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Microsoft Power BI vs Tableau 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
Tableau
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
2nd
Ranking in Reporting
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
295
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (1st), Embedded BI (1st)
 

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 Tableau is 18.2%, down from 18.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Q&A Highlights

it_user83559 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 15, 2014
 

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.
ROMIL SHAH - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides fast data access with in-memory extracts, makes it easy to create visualizations, and saves time
When it comes to visualizations, Tableau has a limitation as compared to Power BI. It has a limited set of visualizations. Power BI has the entire marketplace, so you can connect and import many visualizations and use them, whereas Tableau has only 10 or 15 visualizations. There should be more visualizations, and there should also be data integration with more cloud providers. Tableau has recently launched a paid version for the documentation. So, documentation has become a little bit challenging when it comes to Tableau development because we do not have any tool to export the data out of it. It is a license-based feature that you need to purchase to prepare documentation. So, on the documentation front, for preparing clear documentation for any dashboard, it would help if we get an embedded option, rather than buying a license for each user for the documentation. To document anything, if I have to connect to each workbook and see what has been written as a formula and then document in the Word document, it is pretty time-consuming. We have the Microsoft stack, and we are currently evaluating Power BI because Tableau has a limitation of 50 columns for a drill-down report. If we want more than 50 columns, we have found a hack, but there is no ready-made option for doing it. So, we have to use another tool in case we need a drilled report with more than 50 columns. There are many instances where users need 80 or 90 columns for their analysis, and switching between two technologies becomes a challenge. It is not a cost-effective approach for us. Their support should be improved. We are not happy with their support. Whenever we raised queries, we were pointed to a few blogs, and we didn't get a proper solution from them. Their licensing should also be improved. They want us to purchase a Tableau Creator license for business users, whereas Power BI Desktop is free for business users. They should come up with a basic license with one or two connectors that our business users can use for preparing their visualizations. Tableau also charges us per user for users who want the data only through email.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Connectivity, installation, and configuration are pretty fast and seamless compared to Cognos."
"In the early stage of an implementation, it not only helps decision making, but it allows people to have insight into problems with data so that they can go and get it corrected."
"It offers a lot of information and is very flexible and interactive."
"The sharing features are vital, especially the ability to share and test different shared dashboards."
"The solution is easy to use and flexible."
"It integrates better with other Microsoft products. It is very easy to use and has very powerful visualizations. It has also got a lot of development going on."
"My understanding is that the initial setup is pretty easy."
"The most useful features are the ability to connect different databases to Microsoft BI and explore them. Once the database information has been extracted, you have the ability to construct indicators and dashboards from the information."
"We frequently utilize visualizations using maps and different objects, all with rich coloring options. And tooltips are absolutely essential for us. Tooltips, like the pop-up descriptions when you hover over some object or graph. Those tooltips in Tableau are great features."
"Tableau has improved my organization in a variety of ways, one of its uses being that of data analysis. A feature I have found most valuable is the ease of use and straightforwardness, in addition to the flexibility of Tableau."
"The solution deployment was straightforward."
"Very user friendly."
"I like the visualization component."
"From the data science point of view, we use it for model building purposes. For example, if we are using it for a bank and we want to understand how much loan the bank can provide, we can use visualization to show the educational qualification, salary, gender, and city of a customer, and by using this information, we can arrive at the loan amount that this person is eligible for. I can also use it to view all prospective customers, so essentially, this is going to help me in model building as well as in understanding and segmenting customers and doing forecasting and predictive analytics. We use model widgets, and we can create thousands of visualizations, such as motion charts and bubble charts. We can also create animated versions of the graphs and view the data from multiple dimensions. These are the features that we typically use and like."
"Data Interpreter: Which can identify issues or potential errors with your imported data."
"Tableau has many different connectors for different databases. It's very easy to connect to MySQL, SQL Server, Amazon EMR, Presto, Redshift, BigQuery, and so on."
 

