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Keep Power BI for internal reporting if it already works there. The two are not mutually exclusive: Databrain can serve the customer-facing layer while Power BI stays internal.
Figures and quotes are taken from the published case studies. Two customers is a small sample, so read the fit section for who should stay on Power BI.
Business software for mortgage brokers, replaced Microsoft Power BI
“We struggled with PowerBI - embedding it into our platform was difficult, the customization options were limited & the pricing structure was often unpredictable, making it hard to manage costs effectively.”
Insure-tech and employee benefits, replaced Power BI
“We tried setting up embedded analytics with Power BI and honestly, it was a nightmare.”
The short version of Databrain and Power BI Embedded side by side.
| Databrain | Power BI Embedded | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Multi-tenant B2B SaaS products embedding customer-facing analytics | Microsoft's BI platform, with an embed-for-your-customers option typically used by ISVs |
| How it embeds | Web components (Shadow DOM) for React, Next.js, Angular, Vue, Svelte, Solid and vanilla JS | An iframe driven by the powerbi-client library, with official React and Angular wrappers |
| How tenants are scoped | clientId in a server-minted guest token; one data app serves every tenant | You design it: workspace per tenant, or a shared model with RLS roles, managed with service principal profiles |
| Who needs a licence | Unlimited seats on every plan | App users need no Power BI licence; users who publish content need Power BI Pro |
| Pricing model | Flat and published: $999/mo Growth, $1,995/mo Pro, Enterprise custom | Capacity billed hourly: A1 at $735.913/month, Fabric F2 at $262.80/month pay as you go |
| Query model | Live queries against your warehouse | Import, DirectQuery or Composite semantic models |
| Deployment | Databrain cloud on AWS, or self-hosted on Enterprise | A capacity (A, EM, P or F SKU) you provision |
| Typical time to production | 1 to 4 weeks across five published customers; EpochOS 2 weeks, BerryBox 3 weeks | Depends on your build; Microsoft publishes no figure |
Databrain is an AI-native embedded analytics platform for B2B SaaS. You connect your warehouse with read-only access, set a tenant column, mint a guest token from your backend, and place a web component in your app.
Dashboards are white-labeled, and customers can ask questions in natural language.
Power BI Embedded is Microsoft's offering for embedding Power BI reports, dashboards and paginated reports in your own application.
In the embed-for-your-customers model (app owns data), your app authenticates to Power BI with a service principal or master user, so your customers do not sign in to Power BI or need a licence. Embedding in production requires a capacity (A, EM, P or F SKU).
Databrain mounts web components in your page. Power BI renders through an iframe controlled by the powerbi-client library, and its React and Angular wrappers expose that same iframe. Theming on the Power BI side is a theme JSON object plus CSS on the container.
Databrain scopes the tenant from the clientId in a guest token. Power BI gives you two documented patterns, a workspace per tenant or a shared model with RLS, and service principal profiles to manage them. Power BI scales this, but you operate it.
Databrain charges a flat monthly fee by feature. Power BI Embedded and Fabric bill capacity by the hour, and a capacity can be paused when idle.
Power BI is a full BI platform: DAX, in-memory Import models, paginated reports and a visual marketplace. Databrain is a narrower embedding layer that queries your warehouse live.
Databrain includes natural-language search on every plan. On Power BI, embedded Q&A is going away in February 2027, and Copilot in Power BI requires a paid Fabric F2 or Power BI Premium P1 capacity or higher.
Twenty capabilities that decide a customer-facing analytics build, Databrain against Power BI Embedded. Power BI cells cite Microsoft's own documentation and pricing pages, opened on 22 October 2026. Databrain cells cite our pricing page and product docs. Where Power BI is stronger, the cell says so.
