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Microsoft Power BI vs Oracle OBIEE comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 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 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
Oracle OBIEE
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
5th
Ranking in Reporting
3rd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
157
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 21.6%, down from 22.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle OBIEE is 3.8%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Q&A Highlights

NC
Nov 08, 2021
 

Featured Reviews

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.
VishnuReddy - PeerSpot reviewer
Handles large datasets and easy to interact with and handle but performance could be better
Oracle's technical support usually recommends to upgrade when you contact them for support. They don't focus on fixing the issue at hand or providing guidance on how to do it. If you are in a lower environment, like one version down, they will blindly suggest upgrading. Additional patches are given for other Oracle products like WebLogic, databases, and apps. They fix issues and create patches based on client needs. But from an OBIEE point of view, they mostly provide bundle patches of around 5 to 6 GB that need to be applied and tested end-to-end. It's not an easy way to get small patches, and if issues arise after applying the patches, you have to contact Oracle again.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution integrates with other Microsoft solutions very well."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is real-time report tracking."
"MS SQL & SQL Server Analysis Services."
"The feature I find most valuable is the ability to publish Power Bi reports, using an embedded link, directly onto a website."
"Allows business users with a mission to solve their own problems, without an IT person."
"The product is easy to use and simple to navigate."
"We've used Microsoft BI for the general use cases around reporting and dashboarding."
"The data can be accessed from anywhere."
"I like the cloud deployment feature. There are about 20 new features, and they are available on mobile and more. I haven't used any of them, but these features are highly attractive."
"The most valuable feature is the reporting."
"We have scheduled reports delivered automatically to our business users using enterprise features."
"They were reasonable in terms of price."
"Both the vertical and horizontal scalability of the solution is good. In terms of scalability, I would rate this solution a nine out of ten."
"They are introducing AI. There are good forecasting features and machine learning."
"It provides excellent stability."
"It's easy to create fully-functional Dashboards."
 

Cons

"Actionable insights could be better."
"I believe there is room for improvement in terms of authentication and certain functionalities in Power BI. For instance, adjusting the width of columns is not easily done, as there is only an option to enable or disable automatic adjustment. This can be a significant drawback for clients who desire more flexibility."
"It is getting better but still, there are opportunity areas in some aspects, especially the Windows OS dependency."
"I would like to be able to use SQL properly within the reports and allow multiple people to work on the same report at the same time. If one person is working on it, then it causes issues for anyone else wanting to make reports."
"Microsoft BI could improve by allowing large-size data sources. We have large data sources, and we have problems loading them in Microsoft BI."
"If you are having millions of rows of data or you have a large database, Microsoft BI's performance depends upon how powerful your hardware is. When I am handling large amounts of data I do not use Microsoft BI or Tableau because of this, I use D3."
"The product doesn't support unstructured data. It doesn't support video, streaming, and strings of files."
"Sometimes while developing, the front end is not easily customizable and it has limitations. We cannot go and do any UI we want. We have to stick to the limitations of the product."
"Its overall organization as an analytical tool, the layout of OBIEE, is not very good."
"It could be more user-friendly. For example, the RPD layer could be more straightforward. From a user's point of view, the visualization, especially the graphs, are not as attractive when compared to other tools like QlikView and Qlik Sense."
"The main problem we face is migrating all of the reports into the solution."
"It needs a better security management system."
"Warehouse and business intelligence are two different things, but OBIEE also has some warehouse features in it. I would like to see some of those capabilities improved."
"Retail, Finance, Wholesale"
"There should be more integration in the solution. For example, there should be one solution with multiple functionalities so that other solutions are not needed. Having one solution with all the needed functionality would be helpful."
"I find I prefer Oracle OAC over OBIEE. It's more advanced, has artificial intelligence, and there's more that we can do with it in general. OBIEE is lacking features."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It depends upon the tier of your Office 365 subscription. On E5, which is a Microsoft Azure subscription, you get it for free. If you are on a lower tier, you can subscribe for $10 a month per user, which is really cheap."
"The pricing for the solution is relatively higher compared to other alternatives."
"Their price is good."
"From a cost point of view, it's competitive in the enterprise space, although it's not as competitive when you add up all of the additional costs. Things like integrations cost extra and it's probably where Microsoft makes more of the money."
"The premium licensing is approximately $5,000 per month which is pretty expensive."
"Power BI is cost-effective compared to other reporting tools."
"Its price is very low. It is like $10 per user, per month. The clients pay for their own licenses. It is not on us. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees. That's the beauty. With other systems, you need to spend a couple of thousand dollars just to get started, and then you need to spend $500 per year for the license, which becomes much more costly. You have a system here where for $120 to $140 a year, you can start with two people and start developing and deploying. You can see why the cost difference is huge, especially when you are on a low scale, like us, and you're not building something very huge."
"If you purchase a license for a server, for users, or the professional version, you might not have to. The free version I think it can satisfy many customers' needs."
"There are no additional costs, but there might be some charges for the Java feature."
"This is a very costly product."
"It is high."
"In our organization, we use a user-based license for Oracle OBIEE, and I've heard that the license cost is based on the number of users."
"I would rate it a 4 out of 5 in terms of pricing."
"Its licensing is yearly."
"Compared with the other products in the market, I feel Oracle OBIEE is an expensive product."
"It is an expensive solution."
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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…
 

