How to Host Power BI Dashboard on Website

A Power BI dashboard full of valuable insights doesn't do much good if it's hidden away in the Power BI service. The real goal is to get that interactive data in front of the people who need it - on your website, blog, or internal company portal. This guide will walk you through the different ways to host and embed your Power BI reports so your audience can interact with your data directly.

Why Embed a Power BI Dashboard on Your Website?

Embedding a live, interactive dashboard directly onto your website transforms static data into a dynamic experience. Instead of just showing a screenshot of a chart in your annual report blog post, you can let users explore the data themselves. This is a game-changer for engagement and communication.

Here’s why it’s so effective:

• Wider Reach and Accessibility: You make complex information accessible to a broader audience - clients, stakeholders, or the public - without requiring them to have a Power BI account or special software.
• A Single Source of Truth: When the source data updates, your embedded dashboard updates automatically. This eliminates the need to constantly export new images or PDFs trying to keep your website content current.
• Improved User Engagement: Interactive reports are far more engaging than static images. Users can filter, slice, and dice the data to answer their own questions, which keeps them on your page longer and helps them connect more deeply with the information.
• Demonstrates Transparency and Authority: Sharing live data, such as public project performance or industry trend analysis, builds trust and positions you as a knowledgeable authority in your space.

Before You Begin: Licenses and Security are Crucial

Before you copy and paste any code, you need to understand the two main methods for embedding, as they have significant differences in cost, security, and who can view them.

Power BI Licensing Explained

Your ability to embed a report depends on your Power BI license. Here’s a quick breakdown:

• Power BI Free: Cannot be used for sharing or embedding content for others to see. This license is strictly for personal use.
• Power BI Pro: This per-user license allows you to use both primary methods of embedding: "Publish to web (public)" and secure embedding for other Pro users within your organization.
• Power BI Premium Per User (PPU): Functions similarly to Pro for embedding but offers larger data model sizes and more frequent refreshes.
• Power BI Premium (Per Capacity): This is an organizational-level license ideal for large-scale distribution. It is required for embedding content for users who do not have Power BI Pro licenses, a common scenario for customer-facing applications. We'll be focusing on the more common Pro-level methods.

Data Security: Public vs. Private

This is the single most important consideration. You must decide if your data is safe for public consumption.

Use "Publish to web" for: Data that is already in the public domain, like government census data, non-sensitive survey results, or general market trend analysis. Think of it like publishing a public article - anyone on the internet can potentially find and view it.

NEVER use "Publish to web" for:

• Confidential company performance data (sales, revenue, profit).
• Personally Identifiable Information (PII) like customer names, emails, or addresses.
• Any proprietary or sensitive business intelligence.

For sensitive data intended only for internal colleagues or specific clients, you must use the secure "Website or Portal" embed method.

Method 1: Publish to Web (For Public Data)

This is the easiest way to get an interactive report onto a public-facing website or blog post. Remember, only use this for data that you are comfortable with being publicly visible on the internet.

Step-by-Step Instructions

Follow these simple steps from within the Power BI Service (app.powerbi.com), not the Power BI Desktop application.

1. Open your chosen report in a workspace. Make sure the report is finalized and you have the necessary permissions for the workspace.
2. Navigate to the "File" menu. At the top-left of the screen, click File > Embed report > Publish to web (public).
3. Heed the Security Warning. A dialog box will appear, warning you about making your report data public. This is your last chance to confirm the data is not sensitive. Read it carefully and click "Create embed code."
4. Publish and Copy Your Code. Another box will pop up. Click "Publish." Power BI will then generate your embed code. The one you want is the long link inside the HTML text box, which is an iframe snippet.

How to Add the Embed Code to Your Website

Now that you have the iframe code, you just need to paste it into your website's HTML.

If you're using a CMS like WordPress:

• Edit the page or post where you want the report to appear.
• In the Gutenberg block editor, add a "Custom HTML" block.
• Paste the entire iframe code you copied from Power BI into this block.
• Save or publish your page. The interactive Power BI report will now be visible.

If you are working with a pure HTML file, simply paste the iframe code into the <body> of your document where you want it to appear.

<iframe title="My Public Data Report" width="800" height="600" src="https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=..." frameborder="0" allowFullScreen="true"></iframe>

Managing Your Public Embed Codes

If you need to revoke access to a report you've published, you can easily manage your embed codes. In Power BI, click the Settings gear icon at the top right, then go to Admin Portal > Embed codes. Here you'll find a list of all publicly published reports and can delete any codes as needed, which will disable the link immediately.

Method 2: Embed for Your Organization (Secure)

This method is for embedding sensitive or internal data on a page that is only accessible to authenticated members of your organization, like a company intranet built on SharePoint or a private web portal.

The key difference is that any viewer must have their own Power BI license (Pro or PPU) and be logged into their company Microsoft 365 account to view the content.

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Open your report in the Power BI Service.
2. Navigate to the "File" menu. This time, select File > Embed report > Website or portal.
3. Copy the iframe Code. A dialog box will provide you with an iframe HTML snippet. It looks similar to the public one but works differently behind the scenes. Copy this code.
4. Embed it in your secure site. Paste this iframe code into your internal portal or intranet page. When a user visits this page, they'll see a 'Sign In' button within the frame. Once they authenticate with their work credentials, the report will load.

This method is perfect for a sales team dashboard on a SharePoint site, where you want to share performance data only with logged-in team members.

Customizing Your Embedded Report's Experience

Pasting the default embed code is a great start, but you can tweak it to deliver a more refined viewing experience.

Controlling the Initial View with URL Filters

You can force an embedded report to load with specific filters already applied. This is incredibly useful for creating multiple views of the same master report. For example, you could embed the same sales dashboard on three different regional pages, each filtered to that specific region by default.

To do this, you add a filter parameter to the URL inside your iframe code. The format is:

&filter=TableName/FieldName eq 'Value'

Let's say your src URL is https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=… and you have a table named Regions with a column called Country. To filter for "Canada," you would modify the src like this:

src="https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=…&filter=Regions/Country eq 'Canada'"

Users can still change the filter within the report, but their initial view is tailored to their context.

Default Page and Responsiveness

Your dashboard will by default load to its first page. You can specify a different page to load by adding this parameter to the URL: &pageName=ReportSection[PageID]. You can find the Page ID in the URL when viewing that specific page in the Power BI service.

Additionally, you can adjust the width and height attributes within the <iframe> tag to better fit your website's layout. Using a percentage value for width (e.g., width="100%") can help the dashboard adapt to different screen sizes.

Final Thoughts

Embedding Power BI reports on a website is an excellent way to share actionable insights, whether with the public or internally with your team. By choosing the right method - public for open data or secure embed for confidential information - you can ensure your data is both accessible and protected. Paying attention to details like URL filters and sizing can elevate the user experience from a simple embed to a truly integrated analytics tool.

Of course, this process still requires navigating Power BI service, managing different embed types, and tweaking HTML code to get everything right. To help teams move even faster, we built Graphed — it's an AI data analyst that allows anyone on your team to connect data sources and create real-time, shareable dashboards just by describing what they want to see in plain English. This removes the hours spent in dashboard builders and automates the manual reporting busywork, letting you focus on the insights, not the setup.