Cons

"We would like to have better SQL support for queries."
"​It needs more analytic tools."
"It would be better if they had some video tutorials. Most people from an Excel background may struggle with measures in Microsoft BI."
"The admin view could be improved by making it more simplified to manage a users' activity and other things."
"The integration with third-party products could be more stable."
"I have found that some issues exist, indicating room for improvement in scalability."
"Microsoft needs to provide more drivers to connect other data sources in a native way."
"One area for improvement in Microsoft Power BI is serviceability. Compared to one of its competitors: Tableau, there are a lot of things which you cannot do in this tool, that can be done in Tableau."
"With Tableau, there is a gap in its ability to handle very large-scale data."
"More integration with Python or something related to machine learning would be a good improvement."
"I don't have the ability in Tableau to create a tooltip and see the picture of a piece of jewelry or watch that is a best seller."
"It would be nice if we could export more raw data. Currently, there is a limit as to how much data you can export."
"I would like them to include the Italian language, as I can see there are other foreign language in the product."
"People are migrating to Microsoft BI due to the speed, which is quite slow to load, and the lack of visualization options."
"Creating empty extracts is not easy."
"The only issue with the solution is with its prices at a regional level."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I very much recommend the free trial mode."
"The price of Microsoft BI is reasonable. Other solutions such as SAP Cloud are more expensive."
"We're charged a monthly subscription fee of 500 rupees per person."
"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."
"Make it low in cost. It is a no-brainer!"
"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."
"For my primary use case, i.e. teaching students, the free version of Power BI is adequate."
"The cost of this product is very low, at approximately $8 or $9 per month for a developer."
"Tableau is not as cost-effective as Microsoft BI."
"The initial cost that is set according to CPU cores is expensive."
"Tableau is an expensive solution compared to Power BI."
"For our organization, the cost hasn't been an issue."
"The product's price is relatively inexpensive and manageable for enterprise-level companies."
"It is reasonable based on what it offers."
"The price of Tableau is high, although there are different types of licenses available."
"Basically, we prefer a permanent license. A one-time charge is much better."
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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

it_user83559 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 15, 2014
May 15, 2014
Rich- What is it that current leadership perceives as lacking in the current reporting tool set? Why change if the only benefit is features or a products capabilities? Can the products features and capabilities be exploited? By who and when? How does that make money for the company? Increased profit? Cost reduction? Increased resource utilization? Fewer days for order to cash? Reduced colle...
2 out of 21 answers
Feb 4, 2014
What might be “easy” for some is often “difficult” for others. Some users might find their experience with Tableau can be applied to quickly getting up to speed with Report Builder; others might find their mastery of Tableau gets in the way of learning the new software. I’m sure if asked, some colleague’s would say they find Tableau hard to use. Even so, I think what you really need to know is how much training would be needed after converting over to MS BI. I would suggest that to find the answer, you should ask the organization’s best Tableau users to try out a few typical daily tasks in Report Builder and let them evaluate how difficult or easy they are to complete. Their responses can be used to develop a training program for the other users. I would also suggest this link http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd239338.aspx. It provides tutorials for various tasks in Report Builder, which may be able to give you a feel for how simple or complex it is to build a dashboard, chart or report in Report Builder.
it_user79746 - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 4, 2014
I am still early in my Tableau experience. I do know that MS has a thing called PowerPivot which is part of the MS answer to Tableau, interesting that so many other BI providers are having to adapt to the competition provided by Tableau, but that also requires enterprise Sharepoint. Where I work they are just coming out of what we might call BI 1.0 and trying to get to BI 2.0, which is why I am there.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
43%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
Government
5%
Educational Organization
44%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

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 ...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos Enter...
Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?
Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it consta...
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 ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI
Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
 

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
Accenture, Adobe, Amazon.com, Bank of America, Charles Schwab Corp, Citigroup, Coca-Cola Company, Cornell University, Dell, Deloitte, Duke University, eBay, Exxon Mobil, Fannie Mae, Ferrari, French Red Cross, Goldman Sachs, Google, Government of Canada, HP, Intel, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Macy's, Merck, The New York Times, PayPal, Pfizer, US Army, US Air Force, Skype, and Walmart.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Power BI vs. Tableau and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.