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

Altair RapidMiner vs Microsoft Power BI comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Altair RapidMiner
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Predictive Analytics (3rd), Data Science Platforms (7th)
Microsoft Power BI
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
319
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (1st), Reporting (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Altair RapidMiner is designed for Predictive Analytics and holds a mindshare of 15.9%, down 19.8% compared to last year.
Microsoft Power BI, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 21.6% mindshare, down 22.4% since last year.
Predictive Analytics
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Laurence Moseley - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good tutorials that make it easy to learn and use, with a powerful feature to compare machine learning algorithms
When I started using RapidMiner, I found it difficult to get it to read the metadata. I wanted to use, for example, a pivot table, and it did not have the variable or the attribute names in it. There were no values. It took a long while to figure out how to do that, although it tends to do it automatically nowadays. RapidMiner is not utterly intuitive for beginners. Sometimes people have trouble distinguishing between a file in their own file system and a repository entry, and they cannot find their data. This is an area where this solution could be improved. It would be helpful to have some tutorials on communicating with Python. I found it a bit difficult at times to figure out which particular variable, or attribute, is going where in Python. It is probably a simple thing to do but I haven't mastered it yet. I'd like them to do a video on that. There are a large number of videos that are usually well-produced, but I don't think that they have one on that. Essentially, I would like to see how to communicate from RapidMiner to Python and from Python to RapidMiner. One of the things I do a lot of is looking at questionnaires where people have used Likert-type scales. I don't recommend Likert-type scales, but if they're properly produced, which is a lot of hard work and it's not usually done, they're really powerful and you can do things like normalizing holes on the Likert scale. That's not the same as normalizing your data in RapidMiner. So, I would want to get results with these Likert scales, pass it through RapidMiner, do a normalization and pass back both the raw scores and the normalized scores and put in some rules, which will say if it's high on the raw score and on the normalized score and low on the standard deviation, then you can trust it.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is very intuitive and powerful."
"RapidMiner is a no-code machine learning tool. I can install it on my local machine and work with smaller datasets. It can also connect to databases, allowing me to build models directly on the data stored there. RapidMiner offers a wider range of operators than other tools like Dataiku, making it a better option for my needs."
"Altair RapidMiner is easy to use and intuitive with no coding required, making it a low code tool."
"Scalability is not really a concern with RapidMiner. It scales very well and can be used in global implementations."
"The most valuable feature of RapidMiner is that it is code free. It is similar to playing with Lego pieces and executing after you are finished to see the results. Additionally, it is easy to use and has interesting utilities when preparing the data. It has a utility to automatically launch a series of models and show the comparisons. When finished with the comparisons you can select the best one, and deploy it automatically."
"What I like about RapidMiner is its all-in-one nature, which allows me to prepare, extract, transform, and load data within the same tool."
"The documentation for this solution is very good, where each operator is explained with how to use it."
"The best part of RapidMiner is efficiency."
"The most valuable features are the easy creation of reports, dashboards, and the ability to perform analysis. It is important for us to create reports because we have some operations during certain hours and we can use this tool to track the information."
"The stability is good."
"The most valuable features in Microsoft BI are the analysis using the feature drag and drop function. It's very easy to load and use different data sources."
"Microsoft Power BI is an easy tool for data analysis."
"The initial setup is easy."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."
"The good part of it is that you can do whatever you want with it when it comes to building BI. In terms of languages, it supports Python, and it also natively supports R."
"The scalability is good. We have 20 people in my organization using this solution and plan to increase usage."
 

