Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Microsoft Power BI vs Tableau comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos
Sponsored
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
7th
Ranking in Reporting
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Power BI
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
1st
Ranking in Reporting
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
315
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Tableau
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
2nd
Ranking in Reporting
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
294
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (1st), Embedded BI (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 3.8%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 23.0%, up from 22.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau is 20.6%, up from 18.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Q&A Highlights

it_user83559 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 15, 2014
 

Featured Reviews

Carlos Larrad Salgado - PeerSpot reviewer
Improved the quality of our KPIs, while reducing calls to the IT department
I don't like that when we use Colab packages, we get less functionality. For example, you can make groups of data with Excel or with the data sets from the packages, but when you use the Colab packages directly, you can only group the data when you analyze it with Analysis Studio. I think Cognos needs to improve more on this functionality. The user experience is also very important. Cognos is not very easy to understand sometimes, especially when they change the layout but keep the functionality the same. The help is not very graphic and they have no examples. Cognos has to make a big effort to help with understanding the functionality by improving the documentation. There is a lot of documentation, but the examples are hard to find and they should make their help section easier to understand for non-technical users.
Amol Rane - PeerSpot reviewer
Supports AI initiatives in terms of predictive analytics
The only issue is with permissions. Sometimes, despite granting granular permissions, dashboards are visible to people who shouldn't have access. It's difficult to understand why the permissions slip out. Sometimes dashboards are visible to stakeholders even though they should not have permission. It's a bit difficult to understand why the permissions slip out. The dashboards lack a user-friendly appearance, and the permissions should be easier to understand. At this point, we have to go through a lot of details. It takes a lot of time to understand the permissions, so if there were better options available within the Power BI setup, it would be quite beneficial, especially for admins. So, there should be a more user-friendly dashboard appearance and easier-to-understand permissions.
ROMIL SHAH - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides fast data access with in-memory extracts, makes it easy to create visualizations, and saves time
When it comes to visualizations, Tableau has a limitation as compared to Power BI. It has a limited set of visualizations. Power BI has the entire marketplace, so you can connect and import many visualizations and use them, whereas Tableau has only 10 or 15 visualizations. There should be more visualizations, and there should also be data integration with more cloud providers. Tableau has recently launched a paid version for the documentation. So, documentation has become a little bit challenging when it comes to Tableau development because we do not have any tool to export the data out of it. It is a license-based feature that you need to purchase to prepare documentation. So, on the documentation front, for preparing clear documentation for any dashboard, it would help if we get an embedded option, rather than buying a license for each user for the documentation. To document anything, if I have to connect to each workbook and see what has been written as a formula and then document in the Word document, it is pretty time-consuming. We have the Microsoft stack, and we are currently evaluating Power BI because Tableau has a limitation of 50 columns for a drill-down report. If we want more than 50 columns, we have found a hack, but there is no ready-made option for doing it. So, we have to use another tool in case we need a drilled report with more than 50 columns. There are many instances where users need 80 or 90 columns for their analysis, and switching between two technologies becomes a challenge. It is not a cost-effective approach for us. Their support should be improved. We are not happy with their support. Whenever we raised queries, we were pointed to a few blogs, and we didn't get a proper solution from them. Their licensing should also be improved. They want us to purchase a Tableau Creator license for business users, whereas Power BI Desktop is free for business users. They should come up with a basic license with one or two connectors that our business users can use for preparing their visualizations. Tableau also charges us per user for users who want the data only through email.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"IBM Cognos offers tools so that you can design and develop your own test queries and reporting solutions."
"The most valuable feature of IBM Cognos is security. The solution has updated features that other competitors' solutions come out with long after IBM Cognos has had them."
"It's enabled us to report directly from our main application systems. We're removing islands of data and we're removing inefficiencies, where people or small divisions had their own store of information."
"The basic platform comes with several meta-modelling tools."
"IBM Cognos improves the effectiveness of the sales team."
"The dashboarding offered by this solution is very valuable to us."
"We use the account statement report. When you use an account in HSBC, you receive various types of accounts, such as the stock market, fixed accounts, credit cards, and business accounts. We can create one consolidated report called CCS support, which includes all these accounts. In that statement, we are consolidating all those accounts."
"Other people can access data much more easily than before. Its usability is the main advantage, people in the company are using it."
"There is a feature in Microsoft BI that allows JSON data to SQL on the dashboards effectively and quickly."
"The most valuable feature would be the abundance of connectors. It is also easy to use."
"Microsoft BI's most valuable feature is flexibility."
"It provides easy integration with Office tools."
"Provides good data flow related to the container and control flow."
"It offers a lot of information and is very flexible and interactive."
"In contrast to what we were using before I think that Power BI has given us more extensive results."
"The platform's most important feature is predictive analysis."
"The most important feature is the tool is very easy to use. This makes it simple to introduce it to CxOs. After a rapid demo, they are usual impressed by the results shown, because it has such a rare simplicity."
"All features are valuable. It is very user-friendly, and it is mostly drag-and-drop. If we have the dataset available, then we can develop any dashboard very quickly."
"It's very easy to set everything up."
"The most valuable feature is that we can integrate with our own database, and it will displays the KPIs. This is highly required from the business side."
"The product offers an intuitive user interface, detailed screens and widgets, and the absence of data limitations"
"Its performance is pretty good, and the development time is very low."
"Gradual scalability from simple to complex situations"
 

