Where Microsoft Fabric and Copilot Stop for External Audiences

Not an alternative to Microsoft — built on it. Power BI is our foundation. Azure is our deployment environment. The question isn’t Reporting Hub versus Microsoft — it’s what Microsoft natively provides for external intelligence delivery, and where the gaps are.

The stack

Built on Microsoft, not beside it

Reporting Hub does not replace anything you run today. It uses your Microsoft investment as its foundation and adds the one layer Microsoft leaves to you.

Power BI

Stays your report engine

Your semantic models, datasets and reports are the source. Reporting Hub reads what your analysts already build and never asks them to work somewhere else.

Azure

Stays your environment

Reporting Hub is installed into your own Azure subscription. Microsoft bills the capacity to you directly, and nothing is hosted by a third party.

Microsoft Entra ID

Stays your identity layer

Entra remains your directory for internal users. External customers authenticate through your platform or application, using Entra ID, Okta, Auth0 or any OpenID Connect provider.

What Microsoft does not provide is the layer between a finished report and an audience that sits outside your organisation — the tenancy, the branding, the access control and the audit trail that customer-facing delivery needs. That layer is what Reporting Hub is.

The delivery layer

What gets added on top

Six things that only matter once your audience is outside your company.

Per-Tenant Isolation

One deployment serves every customer. Each tenant’s data, users, branding and AI configuration are kept separate as a property of the platform rather than something your team maintains in row-level security.

Your Sign-In, Not Microsoft’s

Customers authenticate through your branded platform or your own application using Microsoft Entra ID, Okta or Auth0. They never see a Power BI sign-in and never need a Power BI account.

Controlled Exposure

A report reaches a customer only once an admin has assigned it to that tenant. What each audience can open is settled in configuration, before anyone outside is let near it.

Governed AI per Customer

BI Genius agents are configured per tenant before exposure — what each agent may reach and answer is set by an admin ahead of time, not approved answer by answer. See how.

An External Audit Trail

Who opened which report, when, and what they asked the AI — recorded per tenant and exportable, which is the evidence regulated customers ask for.

Deployed in Your Own Tenant

A Microsoft-validated installer provisions Reporting Hub inside your Azure subscription. No third-party hosting, no data crossing tenant boundaries, AI inference included. Security and trust.

Fabric

Internal consolidation, not external delivery

Microsoft Fabric unifies your data estate for the people inside your organisation. Reaching the people outside it is a different problem.

Fabric is a strong internal platform, and if you are consolidating a data estate it is a reasonable place to put it. This is not a choice between the two — Reporting Hub runs downstream of Fabric and uses what it produces.

The distinction is who the output is for. Everything below is about audiences that sit outside your tenant, have to be kept apart from one another, and must never see each other’s data.

	Microsoft Fabric	Reporting Hub
Built for	Internal analysts and data teams consolidating a data estate	Customers, partners and regulators outside your organisation
Who signs in	Users in your Microsoft tenant, licensed by you	Your customers, authenticating against your platform or application
Viewer licensing	A Pro licence for every viewer below F64; free viewing only at F64 and above	Unlimited external users on every tier, with no Power BI seats
Keeping customers apart	Workspace design and row-level security, built and maintained by your team	Per-tenant isolation as a property of the platform
Branding	Microsoft’s shell, with limited theming	Your logo, colours, domain and per-tenant themes
What each audience can open	Membership of the workspace or app decides it	Assigned per tenant by an admin, before that tenant is given access
External audit trail	Activity logging aimed at internal governance	Per-tenant record of who saw what and when, exportable
Cost shape	A capacity SKU sized ahead of load and billed hourly	A flat monthly tier, $199–$999

Reporting Hub still runs on a Power BI Embedded or Fabric capacity in your own Azure subscription — see the cost section below.

Copilot

Copilot answers for your analysts

Power BI Copilot is a capable internal assistant. Pointing one at an external audience is where the governance requirements begin.

This is not an argument about the price of entry. Microsoft lowered the Copilot floor from F64 to F2 in April 2025, so Copilot is within reach of most capacities. Only the shared Fabric Copilot Capacity feature still requires an F64.

The argument is about who the assistant is built to serve. Copilot answers for a signed-in user inside your tenant, carrying that user’s permissions. An external audience needs the opposite starting point: an agent whose scope is decided per customer, before anyone outside is allowed near it.