| Capability | Databrain | Power BI Embedded |
|---|---|---|
| Embedding and branding | ||
| Yes: Web components in your page | Partial: Iframe with a JavaScript API | |
| Whether the analytics surface is part of your DOM or a document your page hosts. | <dbn-dashboard> and <dbn-metric> from @databrainhq/plugin render inside Shadow DOM. An iframe route exists and our docs mark it as not recommended. | The powerbi-client library controls an iframe, and Microsoft's React component lets you set CSS class names that style the embedded iframe. You get a rich client-side API, but the report renders in a frame your page hosts. |
| Yes: Seven framework guides | Yes: JS client plus React and Angular wrappers | |
| How much glue code your team writes per framework. | Guides for React, Next.js, Angular, Vue, Svelte, Solid and vanilla JS, all against the same component. Angular, Vue, Svelte and vanilla hosts need react and react-dom as dependencies. | Microsoft publishes the powerbi-client JavaScript library and official React and Angular components that embed reports, dashboards, tiles, visuals and Q&A. |
| Yes: Four theming layers, per-customer themes | Partial: Theme JSON and container CSS | |
| Whether "matches our design system" means a token map or a colour palette. | Chart appearance, admin theme options, custom chart settings and saved metric settings resolve in a fixed priority order. White-labeling and per-customer UI themes are on every plan. Scheduled report emails can be sent through your own SMTP server. | A report theme JSON object can be passed at embed time or applied at runtime with applyTheme, and the embedded iframe can be styled from outside with a CSS class. We found no Microsoft documentation of styling elements inside the report with your own CSS. |
| You set the guest token TTL | Partial: Capped by the Entra token | |
| Customer-facing embeds need renewal logic you write and own. | Your backend sets the time to live when it mints the guest token. | Microsoft states that for security reasons the embed token lifetime is set to the remaining lifetime of the Microsoft Entra token used to call GenerateToken, so reusing one Entra token shortens each embed token you generate from it. |
| Multi-tenancy and security | ||
| Yes: One data app, scoped by clientId | Partial: You design and operate it | |
| Whether onboarding tenant 500 is a value in a token or a provisioning pipeline. | One data app serves every tenant. Tenancy can be a shared table with a tenant column, a schema per tenant or a database per tenant. The recommended shape is one workspace for all tenants, not a workspace per tenant. | Microsoft documents a workspace per customer, managed with service principal profiles, and a shared model with row-level security. Without profiles a service principal is limited to 1,000 workspaces; each profile can access or create up to 1,000, and a service principal can have up to 100,000 profiles. Microsoft recommends workspace isolation with profiles, and says one shared model with RLS can be convenient for ISVs with relatively few customers and small to medium-sized models. It scales, and it is a provisioning system you run. |
| clientId in a server-side guest token | Effective identity in the token request | |
| The identity you pass is a security-critical input on both sides. | Your backend mints a guest token that carries the tenant clientId. Databrain looks the token up server-side and checks expiry and permissions before generating SQL. In custom SQL metrics the tenant filter is not auto-injected: you reference the tenant variable yourself. | Your app supplies an effective identity with username and roles when it generates the embed token. For a service principal, token generation fails if the required identity is missing. For a master user it succeeds but the data is not filtered and all of it is returned. |
| Yes: Tenant filter compiled into the SQL | Yes: DAX roles, static or dynamic | |
| Power BI's RLS is genuinely strong. The question is where it lives and who maintains it as tenants multiply. | For builder metrics Databrain injects the tenant filter into the generated query server-side. Per-session constraints go in rlsSettings in the guest token. Row and column level security rules are an Enterprise feature. | Roles are defined with DAX filter expressions. Dynamic security uses username() or userprincipalname(), and static roles use a fixed value. Well documented by Microsoft. |
| Live queries, caching on Pro and up | Partial: Separate tile queries per user | |
| In multi-tenant embedding, per-tenant security and per-tenant cost are linked. | Queries run against your warehouse through the same tenant-scoped path for dashboards and natural-language questions. Caching is available on Pro and Enterprise. | For DirectQuery dashboard tiles, Microsoft says that with row-level security each user runs separate tile queries, and that a high tile count multiplied by user count and refresh frequency can create heavy load. |
| Yes: Cloud, or self-hosted on Enterprise | A capacity you provision | |
