Microsoft Power BI vs Tableau comparison

Microsoft and Salesforce are both solutions in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category. Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 7.9, while Salesforce is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.6. Microsoft holds a 21.4% mindshare in BIT, compared to Salesforce’s 18.2% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of Salesforce users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Power BI

Read 319 Microsoft Power BI reviews

24,917 Views
19,745 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Tableau

Read 295 Tableau reviews

19,482 Views
16,446 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Microsoft Power BI

Tableau

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

Microsoft Power BI and Tableau are leading contenders in the Business Intelligence category, each with unique features and areas of improvement. Power BI holds an edge in affordability and Microsoft integration, whereas Tableau excels in data visualization.

Features: Microsoft Power BI is praised for its integration capabilities, affordable pricing models, and use of existing Microsoft tools like Power Query and Power Pivot for data preparation. Tableau stands out with data visualization, offering dynamic, aesthetically pleasing graphics, and an intuitive design for data exploration and dashboard sharing. Both tools boast strong community support and receive constant updates.

Room for Improvement: Power BI users show dissatisfaction with integration limitations concerning non-Microsoft data sources, a need for enhanced real-time processing, and more intuitive interfaces for non-technical users. Tableau users point to high pricing as a concern, alongside desires for improved predictive analytics and more robust ETL functionalities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Power BI offers flexible deployment options, catering well to those within the Microsoft ecosystem, alongside responsive customer service and a robust online community. Tableau also supports varied deployment methods but demands a higher training investment upfront, with users noting complexities in licensing.

Pricing and ROI: Power BI is noted for its low starting cost and accessible paid tiers, providing strong ROI through comprehensive reporting at lower costs compared to competitors. Tableau's premium pricing may restrict smaller businesses but offers high-value visualization capacities, particularly beneficial for large enterprises.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Power BI vs. Tableau Report (Updated: February 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI vs. Tableau

February 2025

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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

Microsoft Power BI

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

1st

Ranking in Reporting

1st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

319

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

295

Ranking in other categories

Data Visualization (1st), Embedded BI (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 21.4%, down from 22.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau is 18.2%, down from 18.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Q&A Highlights

it_user83559

Database Expert at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

May 15, 2014

Business users moving from Tableau to MS Report builder

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 collections? Better on time shipping? Faster production? Increased gross margin? Reduced inventory? You get the picture. It's the people that make the difference. Not the tool! What is it that we need to know to grow our business constantly and continuously? Every tool mentioned can do really great "stuff". But what "stuff" does your company need? I wish you the best.

See all answers

Featured Reviews

James Balbach

Executive Director, Decision Support at Community Health Network

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.

Read full review

ROMIL SHAH

Deputy General Manger - Information Technology at Nayara Energy

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like the fact that Power BI lets me use Excel data. At least 90% of my state data is in Excel spreadsheets. Having the ability to just attach a spreadsheet as a data source is very, very important. It's also good for training and teaching. Sometimes you don't always have access to a live production database, so having a spreadsheet with sample data is always nice."

"The most valuable feature of Power BI is its ability to provide customized visualizations and insights tailored to specific business needs."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is an easy-to-use tool."

"Its visualization capabilities are pretty good. It is very easy to use. You can easily make your dashboard."

"Like all Microsoft products, it is very easy to set up initially."

"Data integration is very useful in Power BI. It lets me collect data from many sources. For example, I can get data from Oracle databases and SQL Server databases at the same time."

"Power BI's integration with other tools is very good."

"We encourage end users to use Power BI because it's quite easy for them to interact with the menus and the navigation bar. Even for ordinary users, they can create their own dashboard using Power BI."

More Microsoft Power BI pros

"It is very easy to create dashboards, charts, and graphs."

"Any feature I am looking for usually is part of the next upgrade within a few months. They have a very good dynamic evolution."

"Data handling, visualizations, and aesthetics of it are the most valuable features."

"Good data flow and management."

"It has made the reporting stage simple and enabled us to focus mainly on the ETL part"

"This service is the combination of very pleasant, interactive graphical visualizations along with the application of advanced statistical models (in some cases)."

"Tableau is very good in the front-end visualization compared to Power BI."

"The solution is easy to use, flexible, our clients enjoy seeing the data on maps, and you do not need to be an expert in SQL to use it."

More Tableau pros

Cons

"Microsoft BI lacks some of the scheme features. It would be beneficial if there were a way to show how we move values in a different way."

"Drill-down in dashboards needs to improved. The capability only works in Power BI Desktop today. We need to have an alternative approach today."

"We would like improvements made to the paginated reports so that it produces quality similarly to SSRS."

"This solution is resource-heavy."

"Whenever you work on the same dashboard or on the same code, Microsoft Power BI doesn't have a good architecture that allows multiple people to work on the same project."

"The upgrade process could be improved."

"The one thing that I noticed specifically was the graphical features, and some of the analytical features. They were stronger on the Tableau side."

"One of the more difficult things to do is to export some of the data from Power BI to Excel."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

"The visualizations should be user-friendly and allow for more custom visualizations."

"The pricing is high. I'm using a student license, however, I know that even this license is very expensive. I've tried to have this product in our organization, however, it's quite expensive. We don't have the internal budget."

"Small multiples (a.k.a. Trellis charts) are possible only through very hacky means. Update: Still remains a challenge."

"I take a long time to process the hundreds of thousands or millions of records that must be processed every day."

