Are you interested in learning Power BI and/or testing out the brand new Microsoft Fabric (preview)? Do you want to do it outside of your corporate environment? We’ve got great news for you! You can sign-up for the Microsoft 365 Developer Program entirely for free, with no credit card needed!
Our friends over at BIFocal made a video on this topic, so if you prefer to watch rather than read, check it out on YouTube!
***EDIT: As of May 21st, at Microsoft Build, a new trial experience was announced. Visit aka.ms/try-fabric to get started today with no credit card required!***
What do you get when you sign up?
Great news! You get a FREE M365 E5 tenant – with 25 user licenses and a pre-configured sandbox for development*. This includes admin privileges!! So – if you’re studying for a certification or just trying to learn what admins can and cannot do, this is a great option.
An E5 tenant includes Power BI pro licenses for all users, and you can even access the 60-day trial of Premium features 💣! It does require a bit of set-up, but fear not, we’ll walk you through it.
How do you sign up?
You do need to use a business email to sign-up for the M365 developer program. Here’s how to get one for free!
1. Head over to signup.live.com and create an account. Note that this username must be globally unique, meaning, someone else can’t already have it. Be sure to select “get a new email address.”
2. Finish signing up by setting your password and logging in.
Now you can follow the sign-up process on the M365 Developer Program site!
1. Sign up with the new email you just created, and add the required info.
2. After answering a couple of questions, select the instant sandbox, which will configure the tenant for you! It’s so simple!
3. Set up a username and password for your tenant admin. You’ll create these – be sure to save them somewhere!
4. To complete sign-up, you’ll need to add a valid phone number for authentication.
Note that you can only have ONE M365 Developer Account per phone number, and you cannot use a VOIP number.
5. Once you’re signed up, you can assign licenses to users in the M365 admin portal.
6. Log in to Power BI and start building!!! Have fun!
Update:
7. In the Admin portal of your new tenant, enable the Microsoft Fabric preview!
8. You’ll then need to ensure your workspace has the Fabric trial enabled as well. Have fun!
To learn more about Fabric: check out Microsoft Learn!
* You cannot use this tenant for anything other than testing/learning. Don’t try to scam the system, it’s not kind.
Comments
25 responses to “Learn Fabric for FREE with an M365 Developer License”
I am unable to sign up for the M365 developer program
Hi Christy – where are you getting stuck? You have to first sign up for a business email at signup.live.com – after which you can register for the M365 developer program using that new email address. Feel free to elaborate on your question here – it might help others too!
Hey Shannon, great article – thank you!
What happens after 90 days? of free subscription, is it still possible to use it for free?
Thanks!
Igor
Hi Igor! After 90 days the subscription renews! I’m not sure what the limits are, but as long as you’re using the account, it will auto-renew! You’ll get an email reminder if you’re not using it and it’s about to expire.
I am having issues with step 5. The account I created and associated with M365 Developer Account won’t let me sign into the M365 portal to assign a Power BI license. Has anybody else experienced this issue or found a workaround?
I am having issues with step # 5. After creating an email and associating it to an M365 account, it won’t let me log into the M365 admin portal to assign a Power BI license. Has anybody else experienced this issue or found a work around?
@adam – that sounds strange! My immediate hunch is that there’s some sort of browser cache/authentication issue going on? Did you figure out what was up?
Is it possible to connect Azure resources to the tennant for development actions?
Hi Frits – honestly I’m not sure? I suspect you can, but I haven’t tested it. You will have global admin rights to this tenant, so you should be able to do whatever you need, but the Azure resources would need to be in the same tenant. Let us know what you find!
I am having issues with step # 4 while adding phone number for security.
We can’t continue with the signup process for the following reason:
Your phone number did not pass security checks.
MS-CorrelationId: 00000000-9cc1-4c13-9d49-f803f1af250a
Code: 40301
Please help I have tried 3 different numbers.
Hi Nitin – I’m not familiar with this error message, unfortunately 🙁 The first things that come to mind are: 1) are you entering your # correctly, with country code etc? 2) are you in a country that isn’t supported by M365 (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/business/international-availability)? 3) are you using a # that already has an associated M365 account?
Let us know if you figured it out! Good luck!
No luck on my end. I receive the following error when entering my phone number:
“We’re sorry, you do not qualify for a developer subscription at this time. Follow our Microsoft 365 Developer blog for program updates.
MS-CorrelationId: 00000000-bac0-407f-ade7-142d543d86e8
Code: 40301”
Hey Simon! You’re not the only person seeing this error. Is it possible that you already have an M365 account associated with this phone number? So sorry this is happening – must be frustrating. Any chance the FAQs can help? https://learn.microsoft.com/office/developer-program/microsoft-365-developer-program-faq
FYI Microsoft have paused giving free access to an E5 sandbox. They said: “While you can still join the developer program, access to the free Microsoft 365 E5 subscription is currently paused for the short-term while we adjust the qualifications for that benefit. To stay apprised of changes, please follow our blog.”
Source: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/microsoft365dev/stay-ahead-of-the-game-with-the-latest-updates-to-the-microsoft-365-developer-program/
Thanks for sharing this link, Will. I’m not exactly sure what this means – I’ll follow the dev blog and update the article accordingly. Thanks again!
Don’t see my comment; posting it again.
Was wondering if once 60 days run out, can I create another trial account with a diff email account? (I’m worried will run out of trial before gettting exam/certification.)
Hi John! I *believe* that you could create another account if you used a different email address and phone number. I’m not certain on this though. Let us know what you find!
Hi there. Just wanted to say thank you for this blog post!
While I had a developer sandbox for some time now I had not thought of using it with a Fabric trial (I let my other trial ran out by not using it…).
hi Shannon, thanks for the useful document. But I got stuck after sign-in to the Program. It gave me this saying: “Thank you for joining. You don’t current qualify for a Microsoft 365 Developer Program sandbox subscription.” Is it that MS stopped the program or anything I missed? I tried the way you mentioned in the article to create a outlook email and also tried to use my working email address. Both way gave me same result.
Hi Sean – unfortunately they’re making some changes in the M365 dev program right now and I’m not privy to what they all are! I’m sorry you’re struggling! Another alternative is to sign up for an M365 E5 trial, but I believe you may need a credit card for that. Good luck!
Hi. Any news on the issue “Thank you for joining. You don’t current qualify for a Microsoft 365 Developer Program sandbox subscription.” ? Thank you
Hi Seb – there’s something going on with the M365 dev program right now and unfortunately I don’t have any visibility into when it’s going to be fixed. I’ll continue to raise this with the team and will update the blog post if I get any traction. Thanks for checking in!
Hi Shannon… Seems last time I tried months ago, there was an issue with this approach. Please, what’s the latest best method for an individual (not affiliated with a company or school) to have a go and train with Fabric in prep for certification? Thanks.
Hi John – as far as I know there’s still an issue with the M365 dev program playing nice with the Fabric trial. The best bet is to try to use a Fabric trial on your corporate account (unfortunately). If anyone in the thread has better ideas I am all ears! aka.ms/tryfabric
Well I was able to get 60 day Fabric trial thru my Azure account as explained by :
Setup a free Fabric sandbox environment WITHOUT business email address
So, happy with this .
Thanks