| Regulated customers ask where the data sits and who can reach it. | Cloud on AWS, or self-hosted in your own infrastructure on Enterprise, with VPC peering and a bastion host. Queries run live against your warehouse with SELECT-only access. Query results are cached only if you turn on caching, in Databrain's managed cache or in a Redis you run. | Embedding in production needs a capacity (A, EM, P or F SKU). In Import mode, data is stored in the semantic model; in DirectQuery mode, the model holds only metadata and queries the source. |
| Data and query | ||
| Partial: Live queries only | Yes: Import, DirectQuery, CompositePower BI Embedded leads here | |
| If you want data held in an in-memory model, Power BI offers it and Databrain does not. | Every surface queries your warehouse live: Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, Databricks, ClickHouse, Postgres, MySQL, MSSQL, Athena, Trino, MongoDB, Elasticsearch and more. CSV uploads are snapshots, not live connections. | Import mode delivers fast in-memory querying, DirectQuery sends native queries to the source, and Composite mixes the two at table level. |
| No fixed row cap documented | Partial: 1,000,000 row limit in DirectQuery | |
| A ceiling your largest customer may find before you do. | We publish no equivalent fixed row cap. Very large result sets can hit the component's browser storage quota, which is a known design constraint of the embed. | Microsoft states that in DirectQuery any query or intermediate operation that returns more than 1,000,000 rows fails, and that Premium capacities can raise the limit. |
| Yes: Custom SQL supported; you add the tenant variable | Partial: CTEs do not fold in DirectQuery | |
| Matters if your datasets rely on CTE-based SQL under DirectQuery. | Custom SQL metrics are supported. The tenant filter is not auto-injected in custom SQL, so you reference the tenant variable yourself, or the metric runs unscoped. | Microsoft states that stored procedure calls and common table expressions are not supported in a way that allows folding in DirectQuery. |
| Partial: Builder, custom SQL, calculated fields | Yes: DAXPower BI Embedded leads here | |
| Who on your team can ship a new metric without help. | Metrics are built by drag and drop, custom SQL or natural language, with reusable calculated fields. This is simpler than a full modeling language. | DAX is used in measures, calculated columns, calculated tables and row-level security. It is more expressive than a drag-and-drop builder, and it takes real expertise to use well. |
| What your customer gets | ||
| Yes: Enterprise plan | Yes: Edit and create permissions in the token | |
| Whether every customer request for a new chart becomes a ticket for your team. | End-user report creation is an Enterprise feature, and also needs the workspace and permissions configured to allow it. | An embed token can grant view or edit permissions on a report, and adding the workspace to the token lets users create new reports (Save As or Create New). |
| Yes: Every plan, bring your own LLM | Partial: Q&A retiring; Copilot needs F2 or P1 and up | |
| Whether AI is a feature you ship or a capacity you buy. | Natural-language search is included on every plan, and follow-up chat on Pro and Enterprise. Connect OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, Llama or Mixtral. Questions run through the same tenant-scoped query path as dashboards. | Microsoft documents embedding Q&A, where users ask questions in natural language, and states that Q&A experiences are going away in February 2027 in favor of Copilot. Microsoft lists Power BI Embedded among Copilot surfaces; Copilot in Power BI requires a workspace on a paid Fabric capacity (F2 or higher) or Power BI Premium (P1 or higher), or a Fabric Copilot capacity. Trial capacities are not supported. |
| Partial: Standard chart set, no marketplace | Yes: Marketplace, R and Python visualsPower BI Embedded leads here | |
| If you need an exotic visual or a pixel-perfect paginated invoice, Power BI has more shelf. | Bar, row, stacked, combo, line, area, pie, KPI, pivot table, map, scatter, funnel and gauge, with per-chart appearance control. There is no third-party visual marketplace. | Built-in visuals plus custom visuals from Microsoft AppSource or your own, and R and Python visuals for statistical work. Paginated reports can also be embedded, using a service principal. |
| No: Not a Databrain feature | Partial: Translytical task flows, secure embed only | |
| Write-back inside a customer-facing embed is not documented on either side today; Power BI offers it to licensed viewers. | Databrain reads from your warehouse and does not write back to it. | Translytical task flows let users update, add or delete records in Fabric databases from a report, using Fabric user data functions. Microsoft lists a limitation: Power BI Embedded is supported only for secure embed scenarios, the no-code embed where each viewer needs a Power BI licence. We found no documentation of write-back in an embed-for-your-customers app. |
| No: Not its purpose | Yes: SharePoint Online, PowerPointPower BI Embedded leads here | |
