Fabric Plan Community Logo
Sign in
  pricing

Fabric Planning pricing: capacity & cost calculator

Size your Microsoft Fabric capacity by user role, then see the F-SKU that fits and what it costs each month
Size my capacity
The model

Three roles. One unit of capacity.

Planner
Builds and models the plan
1.16 CU
Stakeholder
Enters data and writes back
0.23 CU
Viewer
Reads the plan only
0.05 CU
Sustained CU per user: the share of your F-SKU each role keeps occupied. Add up everyone and that is the capacity you need.
F-SKUs are Microsoft Fabric capacity tiers. F2 = 2 CU, F4 = 4 CU, F8 = 8 CU, and so on — the number is the total CU available in that tier.

01 Your users

Who is using Fabric Planning?

Rates below are sustained CU — the average capacity each user keeps occupied. Count everyone active in the same 30-day window.

· 1.16 sustained CU/user 1.16 CU

Builds and models the plan.

CU/second
1.16
CU-hours (730 hrs)
846.8
· 0.23 sustained CU/user 0.69 CU

Enters or writes back data.

CU/second
0.69
CU-hours (730 hrs)
503.7
· 0.05 sustained CU/user 0.25 CU

Reads the plan only.

CU/second
0.25
CU-hours (730 hrs)
182.5

Background jobs over the 730-hour period. Each draws ~2 CU-hours, converted to a CU-equivalent and added to your capacity total.

0 jobs · 0.00 CU-equivalent*

* CU-equivalent: total CU-hours over the period divided by the 730 hours in it — the same conversion that defines the sustained CU rates above.

Add overhead buffer Optional safety margin on top of consumption.
% added to your total CU
Total capacity needed Sustained CU incl. 30% buffer

2.73 CU

02 Capacity that fits

Your plan

F4 4 CU tier

2.73 of 4 CU 68% full

Overhead (30%) 0.63 CU
Viewer ×5 0.25 CU
Stakeholder ×3 0.69 CU
Planner ×1 1.16 CU
Total needed 2.73 CU

1.27 CU headroom (32% spare in F4)

03 What it costs

Your monthly Azure cost

Pay-as-you-go

$525.60

per month for F4

Reserved · 1 Year

$312.67

per month for F4, about 41 percent less

Reserved · 3 Years

$312.67

per month for F4, about 41 percent less

Rates read from Microsoft's Fabric pricing page on October 17, 2026, and set by Microsoft. Subject to change without notice. Check the current rate directly with Microsoft. Listing a region here does not confirm that Fabric Planning is available in it.

  1. Microsoft meters Fabric Planning in sessions. A session starts when a user engages with a Plan item and runs for 30 days, whether or not the user returns.
  2. Consumption of Fabric SQL, OneLake, Power BI XMLA API and other native Fabric items are additional CU meters. Budget an additional 30% of estimated CU towards this, as indicated above. Actual consumption will vary based on data volume, query patterns and active usage.
  3. Automation jobs for advanced use cases like connected planning and automated cascading updates are metered separately. Each completed job consumes a fixed 2 CU-hours of capacity, whatever its runtime.
  4. CU rates are set by Microsoft and apply uniformly across regions. The cost of each CU varies by region. See the latest Fabric billing and metering documentation.
04  How it works

