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Microsoft Power BI vs Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 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

Microsoft Power BI
Ranking in Reporting
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
328
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (1st)
Oracle Business Intelligenc...
Ranking in Reporting
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 17.4%, down from 27.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer is 1.2%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Power BI17.4%
Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer1.2%
Other81.4%
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

Antonio Flor - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Anaplanner at Chaucer Group
Data integration has improved reserving and expense control while collaboration drives fast dashboards
Regarding drawbacks or weak points in Microsoft Power BI, it may not be directly related to the tool itself, but with our architecture, as we couldn't get a service account, which is an email address that has no relationship with the employees, just to establish the connection with Anaplan. We couldn't get it to work on SSO, so we use an employee account which could be a point of weakness, meaning if the person leaves, that connection will break. If the person goes on holiday and we need to refresh, we have to change the connection as well, but we have to live with that since we're not using SSO on the service account. Regarding the natural language processing feature, we're trying to avoid using it too much because it can slow down the connection, so as much as possible, we try to build the logic and any transformation in Anaplan, and then deliver an end product to Microsoft Power BI.
Useful for business reports and helps to drill down accounting information
The tool's most valuable feature is table creation. One of the most important capabilities is the supplier assessment reports. These reports provide a balance during transactions, which is crucial for auditing. This feature is not standard in other ERP systems, making it highly valuable. The solution helps to drill down details from sources like payables and inventory, which the accounting department requires.

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."
"Its connectivity with other Office applications, mostly with Excel, and the ability to deploy it very easily are the most valuable features. It comes sort of bundled with the cloud, so you don't need to set up a server and a standalone infrastructure. So, getting into the system or building something that you can deploy is very easy and very cheap. With other systems, you need to have a server, and you need to have a license for the server. The initial setup is very costly."
"The product can go easily go and extract data and it can put it into any format."
"It is more user-friendly compared to SSRS."
"It is a powerful tool that helps our data analysis processes."
"Microsoft BI is scalable."
"It integrates better with other Microsoft products. It is very easy to use and has very powerful visualizations. It has also got a lot of development going on."
"Being able to transfer data with the Power Query feature is great for teaching with about one to two hundred rows of data. I am also able to see the relationship between multiple tables and create various sheets and dashboards."
"The tool's most valuable feature is table creation. One of the most important capabilities is the supplier assessment reports. These reports provide a balance during transactions, which is crucial for auditing."
 

Cons

"In Microsoft Excel, you are able to have tabs. However, in Microsoft BI you do not have this flexibility."
"The cost of the solution can get high."
"There are certain features that are only available in the cloud version. It would be beneficial if they could be brought down to the on-premise version without the necessity of using the enterprise SQL database, as that can be very costly. We need more cost-effective features that are available in the cloud to be accessible on-premise."
"I would like for the next release to have better desktop performance, especially for big databases. Additionally, I would like to have more integrations with programs like Salesforce in order to get more live data coming in."
"The issue with the data refresh frequency in Microsoft Power BI is that it's not frequent enough."
"I would like to see integration with Excel."
"The integration in Microsoft BI could improve for other solutions, such as Oracle DB and PostgresSQL. Additionally, the reporting from the databases to Microsoft BI should be in real-time and the overall performance could be better."
"I think that they can add more types of charts because the selection on the desktop version is limited."
"Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer needs to improve its performance and HTML reports."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Power BI is cheaper for smaller groups when comparing to competitors. It requires a monthly per-user subscription."
"The price of the license can be better."
"Microsoft BI is not expensive."
"We have a professional license for Microsoft BI and the price is fair."
"All of the licenses are on an annual basis, but Microsoft will amortize it to an extent. If it's five years, they'll include the possible interest they might have the following year. Ideally, their licensing scheme is an annual license, but they make it easier for some of our clients to take a five-year license but package everything inside for them to buy the license for five years."
"The solution is less expensive than other PowerBI tools, which is why most people go with it, although it does cost more than MSBI tools."
"It's straightforward licensing."
"Microsoft BI requires licenses."
"Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer is more expensive than its alternatives. You need to pay additional costs for implementation."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager - BI Head with 5,001-10,000 employees
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
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business135
Midsize Enterprise58
Large Enterprise166
No data available
 

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...
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 ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer?
Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer is more expensive than its alternatives. You need to pay additional costs for implementation.
What needs improvement with Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer?
Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer needs to improve its performance and HTML reports.
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

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
Georg Fischer Central Plastics
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Power BI vs. Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
883,712 professionals have used our research since 2012.