Cons

"I think the GIS pieces maybe not as good as we would like."
"It could have more options for themes."
"Tableau and Power BI are faster than Cognos."
"The AI-based features could be further enhanced by the solution."
"Compared to Tableau and PowerBI, the IBM interface is easier to use. However, the drag-and-drop functionality isn't as straightforward. Formatting is also more challenging in the cloud than in other applications, like Power BI. Also, if you encounter an issue, it takes more time to resolve it on the formatting side."
"They should provide improved visual reporting."
"They were lacking in the initial phases of development in the area of big data, and they still need to improve that aspect of the product."
"One thing that we really want is the ability to have data portrayed on an image. Cognos is not able to do it at the moment, and that's becoming a requirement from the business side: having an image and then plotting your dataset on top of the image as a map."
"I have to write scripts to query data for analyzing performance."
"We would like to have better SQL support for queries."
"They can improve it in terms of rule-based security. Currently, it has very limited rules."
"The look and feel should be updated in terms of the types of dashboards and graphs that you can produce. They aren't as visual as some of its competitors."
"It should be easier to use when there are multiple system sources."
"In the future, Microsoft BI can be better by increasing user-friendliness"
"Licensing could be improved."
"I'm missing collaborations functionality to operate or to work connected with multiple people on a data source or on virtualization. There should be more collaborations functions, such as in Confluence. We haven't explored the solution sufficiently in this area, but at this time it doesn't look sufficient."
"There should be more widgets that would help less trained individuals create charts with less difficulty."
"With performance tuning, it generates a pretty complex query when it is not required."
"Overall, the only major frustration that I have had so far is with Tableau Public. I first used Tableau Public when I was building capacity, and when there was a later release to download and you wanted to upgrade, all your work would have to be manually re-entered."
"Most of the problems in Tableau Online that I have noticed have to do with performance or weird, inexplicable bugs that I can't pin down. For example, you might try unloading some data, and you'll be waiting for a long time without anything happening."
"Its price is a concern. It is more expensive than Power BI. The other thing that I never liked about Tableau is its ability to handle large sets of data. To present the data in the dashboards, we have to stage it up exactly like it is going to come into the dashboard. We use another tool called Alteryx that does that for us. So, we manipulate the data, get it staged, and then push it into Tableau. Tableau is terrible at handling large data sets, and we knew right away that we couldn't use Tableau to do data manipulation."
"When compared to Power BI, it is less user-friendly."
"There could be improvements on the mobile application, it is lacking features."
"It will be good if the server, could be more stable, and I would like to have the technical service to be more reliable."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing should be improved."
"The licensing costs are a little bit higher for IBM Cognos. I don't think there is any additional cost apart from the licensing charges."
"IBM Cognos is priced reasonable. However, it is more expensive than Power BI and Tableau."
"There is a standard license required to use this solution. There are some additional tools but I am not sure if they are an extra cost."
"It is quite pricy. I think Microsoft BI is cheaper. Tableau might also be cheaper, but it also depends on the usage. If you have very many users, Cognos can be a problem. It could be cheaper than Tableau but not for so many users. If you have a few thousand users, Tableau, which is generally quite expensive, can be cheaper than Cognos."
"IBM Cognos offers competitive pricing similar to other BI vendors in the market."
"On a scale from one to ten where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate this solution at eight."
"The pricing of this product is meant for medium to large-scale enterprises."
"Compared to others, I think it is reasonable."
"I am satisfied with its price. Its price is very less as compared to Tableau and QlikView."
"Globally, we evaluated a number of products, including Salesforce's product, Microsoft won on the ground of simple functionally and cost."
"Regarding cost, the initial investment wasn't too high, but ongoing licensing could add up."
"The price of the solution can be expensive if you want to synchronize your data more."
"You don't need a license for development, but if you want to publish to external users, you need a license. The licensing is very costly, but I think that since the advantages and benefits of Power BI are so high, people are willing to pay. I can't blame them."
"Microsoft BI is very cost-effective and this is why we use it."
"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."
"Pricing is not bad. It's competitive."
"I believe it has a lifelong license, and once you purchase it, you don't have to renew it, but I'm not sure."
"We are on an annual license which costs us $1,400 which is very expensive. Microsft BI is less expensive."
"It is fairly expensive. I have no idea what they paid. We were on an enterprise license, so whatever it is they licensed at the enterprise level is what we paid."
"It's an annual fee with everything included but it's quite expensive."
"The price of Tableau could improve. The license is too expensive."
"The company chose to purchase a creator license for me, which was $70. With that license, you can also be an administrator. We also have 20-25 extra licenses and they cost around $20-$35 each. Those are for normal users who will be viewing the dashboards. Those are monthly charges."
"The cost of the solution should be improved."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which BI (Business Intelligence) Tools solutions are best for your needs.
816,192 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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…
 