| Relevant only if some of your viewers live inside Microsoft 365. | Databrain embeds in your own product. It does not target Microsoft 365 surfaces. | Microsoft documents embedding Power BI content in Microsoft 365 apps such as SharePoint Online and PowerPoint, with per-user licensing implications on smaller capacities. |
| Commercial | ||
| Yes: Flat and published | Hourly capacity | |
| One of these bills is flat; the other tracks the capacity you provision. | Growth $999/mo, Pro $1,995/mo, Enterprise custom. Seats, embeds and tenants are unlimited on every plan. 14-day free trial, with a proof of concept on your dataset for Pro and Enterprise. Growth and Pro include support through a Slack, Microsoft Teams or Google Spaces channel plus in-app chat; Enterprise gets 24x7 premium support and a dedicated account manager. | Power BI Embedded bills hourly by node, computed to the second: A1 is $735.913/month, A2 $1,465.913, A3 $2,937.666, A4 $5,881.245, A5 $11,768.33, A6 $23,542.938. Fabric F2 is $262.80/month and F64 $8,409.60/month pay as you go. Capacity can be paused. Users who publish content need Power BI Pro at $14 per user per month paid yearly; viewers need no Power BI licence. |
| 14-day trial on every plan | Capacity purchase for production | |
| A purchase decision you make before a customer sees anything. | Start on Growth or Pro with a 14-day free trial. Pro and Enterprise trials include a proof of concept on your own dataset. | Microsoft states that to embed in production you must use a capacity. Free embed trial tokens show a free-trial banner until a capacity is purchased. |
Tenant isolation is the hardest part of customer-facing analytics, and Databrain and Power BI Embedded solve it in different places. Power BI puts it in the semantic model and workspace layout. Databrain puts it in the token and the generated query.
Your backend mints a guest token that carries the tenant clientId. The embed sends that token with each request. Databrain looks it up server-side, checks expiry and permissions, then generates SQL with the tenant filter applied before the query reaches your warehouse. One data app serves every tenant, and extra per-session constraints go in rlsSettings.
One sharp edge: in custom SQL metrics the tenant filter is not auto-injected, so the author must reference the tenant variable. A custom metric that omits it runs unscoped.
Databrain's Trust Center lists SOC 2 and GDPR as compliant and ISO 27001 as in progress. We did not compare Microsoft's certifications, so check Microsoft's current compliance documentation for your region and workload.
Microsoft documents two ways to serve many customers. One is a workspace per customer, with service principal profiles to create and manage that content at scale. The other is a shared semantic model with row-level security roles written as DAX filters, either static or dynamic through username() or userprincipalname(). Both are documented patterns.
Two details matter for a multi-tenant build. First, Microsoft states a service principal without profiles is limited to 1,000 workspaces, and a profile can access or create up to 1,000, with up to 100,000 profiles per service principal. Second, when RLS applies and no effective identity is passed, token generation fails for a service principal but succeeds for a master user with the data unfiltered, so the identity you pass is a security-critical input.
clientId and your data app name.POST /api/v2/guest-token/createPower BI's RLS is well documented; the difference is who builds and maintains the tenant layer as customers multiply.
Both lists are genuine. If your situation matches the Power BI Embedded side, that is the right call.
Match your situation to the row, then check the feature comparison for the detail.
| If your question is | Lean toward | Because |
|---|---|---|
| The viewer is your customer, not your colleague | Databrain | Customer-facing embedding, per-customer themes and no per-viewer cost are what Databrain is built for. |
| The dashboard must match your product UI | Databrain | Web components and four theming layers, against an iframe with theme JSON on the Power BI side. |
| Many tenants with self-serve onboarding | Databrain | Tenant scope comes from a guest token, and one data app serves all tenants. |
| A handful of enterprise tenants and a BI team | Power BI Embedded | A workspace per tenant with service principal profiles is manageable at that scale, and DAX RLS is well documented. |
| Your team already builds in DAX | Power BI Embedded | You reuse semantic models and skills; Databrain's modeling is simpler. |
| You need paginated reports or a visual marketplace | Power BI Embedded | These are documented Microsoft capabilities that Databrain does not offer. |
| You need forecastable spend regardless of customer load | Databrain | A flat monthly plan with unlimited seats, embeds and tenants. |
| You want spend that pauses when idle | Power BI Embedded | Power BI Embedded and Fabric capacity can be paused; paused content does not load. |
| You must self-host the analytics layer | Databrain | Self-hosted deployment is available on the Enterprise plan. |
A flat plan and an hourly capacity are different shapes of bill, so compare Databrain and Power BI Embedded at your own tenant count, load and uptime needs. Neither is cheaper in every case.
