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Microsoft Power BI vs Pyramid Analytics 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

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)
Pyramid Analytics
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
16th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (12th)
 

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 Pyramid Analytics is 0.7%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

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.
Shyam Pendyala - PeerSpot reviewer
A comprehensive and user-friendly business intelligence for enhanced data insight
When developing multidimensional IMDS models in Pyramid Analytics, there is a need for better features to maintain and analyze data. The application currently lacks the ability to easily track the original physical table and field names, making it challenging to relate them to business names. It would be desirable to have the possibility to generate a data dictionary, detailing the original physical tables, renamed fields, and derived fields. Such features would simplify documentation, facilitate understanding of how calculations depend on physical fields and aid in explaining the development process to others. Having this lineage and easy-to-generate data dictionary would greatly enhance the usability of Pyramid Analytics for developers.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Easy to use and the visualization is valuable."
"Ease of development and maintenance."
"The virtualization of Microsoft BI is very good."
"Microsoft BI's dashboards are helpful."
"It's a powerful platform."
"What I liked most about the tool is that we can use text queries to create projects and modify columns according to our needs. There are hundreds of YouTube courses on how to use it."
"There are some great automation elements in the product."
"Because this solution is very easy, and very visual, you can have results in minutes."
"The features I find most valuable are 'Discover,' 'Formulate,' and 'Model.' I use them regularly to build logic and create reports for my job."
"It proved to be a very powerful and useful tool due to its breakdown capabilities, easy reporting features, flexibility in building custom calculations, and the ability to integrate them into reports."
"Pyramid has a wide level of uses, as it's a complete ETL process and has a good level of connecting to a lot of data sources."
"The on-premise version has quite good scalability."
"It seems quite performant in analyzing multi-dimensional information sets and presenting them."
"I think the most valuable Pyramid Analytics feature is the solution's ability to drill down and dice in the loop. I think it is better than InExcel or Power BI."
"It offers a wide range of analytics options including statistics and visualizations, as well as prediction capabilities, allowing users to make forecasts based on the latest data."
"The most valuable feature of Pyramid Analytics, outshining even top-tier platforms like Power BI, is its robust support for DAX queries."
 

Cons

"We did have some issues building the Microsoft blog."
"I would like Microsoft to include some inbuilt machine learning so that it becomes point-and-click, rather than us developing models out of API and BI connecting to that and getting the results. That process gets in the way of continuity."
"They are improving it all the time. What would be nice is if they could respond to feature requests more quickly. They can provide faster support for new features."
"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 graphic interface could be better."
"It should be more user-friendly. There are very small or tiny icons that you need to move very carefully. If you go a little bit up and down, some of the values change. Its user interface should be improved. It should be like Tableau. Its performance is also slow and should be improved. I definitely feel some sort of speed issues with Power BI. The integration of Excel with Power BI would also be good."
"The Power Query feature needs to be improved to handle large amounts of data. This feature is also slow for large data transfers making it better to use some kind of script."
"Microsoft Power BI was born native on the cloud, however, it's quite difficult when it has to connect to on-premise data sources."
"It would be desirable to have the possibility to generate a data dictionary, detailing the original physical tables, renamed fields, and derived fields."
"I think the graphic number of charts and components could be higher, at least comparable to Brain Power BI."
"There is room for improvement in terms of the user interface, particularly when it comes to modifying connections between filters and visual components in a dashboard."
"There is room for improvement in terms of documentation and examples, especially for newcomers like me who are learning both business intelligence and Pyramid."
"Even though the solution has a functionality for every step, it's not so well- defined. That needs to be improved."
"Pyramid Analytics could improve by speeding up data refresh, especially for large datasets."
"I find that this is quite a heavy, time-consuming tool for developers."
"The general amount of negative comments that I am hearing from my team makes me very wary."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I have never worked on licensing, but I have heard that it is reasonable."
"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."
"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."
"It is a cheap solution for our needs."
"We have a premium Power BI license in-house that's quite an expensive license. It's $10 a month for four users and then I think 35,000 at the premium rate."
"The solution's costs are quite reasonable given the range of features provided."
"Its licensing cost is very high. It is $20 per user, which is very high, but it is a good product, so you pay for it."
"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."
"The licensing cost is not excessively expensive, but it does increase with the addition of new features and modules."
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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
Educational Organization
43%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
12%
Insurance Company
8%
 

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 ...
What do you like most about Pyramid Analytics?
The most valuable feature of Pyramid Analytics, outshining even top-tier platforms like Power BI, is its robust support for DAX queries.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pyramid Analytics?
I find the price of Pyramid Analytics to be quite reasonable, especially when compared to other tools in the industry. It is a cost-effective choice, particularly for mid-sized or larger companies ...
What needs improvement with Pyramid Analytics?
Pyramid Analytics could improve by speeding up data refresh, especially for large datasets. While it is currently an in-memory tool, efforts are underway to enhance direct connections to source sys...
 

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
US Department of Veterans Affair, Volkswagen, Siemens, Blackboard, Hallmark, Orange, CDW, LA Fitness, Atelier GS, Memorial Healthcare, Acadia Insurance, BancoBic, Advanced Learning, Microsoft, Drake University
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Power BI vs. Pyramid Analytics and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.