How Fabric Planning pricing works

For people, the cost follows a 30-day pattern: the first time a user takes an action, that action sets their role, and that role’s capacity is billed for the next 30 days. Background automation jobs bill differently, per successful run; see the Automation jobs section below. Five things set the bill for people.
Billing is based on sustained CU, and sustained CU only starts with activity. If no one opens a plan item for a month, no role is triggered and there is no charge. Off-season and unused months cost nothing.
01
Sustained CU is a seat license, not a meter.
The first time a user acts in a role, they take a 30-day license for that role, and that license is what sustained CU represents — a Planner holds 1.16 CU, a Stakeholder 0.23, a Viewer 0.05, occupying a fixed share of your capacity for the whole 30 days whether they sign in daily or once. It is not CU per hour and not CU-seconds, so it lines up directly with the SKU number. One Planner alone holds 1.16 of an F2's 2 CU — about 58% of the tier — which is why F2 cannot host a real deployment. Learn how Microsoft meters Fabric Planning.
02
Your action sets your role, and your role sets the bill.
You do not pick a role; your first action picks it for you. View only and you are a Viewer. Enter or write back data and you are a Stakeholder. Build or model the plan and you are a Planner. A user who holds several roles is billed once, at the highest role only.
03
A session is a 30-day commitment.
Once an action opens a session, its full 30 days are billed. The sustained draw runs for the whole window from the moment it starts, and closing the session early does not reduce the cost. Sizing is about who is active in the same 30 days, not how many people have access.
04
Add up the sustained CU and pick an F-SKU above it.
Your total sustained CU across everyone active, plus the CU-equivalent of any automation jobs, is the capacity your plan needs. Microsoft meters this per second underneath, but from a capacity view it reads cleanly as the share of your F-SKU each role occupies.
05
Region changes price, not capacity.
The number of CUs each role consumes is the same in every region. What changes by region is the dollar price of one CU — from $0.18/CU-hour across the cheapest US and East Asia regions up to $0.18/CU-hour in Norway West and South Africa West. The region selector carries the published rate for all 63 regions Microsoft prices Fabric in; if you hold a negotiated rate, or Microsoft opens a region it has not priced yet, enter the CU-hour rate and the page recalculates.
This calculator is kept deliberately simple: one consistent unit and one set of numbers. For the current dollar cost of a CU in your region, see Microsoft's Fabric pricing page.

One open question: whether Copilot and AI features draw from the same CU pool or bill separately. See the costing questions below for what we know so far.

Did you know?

PowerTable and Intelligence at no additional cost
One Fabric capacity subscription covers all three. Plan users incur no additional cost for using PowerTable or Intelligence.
Users who do not engage cost nothing
A session starts only when someone engages with a sheet in a Plan item. Users who do not engage in a given month consume nothing at all.
Extra workspaces do not add sessions
A user working across several Plan workspaces on the same capacity runs one session, not one per workspace.
MACC credit eligibility
Fabric Planning runs on Microsoft Fabric capacity, which is an eligible Azure service for MACC. Draw on Azure spend your organization has already committed.
05  Roles and Access

What each Fabric Planning role can do

Billing follows what you do in Fabric Planning, not your workspace role. A user with Contributor or Member rights who authors PowerTable and Intelligence content in edit mode is billed as a Stakeholder. Authoring Planning models in edit mode is the single capability that moves a user to a Planner session. Learn more about the full roles and permissions.

Session Types

Fabric Planning meters three session types, and each consumes Fabric capacity at a different rate.

Viewer

Consumes Plan items with read-only access.
Fabric Workspace Role
Viewer
(reading view)
CAPABILITIES
View data in reading view
Sort, filter and bookmark reports

Stakeholder

Contributes to Planning sheets, and authors PowerTable and Intelligence sheets.
Fabric Workspace Role
Viewer, Contributor or Member
(reading view and edit mode)
CAPABILITIES
Includes all Viewer capabilities
Reading view
Fabric Viewer role · across Planning, PowerTable and Intelligence
Enter data and collaborate
Create scenarios and simulations
Provide approvals and comments
Save and write back data
Trigger audit change capture
EDIT MODE
Fabric Contributor or Member role · PowerTable and Intelligence
Author reference data and tables in PowerTable
Author reports and dashboards in Intelligence

Planner

Authors planning models, and administers security and permissions.
Fabric Workspace Role
Contributor, Member or Admin
(edit mode)
CAPABILITIES
Includes all Stakeholder capabilities
EDIT MODE
Fabric Contributor, Member or Admin role · Planning
Author planning models and layouts
Author input templates for data entry
Configure planning logic, rules and allocations
Customize security settings and user permissions

