Microsoft Power BI vs Sigma comparison

Microsoft and Sigma Computing are both solutions in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category. Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 7.8, while Sigma Computing is ranked #16 with an average rating of 7.0. Microsoft holds a 20.7% mindshare in BIT, compared to Sigma Computing’s 1.6% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Sigma Computing users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Power BI

Read 321 Microsoft Power BI reviews

26,806 Views
16,352 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Sigma

Read 6 Sigma reviews

1,726 Views
1,329 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Power BI

Sigma

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Microsoft Power BI and Sigma compete in the business intelligence solutions category. Sigma is viewed as having superior features, while Power BI leads with pricing and customer service.

Features: Microsoft Power BI provides comprehensive data visualization, robust report generation, and seamless integration into other Microsoft products. Sigma is strong in powerful analytics capabilities, efficient complex data modeling, and advanced analytics features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Power BI offers straightforward deployment with strong support and resources, backed by Microsoft's service infrastructure. Sigma, though requiring more initial configuration, offers focused support for technical queries.

Pricing and ROI: Power BI is noted for its competitive pricing and high ROI for small to mid-sized enterprises. Sigma's higher setup costs are reflective of its advanced features, offering a strong ROI for larger enterprises with complex data needs.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Power BI vs. Sigma Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI vs. Sigma

July 2025

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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

321

Ranking in other categories

Reporting (1st)

Sigma

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

16th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

8.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Visualization (14th)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 20.7%, down from 21.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sigma is 1.6%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Q&A Highlights

Pambos Soteriades

Founder & CEO at PiSigma

Apr 29, 2023

Which solution is better for a company in the telecoms industry: Signa or Power BI?

This market comparison chart....https://www.gartner.com/doc/re...;ct=230130&st=sb

See all answers

Featured Reviews

Shoury Priyanshu

Senior Manager, Strategy & Consulting at Viacom18 Media Pvt Ltd

Facilitates seamless data aggregation with some outdated visual elements hindering user appeal

Real-time data integration is an area for improvement. Although I've worked on several solutions involving real-time integration, it's not very user-friendly and often lags, especially with over a million data rows. This makes Power BI difficult to manage as loading times can reach one or two minutes, which is problematic today. There are challenges with scalability, requiring multiple pages in dashboards to manage these issues. Visualization could be improved as it appears outdated. Users, especially newcomers, find it unappealing and not user-friendly.

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Russell Rothstein

CEO at a tech company with 51-200 employees

Modern dashboards and reports enhance decision-making and presentations

I would love to be able to create my own reports in Sigma, as I can do in Salesforce. Either we are not using it properly, or the software is too complicated. It would be great if there was a way for me to create reports without relying on a data analyst. I'm interested in the upcoming AI co-pilot to enable natural language generation of visualizations and reports. Also, the marketing materials did not match what I feel we've received. Regarding pricing, Sigma's pricing doesn't allow more people to have the ability to create their own reports. We have very few admin or report creator licenses, while everyone else is on a view-only mode.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What I like about Power BI is how fast you are able to create dashboards and how fast you are able to fetch the data. You can connect to the database or data source, and then you can design your dashboards very easily."

"One of the most valuable features of Microsoft Power BI is its easy way of sharing data within the organization or outside."

"We have found the solution to be stable."

"Considering that it's Microsoft, it can be integrated with the Power Platform, which is also Microsoft-based, like SharePoint, Power apps, Power Automate, and Power BI, which is the most user-friendly."

"The most valuable feature is integration with Python."

"Its ease of use is most valuable."

"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."

"Microsoft B's beneficial features are that it is a Microsoft product and it is well known by the staff here in the company. It suited the available skills."

More Microsoft Power BI pros

"Sigma is a great software for non-technical business users. If someone's familiar with pivot tables or Excel or Google Sheets, they should be able to pick up Sigma pretty quickly. There is a very low bar for onboarding."

"Sigma serves as the visualization and reporting front end."

"The most valuable feature of Sigma is the detailed reports."

"I find the collaborative features, such as commenting, to be very valuable."

"The tool's interface is easy to use. The functions listed as a part of the menu items are easy to use."

"The most valuable aspect for me is having real-time data."

"The most valuable feature of Sigma is the detailed reports."

Cons

"Not having to login again after a mobile app upgrade. A simple login on mobile would be great."

