Microsoft Fabric is a comprehensive cloud platform that unifies data ingestion, storage, processing, and analysis within a single environment. It streamlines analytics by integrating data engineering, data warehousing, real-time analytics, and AI-powered business intelligence (BI) capabilities. By consolidating key Microsoft services like Power BI, Azure Synapse, and Data Factory, Fabric simplifies end-to-end data workflows and accelerates decision-making across the organization
Fabric compute engines
All Microsoft Fabric compute experiences come preconfigured with OneLake, much like Office apps automatically use organisational OneDrive. The experiences such as Data Engineering, Data Warehouse, Data Factory, Power BI, and Real-Time Intelligence etc. use OneLake as their native store without extra setup
Fabric is a unified data platform that offers shared experiences, architecture, governance, compliance, and billing. Capacities provide the computing power that drives all of these experiences. They offer a simple and unified way to scale resources to meet customer demand and can be easily increased with a SKU upgrade.
Microsoft Fabric’s Capacity-Based Pricing Model
A Microsoft Fabric capacity resides on a tenant. Each capacity that sits under a specific tenant is a distinct pool of resources allocated to Microsoft Fabric. The size of the capacity determines the amount of computation power available.
Your capacity allows you to:
- Use all the Microsoft Fabric features licensed by capacity
- Create Microsoft Fabric items and connect to other Microsoft Fabric items
Purchase a capacity once and use it to power everything Fabric
One of the biggest differences between Microsoft Fabric and traditional Azure services is how you pay for what you use. In Azure, each service—whether it’s Data Factory, Synapse, or Power BI—comes with its own pricing structure. That can get complicated fast.
Fabric changes the game with a capacity-based pricing model. Instead of juggling multiple service fees, you simply purchase a Fabric Capacity, also known as an F SKU. This acts as a shared pool of compute power for everything in Fabric—Data Factory, Spark for data engineering, Data Warehousing, Power BI, and more.
Each SKU gives you a fixed number of Compute Units (CUs). For example:
- F2 provides 2 CUs
- F4 gives 4 CUs
- …and it scales all the way up to F2048
All your workloads—regardless of the service—consume compute from the same CU pool. That means one predictable charge for compute, with no need to track usage across individual services. Simple, scalable, and cost-effective.
To use Microsoft Fabric you need to have a capacity license. Each capacity license is associated with a Stock Keeping Unit (SKU). Each SKU has its own considerations and limitations.
Microsoft Fabric operates on two types of SKUs:
- Microsoft 365 – Billed monthly or yearly, with a monthly commitment.
Microsoft 365 SKUs, also known as P SKUs, are Power BI SKUs that also support Fabric when it’s enabled on top of your Power BI subscription. Power BI EM SKUs don’t support Microsoft Fabric.
- Azure – Billed per second with no commitment. To save costs, you can make a yearly reservation.
Azure SKUs, also known as F SKUs, are the recommended capacities for Microsoft Fabric. You can use your Azure capacity for as long as you want without any commitment. Pricing is regional and billing is made on a per second basis with a minimum of one minute.
To buy an Azure SKU, you need to be an owner or a contributor of an Azure subscription
Pay-As-You-Go vs. Reserved Capacity
There are two ways to pay for Fabric capacity. Pay-as-you-go where you pay an hourly rate (billed per minute only while the capacity is running.
Reserved capacity means committing to a chosen F SKU for 1 year in exchange for a significantly lower rate. Reserved pricing is about 41% cheaper than pay-as-you-go rates. But you pay for the capacity regardless of actual usage.
Microsoft Fabric’s pricing model overlaps with Power BI licensing. While Fabric’s compute capacity (F SKUs) handles the intensive backend tasks such as data model processing and report rendering, Power BI user licenses are still required for creating and consuming content in most scenarios. Essentially, Fabric provides the infrastructure, but Power BI licenses govern user-level access and capabilities.
OneLake Storage
A single place to store all data.
The benefits of OneLake storage:
- Simplified purchasing with automatically provisioned single storage service for all workloads.
- A single copy of data across all the analytical engines of Fabric without moving or duplicating data.
- The ability to link your existing third-party storage systems natively and make them available to Microsoft Fabric analytics workloads.
- Open data formats that democratize access to multiple analytical engines, reducing additional resources needed to set up.
- Persistent security means all data and governance tools are accessible in one place, helping reduce maintenance overhead.
Fabric’s F SKU covers compute only — storage is billed separately. All data within Microsoft Fabric is stored in OneLake, Microsoft’s unified data lake. OneLake storage is priced separately and follows a model similar to Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS), ensuring consistent cost expectations for organisations already familiar with ADLS pricing.
