How much does a Power BI consultancy cost?

"How much will it cost?" is the first question we get on almost every Power BI enquiry, and it's the one that gets the least useful answer online. Most agencies quote "it depends" and move on. Fair enough - it does depend - but there are still sensible ranges, and knowing them helps you scope your project honestly.

Two ways consultancies price Power BI work

Most UK Power BI consultancies price in one of two ways: day rates for time-and-materials engagements, or fixed-price stages for well-scoped work. Both are legitimate. Fixed-price is usually better for you when the scope is clear (a first dashboard, a licensing review, a readiness assessment). Day rates make sense when the work is genuinely exploratory and locking down a price would just build in a big contingency.

Typical UK day rates

As a rough guide for 2026:

£600 to £900 a day - independent Power BI consultants or small specialist agencies.
£900 to £1,400 a day - mid-sized Microsoft partners with a data practice.
£1,400+ a day - large consultancies, tier-one system integrators.

Anyone charging materially less than the bottom of that range is usually inexperienced, offshoring the work, or has a business model that leans on selling licences alongside. Anyone at the very top of the range is generally being paid for their brand as much as their delivery. The mid-range is where most UK SMBs land.

What typical projects actually cost

Some rough project shapes to calibrate against:

A first live dashboard on real data - typically £6,000 to £15,000. Two to four weeks of work, including discovery, connecting a handful of sources and iterating with users.
A single-department implementation - typically £15,000 to £40,000. Six to twelve weeks. Proper data model, multiple reports, security, workspaces, training.
A business-wide rollout - typically £40,000 to £120,000+. Three to six months. Multiple teams, governance, deployment pipelines, adoption programme.
A licensing and estate review - typically £3,000 to £8,000. A short focused piece that often pays for itself in licence savings alone.
Ongoing monthly support - typically £1,500 to £6,000 a month depending on how many enhancements and new datasets you want in the queue.

Don't forget the licences

Consultancy fees are one line on the bill. Power BI licences are the other:

Power BI Pro - roughly £8.20 per user per month.
Power BI Premium Per User - roughly £16.60 per user per month.
Fabric capacity (F-SKUs) - starts at ~£220/month for F2 and scales up. Larger businesses often land on F64+.

Right-sizing the licence model is one of the highest-value things a good consultancy does for you. We routinely see clients overpaying by 30-50% because someone put everyone on Premium Per User when Pro would have been fine, or bought Fabric capacity three sizes too big.

What drives the bill up

Data readiness. If your source systems are messy or nobody knows where the numbers live, discovery and modelling take longer.
Number of sources. Every additional source system adds effort - connections, transformations, testing, refresh scheduling.
Row-level security. Complex security requirements (e.g. sales reps only seeing their own accounts) add real work.
Bespoke DAX. Advanced measures, time intelligence and calculation groups are cheap in effort but hard to get right - which is where experienced consultants earn their fee.
Change management. Adoption, training and running a governance model cost real money but pay back the most.

What drives it down

Clear success measures agreed up front - "what does 'done' look like?"
A small, motivated pilot group instead of a company-wide big-bang.
Reusing a well-designed data model across multiple reports rather than rebuilding for each one.
A fixed-price stage-by-stage engagement so you can stop, redirect or continue with your eyes open.

How we price

At Axon we scope in fixed stages - discovery, prototype, model and build, rollout, ongoing care - so you're never signing a blank cheque. Most first engagements land somewhere in the £8,000 to £25,000 range for a focused, working outcome, with follow-on stages priced separately once you've seen what you're getting.

Where to go next

If you want to see what an engagement would look like for your business, our Power BI consultancy page walks through how we work. For a full rollout in stages, see Power BI implementation. Or get in touch for a short call and we'll give you a realistic range for what you have in mind.