In this article
Summary of components by onboarding scenario
Examples with calculation results
The Analytics solution is comprised of various resources that are sometimes on-premises and sometimes in SaaS or Azure depending on the setup scenario you select. Each component that affects Azure, Power BI and/or third party application is now described, the cost and list in which scenarios it is used or can be used so you can then make use of the Analytics cost calculator to estimate the cost of the Analytics environment before setup.
Analytics licenses
No license charge is collected by LS Retail for adding the Analytics for LS Central solution to a customer or partner LS Central license. Any partner and customer can request a license free of charge.
Azure SQL server and database
There is no direct cost of creating or running a new SQL server in Azure.
The payment for the Azure SQL database is fixed per month based on the selected pricing tier and is not usage related. As you noticed in the deployment process, you were asked to select a pricing tier - S2 is recommended. The pricing tier of the database affects both the max storage size and the number of DTUs the database can use. The DTU unit is best explained by Microsoft. But in short it combines the CPU and memory the database has access to.
The above image is taken from Azure price calculator for single database on May 20th 2025.
If you scale the database up or down for a few days, you can increase or lower the cost since the cost for the database is calculated every day from the monthly cost of the pricing tier you selected.
- It is best to scale the database up while you run the Initial Load, especially if you have a large transaction dataset.
- Then scale it as far down as you can while still completing the pipeline runs in a few hours every night.
- It is not recommended to go lower than the S2 price tier, but you might need a higher pricing tier if you have a high volume of transactions coming through every day.
Usage
The Azure database is used in onboarding scenarios
- LS Central on-premises and Analytics in Azure.
- LS Central SaaS and Analytics in Azure.
If you are hosting the Analytics Database on an on-premises SQL server then that might be adding cost or if you are reusing a server you already have it might not so we will not estimate that cost.
If you have LS Central on-premises and Analytics database on-premises you will need to add the estimated cost manually.
Azure Data Factory
The cost of the Azure Data Factory usage is based, and primarily related to the cost of the integration runtime actions that are run when moving the data between tables within the database (stored procedures pipelines and staging for LS Central SaaS) and when moving data between two databases (staging process for LS Central on-premises/VM).
The factors that affect the number of actions run by the integration runtimes are:
- Number of source tables - can be affected by disabling the modules you are not using. Standard Analytics loads 133 source tables from LS Central into staging.
- Data throughput - moving more data takes longer and therefore increases the price of the ADF slightly but there is always a certain base cost. The database performance and the sizes or the tables in the Analytics database also affects the time it takes the ADF to run and can impact the ADF cost of high throughput environments.
- Number of companies - cost of ADF is multiplied by the number of companies
- Number of Scheduled runs per day - cost of ADF is multiplied by the number of runs per day
Since the number or tables and data throughput do not have as large an impact on the cost of the Azure Data Factory as the number of companies and scheduled runs, those factors have been combined into one factor in the calculator that is called estimated number of rows per run. In most cases the number of sales transaction lines is the largest factor in the row count, and you can get the count of those by checking the count of lines in Transaction registry in LS Central for one day.
Usage
All the different onboarding scenarios use the Azure Data Factory.
Power BI license options
There are three main types of Power BI licenses:
- Power BI Free - A license for individual report development that does not allow sharing or publishing to the Power BI Service.
- Power BI Pro - Enables users to publish, share, and collaborate on reports within the Power BI Service. The Power BI pro is often included in Microsoft 365 E5 licenses or can be purchased separately (~$10/month per user).
- Power BI Preminum Per User - If you want to take advantage of Power BI Premium features like paginated reports, larger model sizes, and AI capabilities, you can opt for Premium Per User (PPU). (~$20/month per user).
Power BI Pro and Premium Per User are the most common types used by users of Analytics for LS Central but there are others more expensive ones that is good to mention as well:
- Premium Capacity (SKU-based): Designed for enterprise-scale solutions. Provides dedicated capacity for report performance, large datasets, and broader sharing with free users. Priced based on compute resources (for example P1, P2).
- Fabric is licensed via F SKUs (for example, F2, F4, F8), which unifies resource consumption across workloads.
- Power BI workloads running under Fabric capacity do not require Pro or PPU licenses for report viewers if the content is published to a workspace backed by Fabric capacity.
- Authors still need at least a Power BI Pro license.
Here is a summary that might help you in choosing the right model
Power BI licenses can be purchased through LS Retail so please consult our price list on the partner portal or contact licensing for further information.
Usage
If you want to utilize the Analytics report templates and semantic model your users need Power BI licenses, but there is also the option of connecting to the data warehouse from other BI tools such as Tableau. The star schema is created in the data warehouse but of course the Power BI report templates contain additional measures for example for time intelligence and other calculations.
Offline store license
If you need to use Data Director and scheduler jobs to replicate data from LS Central SaaS into Analytics you need to purchase an offline store license from LS Retail and provision or use a server that you already have to run LS Central on premises and Data Director. This cost is not included in the calculator since the cost of the offline store license is only $5 per month and the server price can vary greatly.
Usage
As stated, this is only used with the LS Central SaaS and Analytics in Azure onboarding scenario.
Third party solutions
As an alternative to the replication of data described above you can use a third party tool called Ecodel data warehouse to export the data into an Azure SQL database that can be used as an on-prem LS Central source for Analytics. The app subscription is $300 per month and you also need a second Azure SQL database to keep the source data. An S2 costs $74 per month. You can select this option in the calculator if you want to add these costs to your calculation.
Usage
As stated this can only be used with the LS Central SaaS and Analytics in Azure onboarding scenario.
Summary of components by onboarding scenario
| Scenario | Azure SQL database | Azure Data Factory | Power BI license | Offline store license DD and LS Central scheduler | Ecodel DW |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LS Central on premises and Analytics in Azure | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
| LS Central on premises and Analytics database on premises | ✓ | ✓ | |||
| LS Central SaaS and Analytics in Azure | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | (✓) |
Analytics cost calculator
Examples with calculation results
Small business
Small business with on premises LS Central and Analytics in Azure (S2), one company, small transaction throughput, one run per day and 4 Power BI pro users.
Medium multi company and multiple run business
Medium business with on premises LS Central and Analytics in Azure (S2), three companies, one run per day, medium transactional throughput and 10 Power BI pro users.
Large SaaS business
Lastly we have a large business using LS Central SaaS and Analytics in Azure (S3) with many stores and high transactional throughput but only one company. Using Ecodel data warehouse as source, one run per day and 20 Power BI Premium per user licenses.
Disclaimer
All prices shown are in US dollar ($). This is a summary estimate, not a quote. Prices may differ based on sizes of different tables being loaded from LS Central.
For up-to-date pricing information visit the Azure pricing calculator.
This pages and the calculator was updated 20/5/2025.