Answers from the Community

NC
Nov 8, 2021
Nov 8, 2021
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 OBIEE offers user security, data security, and many other security options. OBIEE also has a machine learning option, which is very good. OBIEE works best for very large organizations. Microsoft BI is...
See 2 answers
Oct 24, 2021
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 OBIEE offers user security, data security, and many other security options. OBIEE also has a machine learning option, which is very good. OBIEE works best for very large organizations. Microsoft BI is easy to learn, very user-friendly and stable, and integrates well with everything in the Microsoft ecosystem. This solution offers many different licensing options and the technical support is very good. It is a very good solution for teaching and training and works great integrating with Excel. Oracle OBIEE implementation and deployment can be confusing, requiring technical expertise and experience to manage. The pricing model is expensive and it is not a cost-effective solution for smaller enterprises. There also seems to be a lot of redundancy with regard to creating the necessary code to make things run smoothly. This solution should be more intuitive and less complex. Scalability could also be easier. With Microsoft BI, design and visualization seems a bit limited. They should offer better licensing options with more flexibility for various unique client needs, especially with smaller enterprises. Moving to the cloud makes licensing needs even more challenging to figure out and to choose the best option. Support could be better in explaining how issues were resolved and what steps were taken to resolve them. Conclusion Oracle OBIEE is very user-friendly and offers customizable dashboards. The visualization is very good and they offer AI with good forecasting options and machine learning. This is a great solution for large-scale enterprises. Microsoft BI is a good option for smaller-scale enterprises and, of course, works great with everything within the Microsoft ecosystem. It is a great option for the less tech-savvy user.
MR
Nov 8, 2021
When comparing Power BI with OBIEE, it is evident that OBIEE emerges as the winner in the data management aspect, while Power BI scores drastically above OBIEE in the self-service and data visualization aspects.  Power BI and OBIEE make a strong pair in the Analytics landscape by complementing the weaknesses of one with the strengths of the other! Therefore, it is good to leverage the best of both OBIEE and Power BI, by connecting them seamlessly and securely through BI Connector.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
43%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Government
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

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...
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 ...
Which Oracle product is better - OBIEE or Analytics Cloud?
Oracle OBIEE is designed to be relatively easy to set up and has a helpful customer support staff at the ready to assist customers. These are two attributes that make this system quite valuable. OB...
What do you like most about Oracle OBIEE?
The most valuable feature of Oracle OBIEE is its ability to handle large volumes of data and provide traditional BI functionalities that developers can easily understand.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle OBIEE?
All products from Oracle are very pricey. Microsoft always works out to be a cheaper tool. If you have anything that you do with Microsoft, then price-wise, it is very competitive. Microsoft Power ...
 

Also Known As

SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI
OBIEE, Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition, Oracle BI, Oracle BI EE 11g
 

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
Banca Transilvania, BeckmanCoulter, Hong Kong Housing Society, HealthShare, Ivanhoe Cambridge Unifies, and Home Credit, and Finance Bank.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Power BI vs. Oracle OBIEE and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.