	Power BI Copilot	BI Genius
Designed for	Internal users working inside Power BI	Your customers, inside your product
Capacity required	F2 and above; the shared Fabric Copilot Capacity still needs F64	Whichever Embedded or Fabric capacity you already run
Configured per customer	One assistant, scoped to the signed-in user’s permissions	Each tenant’s agent is configured separately before that tenant can use it
What the agent may reach	Whatever that user can reach in the tenant	Only the models, fields and metrics an admin has allowed for that tenant
Record of what was asked	Internal tenant telemetry	Per-tenant audit trail of questions asked and answers returned
Explainability	The answer text	The answer plus the fields and filters it was derived from
Where inference runs	Microsoft’s service	Inside your own Azure subscription, with no data egress

Cost

What Microsoft bills, and what we bill

Two separate lines on two separate invoices — and only one of them moves when you win more customers.

Reporting Hub runs on a Power BI capacity inside your own Azure subscription — either a Power BI Embedded capacity (A or EM SKU) or a Fabric capacity (F SKU). One of the two is required. Microsoft bills it to your subscription directly, and it sits alongside your Reporting Hub tier rather than inside it.

What you do not need is an F64. F64 is the point at which Power BI stops charging per viewer: below it, everyone who opens a report needs a Pro licence at around $10 a month, and at F64 and above viewing is covered by the capacity. That is why it is the number teams get quoted when they ask how to put reports in front of a lot of people. In US regions an F64 reserved instance runs about $5,000 a month, and $10,000+ at F128.

Reporting Hub reaches the same outcome from a different direction. Your customers authenticate against your platform or your application rather than against Power BI, so external users are unlimited on every tier and no capacity threshold decides how many of them you can serve. Compare plans.

And because a capacity bills for compute whether or not anyone is signed in, Reporting Hub includes a Fabric/Embedded Capacity Manager that pauses it when idle. Evenings, weekends and holidays are most of the week.

	Power BI Pro	Fabric F64	Reporting Hub
Roughly	$10 per viewer	$5,000 per month	$199–$999 per month
Covers	One named viewer	Free viewing inside your tenant	Unlimited external users
Grows with	Headcount	Capacity size	Nothing — it is flat

Capacity figures are US-region list prices for a reserved instance and vary by region and commitment. Reporting Hub tiers are listed in full on the pricing page.

Questions

Fabric & Copilot FAQs

Do we need Microsoft Fabric to run Reporting Hub?

No — but you do need a capacity. Reporting Hub runs on either a Power BI Embedded capacity (A or EM SKU) or a Fabric capacity (F SKU), deployed into your own Azure subscription and billed there by Microsoft. What you do not need is an F64. If you already run Fabric internally, Reporting Hub sits downstream of it and uses what it produces.

Does Reporting Hub replace Power BI?

No. Reporting Hub sits after Power BI and orchestrates what it produces. Your datasets, semantic models and reports are used as they are — no rebuild, no migration, no re-platforming. See the platform overview.

Does Power BI Copilot still require an F64 capacity?

Not since April 2025, when Microsoft lowered the floor to F2 and above. The shared Fabric Copilot Capacity feature still requires F64. So the case for BI Genius over Copilot is not about the capacity tier — it is that Copilot is built to answer for a signed-in internal user, and external audiences need an agent that is scoped, logged and explainable per customer.

Can we use Copilot for customer-facing analytics?

Copilot is a capable internal assistant, but it answers with the permissions of the signed-in user inside your tenant. There is no per-customer agent configuration, no way to scope what it may reach per external audience, and no external-facing audit trail. Deploying it to customers means building that layer yourself. See how BI Genius is governed.

Do our customers need Power BI licences?

No. External users are unlimited on every Reporting Hub tier and authenticate against your platform or your application — not against Power BI. This is also why you do not need to reach F64 to serve them: no per-viewer Pro licence is involved at any customer count.

Where does Reporting Hub actually run?

Inside your own Azure subscription, installed through a Microsoft-validated guided installer. There is no third-party hosting layer and no data crossing a tenant boundary, which is usually what regulated procurement is asking about. Security and trust.

Does AI inference leave our Azure environment?

No. BI Genius runs inside your own Azure tenant along with the rest of the platform. Prompts and data are not sent to an external service, there is no third-party hosting layer, and there is no data egress — AI inference included.

Can we keep our existing reports and semantic models?

Yes — that is the point of the design. Your datasets, semantic models and reports are used as they are. Nothing is rebuilt, re-modelled or migrated, and your analysts keep working the way they already do.

We already run Fabric internally. Does Reporting Hub conflict with it?

No. They solve different problems. Fabric consolidates your internal data estate; Reporting Hub delivers governed analytics from it to audiences outside your organisation. Reporting Hub reads the semantic models Fabric feeds and adds the tenancy, branding, access control and audit layer that external delivery needs.

Is Reporting Hub Microsoft-accredited?

Yes. Reporting Hub is a Microsoft partner solution with a Microsoft-validated installer, deployed natively on Azure and aligned with the Power BI and Entra ID architecture you already run.

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