Access by sheet type

Each cell shows the highest level of activity a session type can perform in that sheet type.
Session type
Sheet typeViewerStakeholderPlanner
PlanningBudgets, forecasts, scenarios, allocationsViewContributeAuthor
PowerTableReference and master data managementViewAuthorAuthor
IntelligenceReports, dashboards and analysisViewAuthorAuthor
ViewRead-only.
ContributeEnter data, run scenarios, approve, comment and write back inside an existing plan.
AuthorCreate and edit that sheet type’s Plan items in edit mode.
06  Single role

What a single role costs on its own

The common case: someone opens a session and stays at one role for the full 30 days, no upgrade.

Pay-as-you-go (list price)

Role Sustained CU CU-hours / session Cost / 30-day session
Planner Builds and models the plan. 1.16 847 $152.42
Stakeholder Enters or writes back data. 0.23 168 $30.22
Viewer Reads the plan only. 0.05 37 $6.57
One automation job not applicable 2 $0.36

East US pricing, $0.18 per CU-hour, as of October 17, 2026. Microsoft states a session as 30 days (730 hours). A user who holds several roles is billed once, at the highest role only.

Reservation (1-year, discounted)

Role Sustained CU CU-hours / session Cost / 30-day session
Planner Builds and models the plan. 1.16 847 $90.67
Stakeholder Enters or writes back data. 0.23 168 $17.98
Viewer Reads the plan only. 0.05 37 $3.91
One automation job not applicable 2 $0.21

East US pricing, $0.1071 per CU-hour, as of October 17, 2026. Microsoft states a session as 30 days (730 hours). A user who holds several roles is billed once, at the highest role only.

Reservation (3-year, discounted)

Role Sustained CU CU-hours / session Cost / 30-day session
Planner Builds and models the plan. 1.16 847 $90.67
Stakeholder Enters or writes back data. 0.23 168 $17.98
Viewer Reads the plan only. 0.05 37 $3.91
One automation job not applicable 2 $0.21

East US pricing, $0.1071 per CU-hour, as of October 17, 2026. Microsoft states a session as 30 days (730 hours). A user who holds several roles is billed once, at the highest role only.

07  Role changes

What happens when you change roles

Section 05 shows one role, flat for the full 30 days. This is the other case: a role change mid-session. Roles are earned by action — watch what an upgrade does to the bill, day by day.

Viewer → Stakeholder → Planner

The sample scenario: the same user moves from looking, to entering data, to building.

505.4 CU-hours over 30 days

Day 1, Viewer, 1.20 CU-hours
Day 2, Viewer, 1.20 CU-hours
Day 3, Viewer, 1.20 CU-hours
Day 4, Viewer, 1.20 CU-hours
0.23 CU
Day 5, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 6, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 7, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 8, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 9, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 10, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 11, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 12, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 13, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 14, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
1.16 CU
Day 15, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 16, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 17, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 18, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 19, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 20, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 21, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 22, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 23, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 24, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 25, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 26, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 27, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 28, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 29, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 30, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
  • Planner 1.16 CU
  • Stakeholder 0.23 CU
  • Viewer 0.05 CU

Viewer → Stakeholder

A reader is pulled into the cycle and starts entering numbers.

135.4 CU-hours over 30 days

Day 1, Viewer, 1.20 CU-hours
Day 2, Viewer, 1.20 CU-hours
Day 3, Viewer, 1.20 CU-hours
Day 4, Viewer, 1.20 CU-hours
Day 5, Viewer, 1.20 CU-hours
Day 6, Viewer, 1.20 CU-hours
Day 7, Viewer, 1.20 CU-hours
0.23 CU
Day 8, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 9, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 10, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 11, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 12, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 13, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 14, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 15, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 16, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 17, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 18, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 19, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 20, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 21, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 22, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 23, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 24, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 25, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 26, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 27, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 28, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 29, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 30, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
  • Planner 1.16 CU
  • Stakeholder 0.23 CU
  • Viewer 0.05 CU

Stakeholder → Planner

A contributor takes over the model partway through the window.

