Authenticate API in Power BI

If you add a web API as a data source you will not be able to add credentials in the usual way. It will fail to connect if the API uses authentication. To use credentials you need to store them in data source settings.

Go to File > Options and Settings > Datasource Settings.

From here you can see the data sources under global permissions. Click on edit permissions and a new popup will show up where you need to click edit under the credentials heading. From there you will get the popup shown below where you can add basic authentication to your data source.

Once you have entered valid information, you can re-add the data source and Power BI will automatically login to the API.