Cons

"A great product but confusing in some way with regard to the user interface and integration with other tools."
"I think that they should make deep learning models easier."
"The product must provide data-cleaning features."
"In terms of the UI and SaaS, the user interface with KNIME is more appealing than RapidMiner."
"RapidMiner isn't cheap. It's a complete solution, but it's costly."
"If they could include video tutorials, people would find that quite helpful."
"Altair RapidMiner needs updates to its examples, particularly in business and marketing areas, and to the tool itself. The user interface should be improved."
"Many things in the interface look nice, but they aren't of much use to the operator. It already has lots of variables in there."
"The mobile app is very poor."
"The performance of Microsoft BI could improve for large datasets and it would be beneficial to have more visualization features."
"Its desktop tool is a little bit memory CPU intensive, and it can be improved, but the machines nowadays come with a lot of memory. For the desktop users who are using it on the desktop, we recommend that they do an upgrade. It is a minor issue. We can fix it on the desktop."
"The Microsoft BI interface should be simpler and more user-friendly. I find it very difficult to move between their data sources and their analytics section."
"Microsoft BI has its own challenges in terms of user interface and how quickly somebody can learn how to use it."
"The visual outlet or the visualization aspect can be improved because the settings piece is quite problematic. It requires a lot of time to set the visuals and check. It is quite fiddly to change all the settings and font sizes. It just needs better ability in terms of using templates or visualization templates to get the vision. Our users always benchmark based on the product, and they don't appreciate everything under the bonnet. The only rating is based on the actual reports in the settings for the dashboard. They should make it look a bit funky and a bit more aesthetically pleasing on the eye. It is quite a fiddly tool, but other than that, it is pretty slick. Because it is community-driven, the marketplace tends to be changing forever. You get the standard visualizations, and you've also got all other marketplace visualizations that require you to spend a bit more money and purchase things in the marketplace. With certain visualizations, there is no longevity. I had used certain visualizations, but they discontinued them, and I had to rebuild my reports, which is obviously very frustrating. There should be some sort of stabilization around how the marketplace visuals impact the users when they expire."
"The solution doesn't integrate well with third-party tools."
"I would prefer that the solution not be shared. I'm concerned that if we make a mistake we could reveal information to people who shouldn't see it. I would like to have my own on-prem server, to buy my own server and have my own infrastructure for Microsoft BI, with only with my data."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For the university, the cost of the solution is free for the students and teachers."
"I'm not fully aware of RapidMiner's price because we had licenses provided, but from my analysis, it's moderately priced, not too high or too low. It's worth the investment."
"I used an educational license for this solution, which is available free of charge."
"The client only has to pay the licensing costs. There are not any maintenance or hidden costs in addition to the license."
"Although we don't pay licensing fees because it is being used within the university, my understanding is that the cost is between $5,000 and $10,000 USD per year."
"The pricing for the solution is relatively higher compared to other alternatives."
"We pay for users who are publishing on the cloud. The desktop version is free. Its licensing is on a yearly basis."
"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."
"We are end-users, and we don't take care of the prices and accounting. We get a product and pay the fee to our internal service provider, but its price should be reasonable. Otherwise, they wouldn't have bought it."
"Microsoft BI for desktop is free to use, and you can download and use it."
"It is part of our Office 365 license."
"The cost of licensing depends on the number of people that are going to be using the reports, and we are satisfied with it at $10 per user."
"It is somewhere in the middle in terms of price. Licensing is quite clear."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Predictive Analytics solutions are best for your needs.
849,190 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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
University
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Educational Organization
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Educational Organization
41%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about RapidMiner?
RapidMiner is a no-code machine learning tool. I can install it on my local machine and work with smaller datasets. It can also connect to databases, allowing me to build models directly on the dat...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for RapidMiner?
I'm not fully aware of RapidMiner's price because we had licenses provided, but from my analysis, it's moderately priced, not too high or too low. It's worth the investment.
What needs improvement with RapidMiner?
Altair RapidMiner needs updates to its examples, particularly in business and marketing areas, and to the tool itself. The user interface should be improved. Incorporating generative AI as an AI as...
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 ...
 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

PayPal, Deloitte, eBay, Cisco, Miele, Volkswagen
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Alteryx, SAP, Altair and others in Predictive Analytics. Updated: March 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.