589.7 CU-hours over 30 days

Day 1, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 2, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 3, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 4, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 5, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 6, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 7, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 8, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 9, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 10, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
Day 11, Stakeholder, 5.52 CU-hours
1.16 CU
Day 12, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 13, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 14, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 15, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 16, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 17, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 18, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 19, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 20, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 21, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 22, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 23, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 24, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 25, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 26, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 27, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 28, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 29, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 30, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
  • Planner 1.16 CU
  • Stakeholder 0.23 CU
  • Viewer 0.05 CU

Planner, flat

No upgrade — one role held for the full 30 days.

835.2 CU-hours over 30 days

Day 1, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 2, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 3, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 4, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 5, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 6, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 7, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 8, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 9, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 10, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 11, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 12, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 13, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 14, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 15, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 16, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 17, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 18, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 19, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 20, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 21, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 22, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 23, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 24, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 25, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 26, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 27, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 28, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 29, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
Day 30, Planner, 27.84 CU-hours
  • Planner 1.16 CU
  • Stakeholder 0.23 CU
  • Viewer 0.05 CU

The vertical scale adjusts to each scenario, so compare the CU labels on the upgrade markers, not the bar heights, across tabs. Microsoft states a session as 30 days (730 hours), making official per-session figures ~37 (Viewer), ~168 (Stakeholder) and ~847 (Planner) CU-hours; this chart uses clean 24-hour days (720 hours), so totals run slightly under. Budget with the 730-hour figures.

Your bill follows behaviour
Traditional planning tools charge the builder rate for every seat, all year. Fabric Planning charges it only while someone is building, and only for the person doing it. Viewers are nearly free by design. Most of a deployment’s sustained cost lands at Stakeholder — the people entering data during a cycle.
Downgrading does not lower the bill
You pay for the highest seat license held during the 30-day period. If a user’s first action is the highest role they will hold in that window, later viewing or data entry changes nothing — there is no partial refund and no automatic downgrade mid-session. The next window prices at whatever role is active when it opens.
08 Automation jobs

How automation jobs bill

An automation job is work Fabric Planning does without a user in session — a background process runs, not a person clicking through the app. Two examples show up in practice.
01
Planning-sheet sync
A detailed-level plan is saved. A backend job re-runs the full P&L plan to keep the two in sync. No human runs it; the job bills an automation fee.
Learn connected planning with Infobridge
02
PowerTable intake flow
A customer intake form built with PowerTable gets a submission approved. Downstream creates and updates fire automatically. Each triggered run counts as one automation job.
Learn how to configure PowerTable automation workflows
This is a PowerTable- and planning-sheet-native capability, not a Power Automate feature. Unlike per-seat workflow tiers in other tools, there is no bundled allowance and no monthly run cap to upgrade past: each job draws its own CU, at a small disclosed rate, against the F-SKU capacity you already own — 2 CU-hours per successful job, about $0.36* pay-as-you-go or $0.21* with a 1-year reservation. Add your expected job count in section 01 to fold it into your capacity total.
Why “CU-equivalent,” not sustained CU:  automation jobs bill per successful run, not as a continuously-held seat the way roles do. To size your F-SKU from one number, the calculator converts their total CU-hours into an average CU — divided by 730, the same conversion behind the role rates — which is why automation appears in the same total and breakdown even though it bills differently.
In Progress
Microsoft has confirmed automation jobs draw CU per job, distinct from the continuous sustained-CU model roles use, at a fixed cost per successful job. The exact per-job draw and what counts as a trigger are still being confirmed with the product team; this calculator uses 2 CU-hours per job as a working estimate.
*East US pricing. Other regions price a CU-hour higher or lower; confirm current rates with Microsoft.
09 Sizing Reference 

