Microsoft Power BI vs SAP Analytics Cloud comparison

Microsoft and SAP are both solutions in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category. Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 7.9, while SAP is ranked #5 with an average rating of 7.6. Microsoft holds a 21.8% mindshare in BIT, compared to SAP’s 4.5% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of SAP users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Power BI

Read 319 Microsoft Power BI reviews

23,544 Views
18,579 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

SAP Analytics Cloud

Read 69 SAP Analytics Cloud reviews

6,917 Views
4,524 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Microsoft Power BI

SAP Analytics Cloud

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

Microsoft Power BI and SAP Analytics Cloud compete in the business intelligence and analytics category. Based on the comparisons, Microsoft Power BI seems to have an upper hand due to its cost-effectiveness and integration with Microsoft Office Suite, appealing to small to medium enterprises, while SAP Analytics Cloud offers advanced features at a higher price point, suiting organizations already invested in SAP systems.

Features: Microsoft Power BI is renowned for its ease of use, fast performance, and a vast array of connectors for seamless integration. Its ability to quickly create dashboards and manipulate data is complemented by its integration with Microsoft Office Suite, making it a valuable tool for Excel users. SAP Analytics Cloud is noted for its advanced predictive analytics, strong integration with SAP products, and comprehensive data analysis capabilities. It provides excellent visualization features and user-friendliness, suitable for non-technical users.

Room for Improvement: Microsoft Power BI could enhance its ability to handle big data, improve technical support, and expand features for advanced data manipulation and visualization, aligning more closely with competitors like Tableau. SAP Analytics Cloud faces challenges in integrating with non-SAP systems and its high pricing can be a barrier for users. Improving its AI capabilities and simplifying the technical complexity of data integration are areas for enhancement.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Power BI provides a straightforward deployment with robust support from a large user community and abundant online resources, though direct technical support might be more responsive. SAP Analytics Cloud offers seamless cloud-based deployment and benefits from strong integration within the SAP ecosystem. Its customer service is reliable, yet it might require additional exploration of community resources to support diverse customer needs.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Power BI is praised for its cost-effectiveness, offering a free desktop version and affordable licensing options, which often result in a high ROI due to time-saving and integration capabilities. SAP Analytics Cloud is positioned at a higher price point, justified by its advanced features and integrations, presenting a strong value proposition for organizations already invested in SAP tools.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Power BI vs. SAP Analytics Cloud Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI vs. SAP Analytics Cloud

March 2025

Download the complete report

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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

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

319

Ranking in other categories

Reporting (1st)

SAP Analytics Cloud

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

5th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Predictive Analytics (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 21.8%, down from 22.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP Analytics Cloud is 4.5%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

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

RamasamyTelungupalayam

Product Manager - ERP Analytics and BI at Haleon

Seamless integration, collaborative features, and enhances data exploration

There are several areas for improvement in SAP Analytics Cloud. Firstly, features available in SAP Lumira are missing in SAP Analytics Cloud. Secondly, the predictive analytics functions, although promising, are currently only suitable for Proof of Concepts (POCs) and not for industrial-scale use. Lastly, the pricing model for the planning functionality is quite high and presents an entry barrier.

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

"It gives you an edge if you are on the Microsoft platform. If you have been using Microsoft products for a long time or if you have the Microsoft infrastructure, this is the right tool for you. It has seamless integration with Microsoft SQL Server and other sources, and you get the best of the three things (SSIS, SSAS, and SSRS) in one suite."

"Premium features that used to cost $5,000 per company per month recently became a lot more accessible. Microsoft recently implemented a per user feature in Power BI Premium; it's $20 per month."

"The DAX coding language is good for creating formulae."

"The most valuable feature is integration with Python."

"The interface is very easy to use."

"The most valuable feature is shareability, where we can publish work to the cloud and share it with team members."

"Microsoft BI is easy to use and to design. I found Microsoft BI a lot easier than Tableau."

"Implementation is very quick and the solution is very user-friendly."

More Microsoft Power BI pros

"Offers both business intelligence as well as inbuilt AI and machine learning capabilities."

"If 85-90% of your data comes from SAP, then it's the best solution."

"The tool's most valuable features are the BI and planning functionalities. I value being able to integrate smart planning with BI for analysis. The solution is user-friendly."

