How to Downgrade User Roles in Amazon QuickSight

Amazon QuickSight supports three user roles — Admin, Author, and Reader — with role-based pricing and access controls. Downgrading roles enforces least privilege and can reduce costs by moving dashboard-only users from Author to Reader pricing. However, the QuickSight console and update-user API do not allow direct downgrades between tiers. Two workarounds exist: a manual deletion-and-recreation method, and an AWS CLI step-down sequence following the path Admin to Author to Restricted Reader to Reader. This sequence also works for Pro-tier users using legacy role intermediaries.