Power BI Refresh Schedule: Updating Data Every Working Hour

If you’re using Power BI with a personal gateway to connect to on-premises or locally-hosted data sources, you can schedule your report data to refresh automatically at set times throughout the working day rather than relying on manual refreshes.

Setting Up Scheduled Refresh

1. In the Power BI service, go to your dataset’s settings page.
2. Expand Scheduled refresh and turn it on.
3. Set your refresh frequency to Daily, then add multiple specific times throughout the day (Power BI lets you add several refresh times per day rather than just one) — for example, on the hour from 9am to 5pm to keep data current through the working day.
4. Confirm your personal gateway is shown as online and connected under Manage gateways, since scheduled refresh will silently fail if the gateway machine is offline or the gateway service isn’t running at refresh time.

Things to Watch

The Power BI Pro/Premium licence tier you’re on affects how many scheduled refreshes per day you’re allowed (Pro is typically capped at 8 per day; Premium capacities allow considerably more) — check your current licensing limits if you want more frequent refreshes than the default caps allow, and monitor the gateway’s refresh history for silent failures, since a failed refresh doesn’t always surface prominently in the report itself.

Current Limits and Terminology (Updated for 2026)

Power BI Pro is still capped at 8 scheduled refreshes per day — that limit is unchanged. Premium per-user and Premium/Fabric capacity licensing (the F/EM/P SKUs) allow considerably more: up to 48 refreshes per day rather than a genuinely unlimited number, which is a common misconception worth correcting if you’re planning around it. One naming note: Microsoft’s current official term for what this post calls a “personal gateway” is the on-premises data gateway (personal mode) — the shorthand “personal gateway” still gets used informally, but that’s the current documented name if you’re searching Microsoft’s own docs.

Resources

• power bi jira
•  Power BI course
• guide