"In the data warehouse, you're free to make changes. You can make everything text, meaning it's always a string. Even numbers appear as text, giving you the flexibility to work with all columns."

"I like the connectivity the solution provides with other products."

"A robust solution."

"The product is flexible and has features like AI, link analysis, and insights. It has many features. I can search, and it creates automatic charts without selecting anything. For example, I can ask, "What is the gross margin?" the tool builds a chart based on my question."

"The product's most valuable features are reporting and planning, driverless planning, business vertical-wise planning, dashboarding, forecasting tools, and business forecasting."

More SAP Analytics Cloud pros

Cons

"The orchestration module for refreshing data flows is something that is missing and we have to do it manually."

"I would like to see Machine Learning for Power Bi Pro users or an intermediate license to enable Machine Learning if you don't have access to a Premium account."

"It's not really complicated, but I didn't find the things I was looking for. The ones I used to work with within Dash are more open, and there are more choices. But with Power BI, there are only limited types of plots that I can use. For example, when I wanted to put the plots in Power BI, there was no extendable space. You have a limited page where you can place a maximum of three plots in that, and you can't do more than that on a single page. You have to create a new page, a different page for that. That made it a bit annoying, and the filtering part is limited, with basic functions. If you want to make custom filtering or custom functions, you can't do that."

"One thing I would like to have is the scripting language, as they already have within Excel. It's already within a Microsoft business product, because Excel is the number one business product out there. So it would be nice to have the scripting capability in order to automate certain processes."

"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."

"We would like it if they added more Python libraries in the Power BI service. For Power BI service right now, you can use Python, but it is limited to a few libraries or a few packages from Python."

"I find the solution to be 70 percent stable."

"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."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

"Live Data Models are very slow and the setup can be improved, with tools such as Cloud Connector being inbuilt into SAP Analytics Cloud. Likewise, we need to write application code from scratch, rather than tweaking existing code, as we might with Excel macros. Moreover, when using responsive pages, the widgets get adjusted according to the mobile screen. As a result, when I place two or three KPI tiles, they can only be viewed tile-by-tile. We want to see the full dashboard on the mobile screen and zoom in to click on a particular section of the dashboard and go further into that. But displaying tile-by-tile makes it very annoying and the upper management using this dashboard might not be aware there are any more tiles to view."

"What could be improved in SAP Analytics Cloud is integration, particularly in terms of extracting data from the source system. Currently, its data extraction mechanism doesn't have good integration and needs improvement."

"There should be more features for the time series charts."

"All the features are there, maybe except for the one-gauge visualization."

"The predictive analytics functions, although promising, are currently only suitable for Proof of Concepts (POCs) and not for industrial-scale use."

"We need to know that we are using the latest and greatest, and SAP appears as if it has lost some credit in the market."

"AI doesn't work as well with SAP live connections."

"One potential improvement is how we can transpose data. With SAP, if you have data from one system with a declared data type and a different system with another data type, the transfer is tricky."

More SAP Analytics Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is free."

"The only other cost, besides the licensing fee, would be to cover support."

"Price is the best feature of Power BI! You get a lot of value for the price. If you know how to use it, it's a great BI solution for your money."

"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."

"I think it's a good price, from what I've heard. I know it's competitive with other Power BI tools."

"It is somewhere in the middle in terms of price. Licensing is quite clear."

"Paid for itself in the first month."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

"SAP Analytics can be very costly to license, which can make it difficult for organizations to implement."

"Its licensing is on a monthly basis."

"The tool's pricing is medium, and licensing costs are yearly."

"Its pricing is okay as compared to its competitors."

"It's quite expensive and costs a lot to maintain, especially with licensing."

"It is a bit expensive, but really worth it, especially if you are already using other SAP tools."

"The premium option is very expensive at five thousand dollars. I use the nine hundred and ninety-nine dollar option."

"Its price is slightly on the higher side."

More SAP Analytics Cloud 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

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

43%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

Educational Organization

21%

Manufacturing Company

15%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

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...

See all answers

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

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

What do you like most about SAP Analytics Cloud?

In the data warehouse, you're free to make changes. You can make everything text, meaning it's always a string. Even numbers appear as text, giving you the flexibility to work with all columns.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SAP Analytics Cloud?

The pricing model for SAP Analytics Cloud is quite competitive, but the cost for the planning functionality is high and can be a barrier to entry. The overall cost can be managed with better billin...

