Microsoft Power BI vs XLCubed comparison

Microsoft and Fluence Technologies are both solutions in the Reporting category. Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 7.9, while Fluence Technologies is ranked #29. Microsoft holds a 27.2% mindshare in RT, compared to Fluence Technologies’s 0.3% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 50% of Fluence Technologies users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Power BI

Read 319 Microsoft Power BI reviews

14,384 Views
11,351 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

XLCubed

Read 2 XLCubed reviews

195 Views
139 Comparison Views

50% willing to recommend

Microsoft Power BI

XLCubed

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Microsoft Power BI and XLCubed are products in the business intelligence space. Microsoft Power BI seems to have the upper hand with a comprehensive range of tools and integrations fitting various business needs.

Features: Microsoft Power BI includes extensive data visualization tools, seamless integration with Microsoft products, and scalable cloud services. XLCubed offers powerful Excel-based analytics, rich customization options, and the ability to handle complex datasets efficiently.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Power BI has a straightforward deployment process with strong integration capabilities, supported by extensive documentation and community resources. XLCubed offers a tailored deployment experience beneficial for businesses needing in-depth analysis and customization, with personalized customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Power BI generally has a lower initial setup cost with flexible pricing plans catering to different business scales, contributing to a higher perceived ROI due to its broad capabilities. XLCubed, although more expensive upfront, provides high ROI for organizations focused on complex data analytics solutions.

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

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI vs. XLCubed

March 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 Reporting

1st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

319

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (1st)

XLCubed

Ranking in Reporting

29th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 27.2%, up from 25.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of XLCubed is 0.3%, down from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Reporting

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

it_user1391316

Head of Finance Systems at NHS

Cost effective with great capability, performance, flexibility and visuals

In general, we're happy with the solution but we're always looking to see what else is out there. The thing we've struggled with is our partnership with Tagetik UK, the consultants, and the issue we had gaining access to consultants to develop the solution on our behalf. Thankfully we connected directly with XLCubed and now have a pretty close and good relationship with them so the earlier problem we had of actually getting resources to help us develop has now been solved. One of the things that we've been asking for and would like as an additional feature is a sort of benchmarking functionality. The ability to be able to benchmark, directly against the company digital corporate numbers. That said, there seems to be improved functionality within the latest release that could help us develop that further.

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

"The product can go easily go and extract data and it can put it into any format."

"The best feature of this solution is the way you can plan, communicate, and visualize all the knowledge you extract from the data for the customers. I like the way you can show or visualize the information a client needs to answer a business question."

"The stability is good."

"The most valuable feature of Power BI is its ability to provide customized visualizations and insights tailored to specific business needs."

"I like the downloadable visualizations a lot. I think that they give the user a very nice starting point in creating awesome dashboards, with the right way to tell their data story."

"It is very good, and it supports the Microsoft ecosystem, including Excel, etc."

"The product is user-friendly."

"The most valuable features of Microsoft BI are its intuitiveness and ease to use."

More Microsoft Power BI pros

"I am looking forward to testing their full graphics that are available, as they looked very interesting in the demo."

"Great capability, performance, flexibility, visuals, and the solution is also very cost effective."

Cons

"The graphic interface could be better."

"From a scalability and performance perspective and based on my understanding and feedback from end users, there's room for improvement in data processing, scaling up, and leveraging the cloud. That could be an enhancement area for me to look into."

"Real-time data integration is an area for improvement."

"We did have some issues building the Microsoft blog."

"The performance of Microsoft BI could improve for large datasets and it would be beneficial to have more visualization features."

"I'm looking for something that can make it much easier to incorporate Power BI visuals or dashboards into, let's say, Power Apps – custom Power Apps or anything like that. The most important thing would be to seamlessly embed reports in applications. For example, to have buttons that can be navigated through multiple solutions – from Power Apps to Power BI to SharePoint – via links or something like that."

"I have found using Microsoft BI is not easy. For example, trying to use the auto-refresh feature is not simple."

"The way you navigate the product, compared to other products in this industry, that could be improved a bit."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

"There should be a better or an easier way to establish that connection to external sources."

"Would like the ability to be able to benchmark."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This solution came free, it was offered by Microsoft with our E3 license."

"Both cost-wise and implementation-wise, this product is a good choice."

"The price of Microsoft BI is expensive. We found the price of Tableau to be less expensive."

"It is a cheap solution for our needs."

"While Power BI is generally a paid product, particularly for enterprise features and scalability, you can start with the free version and still achieve significant functionality."

"The licensing can be complicated."

"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."

"It depends upon the tier of your Office 365 subscription. On E5, which is a Microsoft Azure subscription, you get it for free. If you are on a lower tier, you can subscribe for $10 a month per user, which is really cheap."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

"I am still using the two-week trial, but at first sight, the price is reasonable."

"14,000 Pounds per year for licensing."

See which vendors are best for you

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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

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Mining And Metals 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...

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 ...

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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 8% of the time

KNIME vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 6% of the time

More Microsoft Power BI Competitors

No data available

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

March 2025

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Buyer's Guide

Reporting

March 2025

Download XLCubed 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

Produce insightful, interactive reports on, company-wide metrics for any business audience. Now all in Excel.
Pixel-perfect financial reporting with the skill sets you already have. No IT required.
Meet XLCubed: The data-connected Excel add-in for all your reporting needs.

Fluence Technologies

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

Marshalls Ltd, BP Exploration and Production, Thorntons, Ted Baker, Bristol-Myers, Rank Group, ING Bank Genve, Cargill Value Investment, Chloride Power, Auchan, Erste, UEFA, Novartis, Porsche Informatik, Raiffeisen Bank International

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI vs. XLCubed

March 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Power BI vs. XLCubed

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