"From a downside perspective, some of the more advanced modeling techniques are actually fairly difficult to do. In addition, I just fundamentally disagree with the way you have to implement them because you can get incorrect answers in some cases."

"When compared to Power BI, it is less user-friendly."

"The customization in the front end is a bit difficult."

"The charting is overly complex in comparison with Power BI's"

More Tableau cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As far as I am aware you do not need a license for the solution."

"The price of Microsoft BI is reasonable. Other solutions such as SAP Cloud are more expensive."

"No comment on pricing."

"There are a few options available for purchasing a license. Typically the number of users you have will determine the price of the license. The more users you have the more you will pay."

"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."

"We pay on a monthly basis which is approximately $10 per user on the Microsoft Power BI Pro license. At the moment we are still down at 400 users, but once we reach 500 users, we will move to the premium edition. The premium is $5,000 for unlimited users. Currently, with the 40 users, the cost is roughly $500."

"Costs less than most competing solutions."

"Once the trial period for the BI service is over, the cost is approximately $10 USD per user, per month, so it's quite reasonable."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

"The solution's licensing is based on user-basis. It depends on the business ROI it offers. It's not on the higher side or too cheap; it falls in the medium-cost range. The price is determined by user usage, so the cost will also increase as the number of users increases."

"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."

"Tableau is an expensive solution compared to Power BI."

"I recommend that you discuss your needs with the salesperson and try to negotiate the price."

"The value for money is definitely there."

"There is a license for this solution and we pay on an annual basis."

"In Korea, the tool's pricing depends on the scale of usage. For instance, it's reasonable for a department with fewer than 50 users to adopt Tableau, like sales. However, the pricing becomes an issue when considering an enterprise solution for a larger user base, say 10,000 people."

"ROI is very high, but it requires a data preparation/blending tool."

More Tableau pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user79932

Senior Manager - BI Head at NVidia

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…

Read full review

Answers from the Community

it_user83559

Database Expert at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

May 15, 2014

Business users moving from Tableau to MS Report builder

2 out of 21 answers

it_user79284

Owner

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.

Read full answer

it_user79746

Consultant at a energy/utilities company

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.

Read full answer

See all 21 answers

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

43%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

Educational Organization

44%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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...

See all answers

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...

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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 ...

See all answers

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 Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos Enter...

See all answers

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 been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it consta...

See all answers

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. This relatively short amount of time can make all the difference for companies ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 8% of the time

Domo vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 8% of the time

Databricks vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 7% of the time

KNIME vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 6% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 4% of the time

More Microsoft Power BI Competitors

Domo vs Tableau

Compared 12% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Tableau

Compared 8% of the time

Databricks vs Tableau

Compared 6% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs Tableau

Compared 4% of the time

SAS Visual Analytics vs Tableau

Compared 4% of the time

More Tableau Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

February 2025

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Buyer's Guide

Tableau

January 2025

Download Tableau product report

Also Known As

SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI

Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online

Overview

Microsoft Power BI is a powerful tool for data analysis and visualization. This tool stands out for its ability to merge and analyze data from various sources. Widely adopted across different industries and departments, Power BI is instrumental in creating visually appealing dashboards and generating insightful business intelligence reports. Its intuitive interface, robust visualization capabilities, and seamless integration with other Microsoft applications empower users to easily create interactive reports and gain valuable insights.

Microsoft

Tableau is a tool for data visualization and business intelligence that allows businesses to report insights through easy-to-use, customizable visualizations and dashboards. Tableau makes it exceedingly simple for its customers to organize, manage, visualize, and comprehend data. It enables users to dig deep into the data so that they can see patterns and gain meaningful insights.

Make data-driven decisions with confidence thanks to Tableau’s assistance in providing faster answers to queries, solving harder problems more easily, and offering new insights more frequently. Tableau integrates directly to hundreds of data sources, both in the cloud and on premises, making it simpler to begin research. People of various skill levels can quickly find actionable information using Tableau’s natural language queries, interactive dashboards, and drag-and-drop capabilities. By quickly creating strong calculations, adding trend lines to examine statistical summaries, or clustering data to identify relationships, users can ask more in-depth inquiries.

Tableau has many valuable key features:

Tableau dashboards provide a complete view of your data through visualizations, visual objects, text, and more.
Tableau provides convenient, real-time options to collaborate with other users and instantly share data in the form of visualizations, sheets, and dashboards.
Tableau ensures connectivity to both live data sources and data extraction from external data sources as in-memory data. This gives users the flexibility to use data from more than one source without any restrictions.
Tableau gives many data source option, ranging from spreadsheets, big data, on-premise files, relational databases, non-relational databases, data warehouses, and big data, to on-cloud data.
Tableau has a lot of pre-installed information on maps, such as cities, postal codes, and administrative boundaries.
Tableau has a foolproof security system based on authentication and permission systems for data connections and user access. Tableau also gives you the freedom to integrate with other security protocols.

Tableau stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Some of these include its fast data access, easy creation of visualizations, and its stability. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

Romil S., Deputy General Manager of IT at Nayara Energy, notes, "Its visualizations are good, and its features make the development process a little less time-consuming. It has an in-memory extract feature that allows us to extract data and keep it on the server, and then our users can use it quickly.

Ariful M., Consulting Practice Partner of Data, Analytics & AI at FH, writes, “Tableau is very flexible and easy to learn. It has drag-and-drop function analytics, and its design is very good.”

Salesforce

Sample Customers

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.

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI vs. Tableau

February 2025

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