Prepare for your next data analytics interview with the most updated Power BI interview questions of 2025. Covers beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels with real-world concepts and tools like DAX, Power Query, and Microsoft Fabric.
Power BI remains one of the top business intelligence tools in 2025, widely adopted by companies for data visualization, reporting, and analytics. Whether you’re a fresher or an experienced BI professional, interviewers expect you to be up-to-date with Power BI’s evolving features and practical applications.
To help you prepare better, we’ve organized the latest Power BI interview questions from basic to advanced, including scenario-based and skill-specific questions used by recruiters today.
Basic Power BI Interview Questions (For Starters & Freshers)
These questions check your foundational knowledge of Power BI and its ecosystem.
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1. What is Power BI used for?
Power BI is a business analytics tool by Microsoft that helps turn unrelated data into coherent, interactive, and visually rich insights for informed decision-making.
2. What are the key components of Power BI?
The main parts include:
- Power BI Desktop (for report building)
- Power BI Service (cloud-based sharing and collaboration)
- Power BI Mobile (for iOS/Android access)
- Power BI Gateway (to connect on-premise data)
- Power BI Report Server (for on-prem publishing)
3. What’s the difference between a report and a dashboard?
A report can have multiple pages and is built from a single dataset, while a dashboard is a one-page summary made from visuals sourced across multiple reports and datasets.
4. What types of visualizations are available in Power BI?
Visuals include bar charts, pie charts, KPIs, tables, cards, maps, gauge charts, and custom visuals from the marketplace.
5. How is Power BI different from Excel?
While Excel is spreadsheet-based and great for individual analysis, Power BI is built for interactive reporting, automation, collaboration, and cloud-based sharing.
Intermediate Power BI Interview Questions (1–3 Years Experience)
These questions explore your working knowledge of features like DAX, data modeling, Power Query, and visualization logic.
6. What is DAX, and where is it used?
DAX (Data Analysis Expressions) is a formula language in Power BI used for creating calculated columns, measures, and custom aggregations in the data model.
7. How do calculated columns differ from measures?
- Calculated columns are evaluated row-by-row and stored in tables.
- Measures are calculated at query time and used for summarizing data in visuals.
8. What is Power Query, and how does it help?
Power Query is the ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) engine inside Power BI that allows users to clean, shape, and merge data before loading it into the model.
9. Explain the concept of query folding.
Query folding is the process of pushing transformations back to the data source to improve performance. Not all steps support folding, especially complex or custom transformations.
10. How do relationships work in Power BI data modeling?
Relationships link different tables using keys, enabling data to be joined for analysis. You can define them as one-to-one, one-to-many, and use single or bi-directional filtering.
Advanced Power BI Interview Questions (3+ Years Experience)
These questions assess deep knowledge around architecture, optimization, and new Power BI features.
11. What is a composite model in Power BI?
A composite model lets you use data from multiple sources—some imported, some in DirectQuery—within a single report, enhancing flexibility.
12. How do you implement Row-Level Security (RLS)?
By defining roles and applying DAX filters, you can restrict access to data based on the user’s identity, ensuring secure and relevant data views.
13. What methods can improve Power BI report performance?
- Minimize cardinality in columns
- Use star schema over snowflake schema
- Avoid too many visuals per page
- Limit calculated columns in favor of Power Query
- Use aggregations and indexing
14. What is incremental refresh?
Incremental refresh updates only new or changed data instead of refreshing the entire dataset, which is critical for large-scale data handling.
15. Compare Import and Direct Query modes.
- Import mode caches data in Power BI for fast performance.
- DirectQuery connects live to the source, showing real-time data but can be slower.
Scenario-Based & Recent Questions (Power BI 2025 Focused)
16. How do AI visuals enhance Power BI reporting?
Visuals like Key Influencers and Decomposition Tree use machine learning to show key factors, trends, and variance explanations automatically in reports.
17. What’s Microsoft Fabric and how does Power BI work with it?
Microsoft Fabric is a unified data platform introduced in 2023. Power BI is integrated into Fabric, leveraging OneLake for data sharing and semantic modeling at scale.
18. What are some 2025 updates to Power BI you should know?
- On-object editing for easier formatting
- Copilot AI for DAX, visual creation, and insights
- Support for semantic models from Fabric
- Enhanced real-time analytics capabilities
19. How would you migrate an Excel-based dashboard to Power BI?
You can load Excel files via “Get Data,” clean data using Power Query, rebuild visual logic in Power BI, and publish for online collaboration via Power BI Service.
20. What are Field Parameters?
Field Parameters allow end-users to switch between different fields (dimensions or measures) in visuals dynamically, enabling more interactive reports.