktop. Here we have created a comparative table to highlight the key differences between these two products across different categories.
| Category | Power BI Service | Power BI Desktop |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | They are primarily designed for creating dashboards, sharing, publishing, and collaborating on Power BI content. | They were primarily used for creating and designing data models, reports, and data visualizations. |
| Data Connectivity | Supports connectivity to limited data sources | Provides data connectivity to many data sources, including Cloud, Online tools such as Azure, Salesforce, etc |
| Data Transformation | No | Supports data transformation through Power Query Tool Editor |
| Data Shaping and Modelling | No | Allows data shaping activities such as cleaning, error handling, and data transformation processing |
| Creation of Measures/Calculated Columns | No | You can create calculated columns and measures using the in-built features such as DAX (Data Analysis Expression) and other in-built functions |
| Integration to Python | No | Supports integration to Python scripting |
| Availability of Themes | No | You can choose from several in-built themes or download from third-party applications for reports or visuals |
| Dashboards | You can create Dashboards | No |
| Apps and Workspaces | Supports Apps and Workspaces | No |
| Dataflow creation | Supports Data flow creation | No |
| Paginated Reports | Supports Paginated Reports | No. Though you can create reports in multiple tabs |
| Row-level security (RLS) management | Supports RLS management | Supports on Row-Level Security implementation |
| Collaborations | Supports Collaboration through hosting the apps on the centralized host server | Supports Collaboration only when you publish the report to the Power BI Service |
| Sharing | Allows sharing of reports | Allows sharing only when you have a licensed version of the app |
Similarities
Although both Power BI Service and Power BI Desktop differ in several ways, they have similar capabilities. It is to provide business intelligence, data analytics, and data visualization. Let’s examine some of the commonalities between these two, as shown in the table below.
| Features | Power BI Service | Power BI Desktop |
|---|---|---|
| Reports | Yes | Yes |
| Data Visualization | Yes | Yes |
| Data Security | Yes | Yes |
| Data Filter | Yes | Yes |
| Bookmarks | Yes | Yes |
| Natural Language Processing Support (Q&A) | Yes | Yes |
| R Visuals | Yes | Yes |
| Report Sharing | Yes | Yes |
| Row-level security creation | Yes | Yes |
In summary, we use Power BI Service for sharing, collaborating, and consuming those reports in a web-based environment, while we use Power BI Desktop for creating and designing reports. Many organizations use both components in conjunction to create a comprehensive data analytics and reporting solution.
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