How many Fabric Planning sessions fit in each F-SKU

The estimator above sizes a capacity from your active user counts. This section shows how much capacity each session consumes, and how many sessions a given capacity holds. A session, once started, reserves its share for 30 days.
What each session consumes
Sessions come in three types: Planner, Stakeholder and Viewer. Fabric meters them in timepoints, a unit lasting 30 seconds. An F2 makes 2 × 30 = 60 CU-seconds available per timepoint, an F64 makes 64 × 30 = 1,920 CU-seconds per timepoint. When a user engages with a Plan item, a session starts and draws its rate from every timepoint for the next 30 days, whether or not the user is active.
RateIn CU-secondsIn CU-hours
Session typeCU/second
the session’s rate
Per timepoint
rate × 30
Per hour
rate × 3,600
Per month (730 hrs)
per hour × 730
CU-hours (730 hrs)
per month ÷ 3,600
Planner
1.1634.84,1763,048,480846.8
Stakeholder
0.236.9828604,440167.9
Viewer
0.051.5180131,40036.5
CU-seconds is the unit the Fabric Capacity Metrics app reports. CU-hours is the same quantity divided by 3,600, and it is the unit Microsoft publishes session and automation figures in. Both measure capacity consumed, not time elapsed, the way a kilowatt-hour measures energy rather than an hour.
One session’s share of each capacity
What matters for sizing is how many sessions you have, not how active they are. One Planner session on an F2 reserves 58 percent of that capacity, leaving 42 percent for every other Fabric and Power BI workload. The same session on an F16 reserves 7.25 percent.
Fabric capacityAvailable per timepoint
CU-seconds
One Planner
34.8 CU-seconds per timepoint
One Stakeholder
6.9 CU-seconds per timepoint
One Viewer
1.5 CU-seconds per timepoint
F26058%11.5%2.5%
F412029%5.75%1.25%
F824014.5%2.88%0.63%
F164807.25%1.44%0.31%
F329603.63%0.72%0.16%
F641,9201.81%0.36%0.08%
F1283,8400.91%0.18%0.04%
F2567,6800.45%0.09%0.02%
F51215,3600.23%0.04%0.01%
F102430,7200.11%0.02%<0.01%
F204861,4400.06%0.01%<0.01%
Each percentage is the session’s CU-seconds per timepoint divided by the capacity’s: a Planner’s 34.8 against an F2’s 60 is 58 percent.
How many sessions each capacity holds
CapacityCU
Planners
1.16 CU
Stakeholders
0.23 CU
Viewers
0.05 CU
Est. CU/second
30% Fabric overhead incl.
F221121.9
F4415103.7
F8828387.9
F16163156012.9
F323273514030.1
F6464157529063.9
F12812830150580127.8
F256256603001,150254.9
F5125121206002,300509.9
F10241,0242401,2004,6001,019.7
F20482,0484802,4009,2002,039.4
  1. Based on an approximate 1:5:20 mix of Planners, Stakeholders and Viewers, with all users active concurrently. Where that exact ratio would exceed a capacity, the mix is trimmed to fit, most noticeably on F2, F4 and F8.
  2. A 30% CU allowance is reserved for other Fabric resources. Actual capacity required will vary by user activity and workload mix.
  3. Automation jobs are additional and not included above. Each completed job consumes 2 CU-hours, so 12 jobs a day is 24 CU-hours, the equivalent of 1 CU held for the whole day.
  4. The estimates above assume all listed users have active concurrent sessions. If not all users trigger a session in a given month, actual CU consumption will be lower, meaning you may be able to (a) support more users within the same capacity, (b) redirect unused capacity towards other Fabric workloads or (c) consider a lower capacity SKU.
10 Best Practices

