Power BI Consulting Rate – Hourly, Monthly, and Project-Based Pricing

Estimating the cost of Power BI development is an important part of planning the project. It is impossible to do without knowing an average Power BI consulting rate.

In this article we will explain different models of working with a Power BI consultant, how much you can expect to spend based on your Power BI project and main factors affecting the price.

Main Factors Affecting The Price

1. Location – it is no surprise that consultants from India or Pakistan would charge far less than consultants from the UK or the US.
2. Experience – beginner consultants who are still building their project portfolio would charge a lot less than experienced consultants with proven track record.
3. Specialised skills – consultants with Power BI Embedded skills could charge up to 300 USD per hour since it is such a niche skill. In general, if you are expecting that your Power BI project will require niche Power BI experience, expect to pay more.

Hourly Power BI Consulting Rate

Power BI consulting rates vary from $20 to $250 per hour based on location, experience and specialised skills. However, there are additional factors that affect hourly rates.

Small, one-off projects that take around 10 working hours would usually be done at rates of $100-200. However, consultants would usually reduce their rates for long-term projects that last for several months.

For example at our Power BI consultancy we charge $100 per hour for one-time projects that take up to 50 hours. However, for year-long ongoing projects we reduce our rates to up to $75 per hour.

Some consultancies would also sell a certain number of hours in advance. In these cases the cost would decrease the more hours you buy.

Project-Based Pricing

A starter dashboard would usually take around 10 working hours to develop which usually costs $1,000-2,000 for onshore and $200-500 offshore development.

Power BI consultancies would usually have a minimum rate for taking a project. For example, we don’t take projects that cost less than 1,000 USD.

A $1,000 with us would essentially get you a 1-2 pages dashboard from a data source that is easy to connect to such as Excel or SQL Server.

Other factors affecting the price of a project are:

1. Number of data sources – including every new data source into the data model takes more time.
2. Data source connectivity – if your data source has no native connector to Power BI, it needs to be coded from scratch which takes around 20-40 working hours.
3. Complexity of formulas – complex calculations take time to develop and test.
4. Design – some clients need a very specific way of displaying the data which is sometimes not possible to achieve with native Power BI visuals. In this case it is necessary to develop a custom visual using Deneb or JavaScript which takes 5-40 working hours.
5. Reusable resources – at Vidi Corp we have done 1000+ projects for 600+ clients which means that we have a lot of code or Power BI files that could be partially re-used for other clients. This helps us deliver projects faster thus reducing the overall cost.

The most expensive fixed-price project that we ever took was 30,000 USD where we coded 2 automatic connections (Salesforce, LinkedIn Ads) and connected to 10+ Excel files. The final dashboard had 10 tabs of high-quality data analysis and visualisation.

Price vs Quality

There is nothing wrong with wanting to reduce your Power BI project cost but compromising quality may cost you more in the long run. Because of this it is important that you know how to evaluate the quality of Power BI consultants. The quality of Power BI consulting services can be seen by:

1. Reviews – if a Power BI consultancy you are evaluating has little reviews, it might be a red flag. For example at Vidi Corp we have 200+ client reviews over multiple platforms.
2. Awards – a lot of awards are pay-to-win but there are a few that can only be won. Specifically, Microsoft gives a Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP) award to only 2,000 professionals per year to recognise them as great teachers of Microsoft technologies. Companies that have an MVP on their staff would usually charge a lot but the quality is undisputed. At Vidi Corp, we are ranked #1 in Business Intelligence Consulting Provider by G2 which is an independent ranking body.
3. Portfolio – A good Power BI consultancy would have a large Power BI portfolio showing projects that they delivered. A small or amateur-looking portfolio is usually a sign of lack of experience.

Make sure that you ask a potential consultant to show their Power BI portfolio and customer reviews. It is also important that they have portfolio cases that are aligned with your company: analytics projects in the same industry, analysis of the same data sources that you are using, etc.  

Cost of Power BI Licensing

In most cases you do not need to buy a Power BI license for an outsourced consultant you are working with. Power BI Desktop is a free application that allows the consultants to develop your Power BI dashboards.

You will need a Power BI license post deployment to share the dashboard with other users. The prices of Power BI licenses are:

• $14 per user per month for Power BI pro
• $24 per user per month for Power BI premium                  
• $735+ per month for Power BI Embedded
• $160+ per month for Power BI Fabric by Capacity

If you want to better understand what license you need, please refer to our Power BI licensing guide.

Want To Know The Price Of Your Project?

If you want to better understand the price of your Power BI project contact us today. We will help you estimate your project and understand how to use your budget in the most cost-efficient way possible!