See all answers

Comparisons

Tableau vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 15% of the time

Domo vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 9% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 8% of the time

Databricks vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 8% of the time

MicroStrategy vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 2% of the time

More Microsoft Power BI Competitors

Tableau vs SAP Analytics Cloud

Compared 18% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs SAP Analytics Cloud

Compared 16% of the time

IBM Planning Analytics vs SAP Analytics Cloud

Compared 13% of the time

Anaplan vs SAP Analytics Cloud

Compared 10% of the time

Qlik Sense vs SAP Analytics Cloud

Compared 5% of the time

More SAP Analytics Cloud Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

March 2025

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Buyer's Guide

SAP Analytics Cloud

March 2025

Download SAP Analytics Cloud product report

Also Known As

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

SAP BusinessObjects Cloud

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

SAP Analytics Cloud is an all-in-one Software-as-a-Service business intelligence tool that provides the key functionalities of an analytics tool to SAP business users. This tool is built on HANA Business Intelligence (BI) platform, providing analytics from data collected from multiple sources, such as ERP, Microsoft SQL, and Salesforce, among other solutions.

You can use SAP Analytics Cloud to compile data and perform ad-hoc reporting and analysis for predictive planning. SAP Analytics Cloud collects and analyzes the raw data from transactional systems into intelligent insights that allow you to make better decisions.

SAP Analytics Cloud uses machine learning to clean up data, identify errors, and issues, and suggest optimization or filtering options. You can use the modeling feature in Analytics Cloud to create hierarchies and get deeper data insights.

The three core functions of SAP Analytics Cloud consist of Planning, Predictive Analysis, and Business Intelligence as a holistic SaaS solution that offers real-time analysis to business leaders.

SAP Analytics Cloud Capabilities

Data discovery
Machine learning
Integrated financial and business planning
Predictive analysis
Automated data cleansing
Custom widgets
Mobile extension
Role-based customization
Data exploration and visualization

SAP Analytics Cloud Key Features

Augmented analytics: SAP Analytics Cloud allows organizations to make the most of AI (Artificial Intelligence)-powered analytics through augmented analytics. It includes a Search to Insight feature that enables users not skilled or experienced in data science to access and use the platform.

These smart insight tools allow organizations to visualize business data without manual intervention. By combining multiple machine learning algorithms, SAP Analytics Cloud automates predictive analysis so that organizations can have significant insight into secured data.

Enterprise planning: As SAP Analytics Cloud is an all-in-one financial planning and analysis solution, organizations can use it to align strategies across all departments. It allows end-to-end, data-driven planning decisions via financial modeling, allocations, smart insights, and automated reporting.

The Zero-based budgeting feature allows for an effective resources allocation with built-in collaboration tools. The finance team can collaborate easily, create budget templates and make accurate decisions.

SAP Analytics Cloud Benefits

Real-time cloud insights: SAP Analytics Cloud makes it easy for users at every level to generate instant insights and improve data-driven decision-making. With SAP Analytics Cloud, you can have immediate and central access to all figures, diagrams, insights, and evaluations for every employee on every device and updated in real time.
Customizable dashboard: You can customize your dashboard according to your requirements. This customization means you can easily access all the relevant data on a single pane of vision tailored to your business.
Collaborative planning: As an all-in-one platform, SAP Analytics Cloud integrates the multiple aspects of a business into a single solution, including finance, HR, sales, and supply chain management.
Data on any device: You can integrate SAP Analytics Cloud with SAP S/4 HANA and deploy insights to Android and iOS devices. The SAP S/4 HANA integration also enables the rolling out of changes to multiple files and devices from a central location, so you can carry your business operations on the go over a secured cloud network.
In-memory technology: Since it is based on SAP HANA in-memory technology, SAP Analytics Cloud can process massive amounts of data in a short time.

Reviews from Real Users

Segun O., SAP HANA Developer at SOA PEOPLE, says that "The most valuable features are on the application side, where you can design applications into your analytics on the platform."

The Head of Finance Enterprise Application at a computer software company adds that "The visualization feature is the most valuable. SAP Analytics Cloud is also very easy to use."

"Its many features make it the best in the market," sums up a Consultor SAP Business Object, Sap Analytics Cloud at a tech services company.

SAP

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

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Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI vs. SAP Analytics Cloud

March 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Power BI vs. SAP Analytics Cloud

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