Answers from the Community

it_user83559 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 15, 2014
May 15, 2014
Rich- What is it that current leadership perceives as lacking in the current reporting tool set? Why change if the only benefit is features or a products capabilities? Can the products features and capabilities be exploited? By who and when? How does that make money for the company? Increased profit? Cost reduction? Increased resource utilization? Fewer days for order to cash? Reduced colle...
2 out of 21 answers
Feb 4, 2014
What might be “easy” for some is often “difficult” for others. Some users might find their experience with Tableau can be applied to quickly getting up to speed with Report Builder; others might find their mastery of Tableau gets in the way of learning the new software. I’m sure if asked, some colleague’s would say they find Tableau hard to use. Even so, I think what you really need to know is how much training would be needed after converting over to MS BI. I would suggest that to find the answer, you should ask the organization’s best Tableau users to try out a few typical daily tasks in Report Builder and let them evaluate how difficult or easy they are to complete. Their responses can be used to develop a training program for the other users. I would also suggest this link http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd239338.aspx. It provides tutorials for various tasks in Report Builder, which may be able to give you a feel for how simple or complex it is to build a dashboard, chart or report in Report Builder.
it_user79746 - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 4, 2014
I am still early in my Tableau experience. I do know that MS has a thing called PowerPivot which is part of the MS answer to Tableau, interesting that so many other BI providers are having to adapt to the competition provided by Tableau, but that also requires enterprise Sharepoint. Where I work they are just coming out of what we might call BI 1.0 and trying to get to BI 2.0, which is why I am there.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
56%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
5%
Government
4%
Educational Organization
41%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Educational Organization
40%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Seeking lightweight open source BI software
It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik ...
What do you like most about IBM Cognos?
The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools.
What needs improvement with IBM Cognos?
I need improvements, particularly with the Framework Manager, which has an outdated user interface from older version...
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 wou...
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 info...
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 ...
Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?
Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have be...
Which would you choose - Tableau or SAP Analytics Cloud?
Tableau is easy to set up and maintain. In about a day it is possible for the entire platform to be deployed for use....
What do you like most about Tableau?
Tableau is a fantastic tool that provides impressive dashboards and customized reports.
 

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI
Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

More than 23,000 leading organizations across multiple industries use Cognos. Some examples of Cognos customers include BMW Financial Services, Quinte Health Care, Troy Corporation, Michigan State University, and GKN Land System.
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
Accenture, Adobe, Amazon.com, Bank of America, Charles Schwab Corp, Citigroup, Coca-Cola Company, Cornell University, Dell, Deloitte, Duke University, eBay, Exxon Mobil, Fannie Mae, Ferrari, French Red Cross, Goldman Sachs, Google, Government of Canada, HP, Intel, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Macy's, Merck, The New York Times, PayPal, Pfizer, US Army, US Air Force, Skype, and Walmart.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Power BI vs. Tableau and other solutions. Updated: November 2024.
816,192 professionals have used our research since 2012.