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Metabase vs Microsoft Power BI comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Metabase
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
26th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Power BI
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
319
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Metabase is 0.8%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 21.6%, down from 22.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Ibrahim Izz El-Deen - PeerSpot reviewer
Modern analytics tool enhances user interactions with neat visualizations for improved decision-making
One area for improvement could be in offering more advanced features even in the open-source edition or making the paid versions more cost-effective. Data scalability, especially if the data grows, requires manual infrastructure management, which could be improved. Increased customization and visualization options in the open-source edition would be beneficial. Additionally, it might be helpful if more complex queries and stored procedures were supported.
James Balbach - PeerSpot reviewer
Robust system consistently elevates data visualization and seamlessly updates with user-driven advancements
Power BI is a general-use visualization system. I can express the performance of our network through high-level key performance indicators. It allows me to show detailed improvements in quality and safety and patient experience. I create improvement dashboards for task forces and work teams. I have built analytic dashboards that guide analytics, enabling research and dataset manipulation.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature of the solution is its interface, which is used to query data into Metabase. I think it is very useful and handy for a novice."
"I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten."
"Metabase's key advantage is its modern approach to business intelligence."
"It is easy for a new user to learn the tool."
"What I like about Power BI is how fast you are able to create dashboards and how fast you are able to fetch the data. You can connect to the database or data source, and then you can design your dashboards very easily."
"Its data visualization provides the user the ability to quickly look at data and focus on relevant information, allowing them to make an immediate decision."
"The ROI is high for small teams or basic use cases with limited datasets."
"The most effective feature of Microsoft Power BI for data analysis is the ability to use Power Query directly from Excel. Power BI's integration capabilities impacted our data management by allowing us to push all reporting down to the end user, giving them the capability to perform "what if" scenarios and discover and validate their own data without needing to refer to IT. Additionally, it provided insights that we couldn't get from Oracle Cloud. We wrote an extract routine to transfer our Oracle Cloud database to Power BI, which was a game changer in terms of giving people confidence in the finances."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft BI are the variety of possibilities to connect to various data sources. The visualizations are easily done, have useful rollover functions, and there are continuous updates being made to the system. You can benefit from the various improvements."
"Technical support is quite responsive."
"The main feature I find valuable is the possibility to work with an extensive amount of data."
"The DAX coding language is good for creating formulae."
 

Cons

"One area for improvement could be in offering more advanced features even in the open-source edition or making the paid versions more cost-effective."
"The tool must be made more user-friendly."
"The solution could provide more customization."
"I think there is a need to add a few more advanced visuals in the tool. There are a standard set of visuals in the tool which are available."
"Creating dashboards could be easier."
"They asked you to pay if you want to synchronize more than eight times, you would have to go to a Power BI enterprise license, which is much more costly."
"The initial setup is a little bit technical."
"When there are large amounts of data being processed there are additional tools needed to handle it."
"I found data cleaning in the solution to be quite difficult. If I could add a feature, I'd include Excel's Flash Fill function. This allows you to set a formula for one row and column and automatically apply it to thousands of rows, making data sorting much easier."
"The default parameters of the prompt could be improved by including a dynamic option."
"The UI looks awkward once the graphs have been generated in the console. This is what Microsoft can work on."
"Their technical support can be better. They normally take too long to escalate and resolve a case."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is open-sourced."
"I would not say it is a cheap tool, but it's viable."
"Using the open-source edition of Metabase on AWS EC2 cost us around $29 per month for the EC2 instance, which was affordable."
"Paid for itself in the first month."
"I believe that the price is reasonable, at least for an enterprise solution."
"In the beginning, the solution cost approximately $1,000 per month, we have a Microsoft startup subscription. There is a subscription pack for startups company which we are able to have for one year."
"The cost of licensing depends on the number of people that are going to be using the reports, and we are satisfied with it at $10 per user."
"MS BI comes with all the tools and it is, to the best of my knowledge, the most affordable solution."
"Power BI comes with enterprise Microsoft licensing. So for the user, you don't have to pay, but you do have to pay a one-time cost."
"I think it's a good price, from what I've heard. I know it's competitive with other Power BI tools."
"Microsoft BI is not expensive. Compared to the price of other BI products, the price is very fair."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 4, 2015
Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho
1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Educational Organization
43%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Metabase?
Using the open-source edition of Metabase on AWS EC2 cost us around $29 per month for the EC2 instance, which was affordable.
What needs improvement with Metabase?
One area for improvement could be in offering more advanced features even in the open-source edition or making the paid versions more cost-effective. Data scalability, especially if the data grows,...
What is your primary use case for Metabase?
I used Metabase for business intelligence and analytics in my organization. We connected Metabase to AWS Athena, allowing us to query and visualize data stored in S3 buckets.
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...
Is Power BI a complete platform or only a visualization tool?
Power BI is an advanced visualization tool oriented to big data with a very complete set of widgets to visualize information, control users accessing information, the configuration of governance po...
How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?
Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are fully customizable and very user-friendly. This solution is very stable. Oracle ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Accenture Adidas Aetna AIG Airbus Alibaba Allstate Amazon American Express Aon AT&T Audi Bank of America BASF Bayer Berkshire Hathaway Boeing Coca-Cola Comcast Cisco Coca-Cola Dell Disney Emirates Equinix FedEx Ford GE Google H&M Home Depot Honda IBM Intel JPMorgan Chase Kellogg's Kroger L'Oréal McDonald's Merck MetLife Microsoft Nike Oracle P&G PepsiCo Procter & Gamble Prudential Financial SAP Siemens Snapchat Spotify Starbucks Target Toyota T-Mobile Unilever Visa Walmart WeWork World Bank Xerox
Find out what your peers are saying about Metabase vs. Microsoft Power BI and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.