"It should be more user-friendly and simple."

"I have to write scripts to query data for analyzing performance."

"There could be an integrated AI that can automatically analyze some of your data and highlight or provide suggestions. For example, when you are looking at a data set, it can suggest putting it into a certain type of chart so that you gain different insights or a trend line. You would almost have templates that it would recommend for you."

"In my opinion, the software is a little bit limited in terms of the flexibility it offers, with regard to the design of the visualization."

"It is not yet ready for enterprises. For a big enterprise data model, it is not so stable, and it also doesn't scale so well."

"The on-premises version lacks some technical features that are available with the Cloud version."

"My main complaint is that the error messages need to be made more clear. Currently, they are either too generic or outright misleading, and finding the real problem is like searching for a needle in a haystack."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

"The product's roadmap regarding introducing new features in the solution or new versions of the tool can be made better in the future."

"The only minor area for improvement lies in handling highly complex visualizations."

"Sigma could have better reports."

"Either we are not using it properly, or the software is too complicated. It would be great if there was a way for me to create reports without relying on a data analyst."

"Sigma lacks a versioning feature to track changes. There is a need for better structuring, like a folder system, to organize diagrams efficiently."

"I would like to see better visualization options. That would allow me to build out more visually pleasing dashboarding in Sigma."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As far as I am aware you do not need a license for the solution."

"I rate the product price an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."

"The licensing can be complicated."

"In general, Microsoft BI's price is lower compared to Alteryx."

"The price of the license can be better."

"I'm not very familiar with the licensing aspect, as it operates in the cloud as a SaaS (Software as a Service) model. Essentially, you pay based on cloud cost models, which might include hourly rates or similar billing structures introduced by Microsoft. Many organizations utilize it and pay for its services, somewhat like Office 365. It's a cloud-based platform that provides the necessary services, including support, for development, and you pay accordingly for the usage."

"Pricing, that's where Microsoft beats Tableau. It is priced much cheaper."

"We have enterprise licenses and some of the other tools or features come as a package and others you have to purchase separately."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

"The retail price is set at one thousand dollars per creator per year."

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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

Answers from the Community

Pambos Soteriades

Founder & CEO at PiSigma

Apr 29, 2023

Which solution is better for a company in the telecoms industry: Signa or Power BI?

This market comparison chart....https://www.gartner.com/doc/re...;ct=230130&st=sb

See 2 answers

Ronald Chavez

Cloud Services at Supérate

Apr 29, 2023

The two are similar, it is cars but of different brands; I ask 1-) the users use Windows 2-) you have Office 365 3-) They will use Excel for the data. If you answer yes to the 3, better BI due to integration, and learning is easier for the user. If they are non-Microsoft databases, investigate on the provider's side, for example, SAP, IBM, etc. I have trained end users in Power BI. I know that Power BI has the majority of connectors. I hope my comment is helpful. Regards

Read full answer

Ronald Chavez

Cloud Services at Supérate

Apr 29, 2023

This market comparison chart....https://www.gartner.com/doc/re...;ct=230130&st=sb

Read full answer

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

Government

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

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...

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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 ...

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What do you like most about Sigma?

The tool's interface is easy to use. The functions listed as a part of the menu items are easy to use.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sigma?

The pricing of Sigma is a concern, as it restricts our ability to provide more users with report-creating capabilities due to the high cost of admin or report creator licenses. Most users have view...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Sigma?

See all answers

Comparisons

Tableau vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 14% of the time

Domo vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 8% of the time

Databricks vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 8% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 7% of the time

KNIME vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 5% of the time

More Microsoft Power BI Competitors

Hex vs Sigma

Compared 36% of the time

Apache Superset vs Sigma

Compared 16% of the time

Omni vs Sigma

Compared 13% of the time

Tableau vs Sigma

Compared 9% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Sigma

Compared 8% of the time

More Sigma Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

June 2025

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Buyer's Guide

Sigma

June 2025

Download Sigma product report

Also Known As

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

No data available

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

Sigma is the next-generation of analytics for cloud data warehouses with a familiar spreadsheet-like interface that gives business experts the power to ask any question of their data no matter the query.

Sigma Computing

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

Snowflake, Fivetran ,Autodesk, Flowspace, Super League Gaming, Zumper, Clover, Volta, Olivela

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI vs. Sigma

July 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Power BI vs. Sigma

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