Sizing and governance best practices

Size the capacity for Plan sessions, with room for automation jobs and other Fabric resources. That headroom keeps it responsive.
01
Give Plan its own capacity
Run Fabric Plan on a dedicated capacity rather than sharing one with other Fabric workloads. Microsoft’s guidance for Fabric recommends dedicated capacities for critical workloads.
02
Size your capacity with headroom
Keep sessions under 75 percent of a dedicated capacity, including the Fabric resource overhead. On an F32 or smaller shared with other workloads, keep them under 50 percent. Learn how sessions consume capacity.
03
Size on active users, not headcount
Size for active users in a given month, and not total users. A session starts only when someone engages with a Plan item. Estimate your active users here.
04
Assign Fabric workspace roles based on need
Assign the Viewer role to users who do not need to edit or create Plan items. They can still enter data, provide approvals, comment, write back and run scenarios in reading view. Learn more about roles in Fabric Planning and managing security in Fabric Planning
05
Keep Plan on one capacity
Each combination of user and capacity starts its own session. Consolidating Plan workspaces onto a single capacity keeps each user on one session.
06
Monitor before throttling starts
Set capacity alerts and use the Fabric Capacity Metrics app to see where consumption is going. Request spare regional quota in advance, since busy regions can be slow to grant it.
07
Scale up in place, never migrate
Sessions are tied to the capacity they started on. Moving workspaces starts fresh sessions there while the originals run out their 30 days, so you pay for both.
08
Reserve the capacity you always need
A reservation cuts 41 percent off the pay-as-you-go price. You can opt to reserve part of a capacity and let the rest run pay-as-you-go.
11 Costing questions