Growth includes multi-tenancy and 1 data source. Pro adds unlimited data sources, SSO and roles and permissions. Enterprise adds self-hosting, multi-region deployment, VPC peering and bastion host, and a dedicated account manager.
Power BI Embedded bills hourly, computed to the second, and you are not charged while a capacity is paused, though embedded content will not load. Viewers in an app-owns-data setup need no Power BI licence.
Microsoft prices are East US list prices read from Microsoft's Azure and Power BI pricing pages on 22 October 2026, and vary by region. Monthly figures are Microsoft's own, based on a 730-hour month: A1 is $1.0081 per hour and F2 is $0.36 per hour. A7 and A8 are not offered in East US. Databrain prices are from the pricing page.
Keep Power BI for internal reporting. The move is for the customer-facing layer. Databrain's five published customers went live in 1 to 4 weeks, EpochOS in 2 and BerryBox in 3, and you can run both side by side until you cut over.
List the highest-traffic reports and the DAX measures behind them.
Connect to Databrain with read-only access.
Tell Databrain which column identifies each tenant in your data.
Rebuild them as Databrain metrics, using drag and drop, custom SQL or natural language.
From your backend, create a token with each customer's clientId.
Replace the iframe with a Databrain web component for a pilot group and run both.
Move the remaining tenants, then pause or scale down the Power BI capacity.
Plan to recreate reports rather than import them. Customer timelines are from the published case studies: Freightify 1 week, Spendflo 2, EpochOS 2, BerryBox 3 and SpotDraft 4.
Yes, for customer-facing analytics inside a SaaS product. Databrain renders as web components, scopes each tenant from a guest token and charges a flat monthly plan. It is not a replacement for Power BI as an internal BI tool, and Power BI can stay in place for that.
Yes, and we recommend it if it already works for your team. Databrain is the customer-facing layer, not your internal BI replacement. Both connect to the same warehouse, so you can move customer-facing dashboards without touching internal Power BI reports.
Power BI Embedded capacity is billed hourly: an A1 running all month is $735.913 in East US, and a Fabric F2 is $262.80 per month pay as you go. Capacity can be paused. Databrain is flat: $999 per month for Growth and $1,995 for Pro, with unlimited seats, embeds and tenants. Compare at your own load and uptime.
No, not in the embed-for-your-customers model. Microsoft states app users do not need to sign in to Power BI or hold a licence, though users who publish content need Power BI Pro, which is $14 per user per month paid yearly. Production embedding also requires a capacity. Databrain has no per-viewer fees.
Yes. Microsoft documents two patterns: a workspace per tenant managed with service principal profiles, or a shared model with RLS roles. In Databrain you pass a clientId in a guest token and one data app serves all tenants. Power BI scales to many tenants, but you operate that setup.
No. Metrics in Databrain are built by drag and drop, custom SQL or natural language. Power BI uses DAX for measures, calculated columns and row-level security, which is more expressive but needs expertise. If your team already writes DAX, that is a point in Power BI's favor.
Databrain's five published customers went live in 1 to 4 weeks: Freightify in 1, Spendflo in 2, EpochOS in 2, BerryBox in 3 and SpotDraft in 4. EpochOS and BerryBox both replaced Power BI, according to their published case studies.
Queries run live against your warehouse, and Databrain needs only SELECT access. Query results are cached only if you enable caching, either in Databrain's managed cache or in your own Redis or Elasticache (cache settings docs). Enterprise customers can also self-host. See the security model.
We check every Power BI claim against Microsoft's own public documentation and pricing pages, and we date the check: every Microsoft source below was opened on 22 October 2026. Prices are East US list prices from Microsoft's Azure and Power BI pages and vary by region.
Databrain claims come from our published pricing page, product documentation and customer case studies. Where we found no Microsoft documentation of a capability, the cell says we found none, not that the capability is impossible. We did not compare certifications or Microsoft support terms.
Where Power BI is stronger, we say so. If you find something here that is out of date or wrong, tell us and we will fix it.
Thirty minutes. Bring your architecture and your warehouse, and we will show a white-labeled dashboard running against your schema and tell you plainly if you are a bad fit.