For more than eight years, customers have relied on Power BI Dataflows (Gen1) as a core part of their analytics solutions. We’re grateful for the trust you placed in the Power Query experience to build reusable, low-code data preparation pipelines that power reports, semantic models, and downstream analytics.
Now, we’re sharing an update on the future of Dataflows.
Dataflows Gen2 builds on everything you know from Gen1—preserving the familiar Power Query authoring experience—while delivering major improvements in scale, flexibility, cost efficiency, and manageability. Going forward, all new Dataflow innovation will land only in Dataflows Gen2.
The future of Dataflows Gen1
Power BI Dataflows Gen1 has reached the end of active innovation and is moving into a Legacy state:
- Existing Gen1 dataflows will continue to work for the foreseeable future. However, specific retirement dates for Gen1 are being finalized, and we’ll share details as plans progress. For customers running Gen1 at Premium capacity, we will provide at least 12 months’ notice before Dataflow Gen1 is retired. (If you’re using Gen1 on Pro or Premium-Peruser, we still strongly recommend planning a move to Dataflows Gen2 to take advantage of the latest investments.)
- In the meantime, Gen1 artifacts will remain available and will be clearly marked as Legacy in product experiences, including the New Artifact menu.
- No new features are planned for Dataflows Gen1. Support will be limited to a narrow set of high impact issues, where changes can be delivered safely within the existing architecture. Many of the remaining Gen1 limitations would require significant architecture changes and are best addressed by moving to Dataflows Gen2, which was designed to solve these scenarios more comprehensively.
The previous statements apply to all Dataflows Gen1—including usage on Pro, PPU, and Premium licenses.
What’s new in Dataflows Gen2
Dataflows Gen2 retains the familiar Power Query experience while introducing substantial platform-level improvements to scale, performance, governance, and cost efficiency. The following updates provide additional details on each benefit area to help customers understand the full scope of Gen2 enhancements.
More flexible destinations
Dataflows Gen2 supports a significantly broader range of output destinations, enabling alignment with diverse data architectures across business, departmental, and enterprise scenarios.
- SharePoint and OneDrive are ideal for business users who need refreshed files (CSV, Excel) for downstream workflows, Office automation, or integrations with Power Automate and Teams.
- Azure Data Lake Storage is a great fit for customers building scalable ingestion pipelines for data science, machine learning, or lakehouse scenarios.
- Azure SQL Database / SQL MI enables operational reporting, standardized relational storage, and hybrid analytics scenarios.
- Microsoft Fabric Lakehouse / Warehouse / SQL analytics endpoints are the most seamless destination option for customers aligning with the Fabric vision. Gen2 integrates deeply with Fabric runtimes, unlocking better performance, more consistent semantics, and governance alignment.
- Snowflake and other cloud databases support multi‑cloud architectures and reduces friction for enterprise customers already standardized on multiple warehouse technologies.
This broader range of destinations allows teams to use dataflows as a general-purpose low-code data ingestion and transformation layer, enabling many more scenarios never supported before with Dataflow Gen1.
Improved performance and scale
Dataflows Gen2 is built on the Fabric runtime and a modernized execution engine that delivers a step‑change in performance, reliability, and scalability.
- Modern query evaluation leverages Fabric’s elastic compute layer to automatically manage scaling behavior, minimizing the need for manual optimization or workload tuning.
- Fast Copy technology supports high-throughput ingestion into Fabric destinations, enabling sustained data movement measured in gigabytes per minute.
- Parallelized execution enables multiple partitions and transformation steps to be processed concurrently, significantly reducing refresh durations compared to Gen1.
- Enhanced support for large datasets includes improvements in memory handling, high-cardinality data processing, and unbounded ingestion patterns.
- Predictable refresh behavior ensures more consistent performance under varying workload conditions.
Together, these improvements establish a more durable and high-performance engine for data preparation, especially in enterprise environments that rely on large or frequently refreshed dataflows.
Built-in AI assistance
Dataflows Gen2 introduces integrated AI capabilities designed to accelerate development, improve quality, and reduce the learning curve for users working with complex transformations.
- Copilot-assisted authoring converts natural-language instructions into Power Query logic, improving productivity and lowering the barrier to entry for users with limited M expertise.
- Code explanation capabilities translate complex or legacy M scripts into easy-to-understand natural language descriptions, improving maintainability and simplifying onboarding.
- Automated performance and foldability recommendations help users align transformations to foldable patterns, resulting in faster load times and lower compute consumption.
- AI-powered data quality insights assist with identifying semantic types, outliers, and join keys and detecting common data issues early in the pipeline.
These capabilities provide consistent guidance across the authoring lifecycle and support organizations with diverse skill levels.
Richer diagnostics
Gen2 introduces a more comprehensive set of diagnostics designed to improve traceability, troubleshooting, and operational reliability.
- Detailed refresh history now includes detailed timing information to clarify where time is spent during execution.
- Expanded logging and instrumentation provide visibility into foldability decisions, connector behaviors, authentication flows, and network operations.
- More consistent refresh semantics across all destinations ensures uniform behavior regardless of the target storage system.
- Greater operational transparency supports root-cause analysis and reduces the time required to identify and resolve failures.
These diagnostic improvements help teams manage dataflows more efficiently and maintain higher levels of operational readiness.
Tiered pricing and potential cost savings
The introduction of a tiered pricing model is a major advantage for customers transitioning from Gen1.
- Gen2 decouples Dataflows execution from Premium capacity consumption, aligning compute usage with Fabric’s capacity unit (CU)–based architecture.
- This model allows customers to pay only for the compute resources required rather than maintaining always-on Premium capacity for workloads that may be intermittent or variable.
- Elastic scaling ensures that high-volume or burst workloads can consume proportionally more compute during peak times, while lighter workloads incur lower costs.
- Organizations with unpredictable or seasonal refresh patterns may see material cost reductions compared to Gen1 running on Premium capacity.
This flexible cost model provides more predictable and efficient resource utilization, particularly for enterprises with diverse or rapidly evolving data refresh patterns.
Our recommendation: Start planning your upgrade
If you’re starting a new project, we strongly recommend using Dataflows Gen2. It offers better performance, richer diagnostics, built‑in AI, broader destination support, and a more flexible cost model.
For existing Gen1 dataflows, now is the right time to begin planning your upgrade:
- Use Save as Dataflow Gen2 for quick, low effort upgrades of individual dataflows.
- For larger migration scenarios, the Save As API enables bulk migration and automation, supporting CI/CD workflows.
- For programmatic or large‑scale upgrades, refer to the Migrate to Dataflow Gen2 (CI/CD) guidance.
Starting now allows you to modernize incrementally, beginning with a subset of your portfolio while keeping all your Power Query skills fully transferable.
Thank you
Thank you again for your long-standing investment in Dataflows and Power Query. We’re excited to support your transition to Dataflows Gen2 and to help you unlock new capabilities for the next generation of analytics solutions.