Common costing questions

The pricing questions we hear most. For everything else about Fabric Planning, see the full FAQ.
A session starts in two ways. One, when a user creates a new Plan item, assigns data and saves it. Two, when a user engages with a sheet in an existing Plan item, in edit mode or reading view.
A session runs for 730 hours from the moment it is triggered, equivalent to a 30-day month. The meter runs for the full period regardless of usage.
No. Once a session starts, there is no way for the user to terminate it early. It runs to completion.
When the session expires, a new session starts the next time the user engages with a Plan item, at whatever session type that engagement establishes.
Users can upgrade (Viewer to Stakeholder, Stakeholder to Planner) but cannot downgrade within an active session. On upgrade, the earlier session closes and is billed for the consumption up to that point. A new session starts at the higher session type, running from the time of the upgrade.
If the same capacity is assigned to multiple workspaces, the user is billed at the highest session type active across all workspaces under that capacity.
Active sessions continue to run and are billed through to the end of the session even if the Plan item is deleted.
The capacity is overcommitted: demand exceeds what the SKU delivers, and sustained overcommitment throttles it. Small SKUs such as F2 and F4 reach that point soonest, as do capacities shared with other Fabric workloads.
A capacity that goes past 100 percent of its available Capacity Units keeps running for a while by borrowing from future timepoints. Overage of up to 10 minutes is absorbed with no throttling at all. Beyond that, throttling arrives in stages: interactive actions slow down after 10 minutes of overage, interactive actions are rejected after 60 minutes and background operations are rejected after 24 hours.
A sustained CU is a seat license. The first time a user acts in a role, they take a 30-day license for that role, and it occupies a fixed share of your F-SKU for the period — whether they sign in every day or once. It is not a running meter: no CU per hour, no accumulating CU-seconds to add up, and the number maps directly onto the F-SKU scale. One Planner holds 1.16 CU, which is 58% of an F2's total 2 CU. That is why one Planner nearly fills the smallest SKU, and why F4 is the realistic floor for production planning.
Because they bill differently. Automation jobs bill transactionally, per successful job, the same way notebooks, pipelines and Power BI refreshes are metered. Sustained CU is a continuously-held seat license for the full 30-day session. To size one F-SKU from one number, the calculator converts total automation CU-hours over the period into an average CU — total CU-hours divided by the hours in the period, the same conversion behind the role rates. That equivalent is what appears in the capacity total and the dollar breakdown.
Billing starts when a session opens, and your role is set by what you do in it. Users start at the minimum — Viewer — and the system upgrades them automatically as they take higher-privilege actions: data entry or write-back moves them to Stakeholder; authoring, modelling or admin actions move them to Planner. A user holding several roles is billed once, at the highest. A role upgrade opens a new 30-day window at the higher rate, and once triggered that window is a commitment: the full 30 days are incurred even if an admin closes the session early.
A Viewer session: 0.05 CU held for 30 days, under $7 at Central US list rates. The peek is cheap; the upgrade is what to govern. Entering one number turns that Viewer into a roughly $30 Stakeholder session, and touching the model opens a roughly $150 Planner session. Treat any open as billable until told otherwise.
No cap. Within the 30-day session the role charge is fixed no matter how much you do — dozens of PowerTables, a hundred scenarios, thousands of edits, and the rate does not move. What scales with usage is the compute underneath, drawn from the Fabric capacity you already own; the seat itself stays fixed. That flat charge covers every artifact and unlimited activity across Planning Sheets, PowerTable Sheets and Intelligence Sheets, for whatever role you hold.
You are billed for the window, not the volume. Once you engage, the 30-day window is committed at your role rate, and ten entries cost the same as ten thousand. The same fixed charge that removes the ceiling also puts in a floor. The useful question is not the bill but whether that person belongs in the plan at all — if they do, the session cost is a rounding error next to what their time costs.
No. The window runs out either way, at the rate it opened at. Cost control happens before the click, by governing who gets access to which role in the first place — not by managing sessions after they have started.
No. Billing is based entirely on sustained CU, and sustained CU only starts with activity. The first action sets a role and opens a 30-day window for it. If nobody opens a plan item, no role is triggered and there is no charge. The one nuance is automation: a background job that fires in an otherwise idle month still bills its small per-job draw. No sessions and no jobs means no charge.
The same thing that happens on pay-as-you-go. Both capacity types hard-cap at the CU limit, and both offer overage billing as a toggleable setting. With overage on, additional CU-seconds are charged at 3× the pay-as-you-go rate. With overage off, the capacity throttles. Reserved and PAYG behave identically here — the difference between them is price and commitment. Size with headroom using the buffer setting above.
Pausing, resizing or deleting a capacity closes the books on every open session: the remaining days of each 30-day window bill out immediately instead of burning down over time. A restart is a pause plus a start, so the true-up rides along — but it is not a second charge. When capacity returns, users burn down hours already billed, and no new session opens until the original window would have ended. A restart accelerates the bill; it does not grow it.
Yes. Sessions key on the user plus the capacity, so one person active on two capacities opens two separate sessions, one on each.
They share the same pool, so size for the planning peak on top of your existing peak rather than as a separate allocation. The buffer setting in section 01 is one way to build that headroom in deliberately.
Traditional EPM tools charge annual per-seat licenses, and a viewer seat often costs nearly as much as a builder seat regardless of use. Fabric Planning is consumption-based: you pay for active use only, and the Viewer and Stakeholder tiers are priced deliberately low to make broad participation cheap. The planning workload draws from the same Fabric capacity you already run analytics on, and unused capacity stays available to the rest of Fabric. The comparison favours Fabric Planning most for seasonal cycles with many occasional participants.
Not confirmed. We do not yet know whether Copilot and AI features in Fabric Planning draw from the same CU pool or bill separately. Treat AI usage as a line item to verify during a POC.
Fabric Plan
Enterprise planning, integrated with PowerTable and Intelligence, native to Microsoft Fabric. Co-engineered with Lumel.
BUILT ON MICROSOFT FABRIC
CERTIFIED BY
Fabric Planning is certified by IBCS
Microsoft, Azure, Copilot, Excel, Fabric IQ, Microsoft Entra, Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft Teams, OneLake, Outlook, Power Automate, Power BI and SharePoint are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. IBCS is a registered trademark of IBCS Association. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

This community is operated independently by Lumel. Nothing on this site constitutes a representation or warranty by Microsoft.