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Microsoft Power BI vs Yellowfin comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 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
6.8
Number of Reviews
328
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Yellowfin
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
35th
Ranking in Reporting
23rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (24th), Embedded BI (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 8.9%, down from 21.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Yellowfin is 0.9%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Power BI8.9%
Yellowfin0.9%
Other90.2%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Antonio Flor - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Anaplanner at Chaucer Group
Data integration has improved reserving and expense control while collaboration drives fast dashboards
Regarding drawbacks or weak points in Microsoft Power BI, it may not be directly related to the tool itself, but with our architecture, as we couldn't get a service account, which is an email address that has no relationship with the employees, just to establish the connection with Anaplan. We couldn't get it to work on SSO, so we use an employee account which could be a point of weakness, meaning if the person leaves, that connection will break. If the person goes on holiday and we need to refresh, we have to change the connection as well, but we have to live with that since we're not using SSO on the service account. Regarding the natural language processing feature, we're trying to avoid using it too much because it can slow down the connection, so as much as possible, we try to build the logic and any transformation in Anaplan, and then deliver an end product to Microsoft Power BI.
AC
‎IS Executive at SAINS
It is a central source of up-to-date data and information, but needs more charting capabilities
Management information Reporting Statistics Data analysis It reduces sending copies of different report/spreadsheet versions over email, which makes it difficult to access the right report. It is also able to create information dashboards for various users' throughout.  All management…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I have found the quick reporting and the conductivity with all the data sources valuable."
"It provides easy integration with Office tools."
"It is very well integrated with other Microsoft products, including PowerApps and Excel, as well as Access, so it fits well into our workflow."
"The most interesting feature of Microsoft Power BI is that it's very user-friendly."
"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."
"We are able to collaborate on things and get insightful data visualizations."
"The visualization and reporting are the most valuable features of this solution."
"One of the most valuable features of Power BI is the ease of use. It is comfortable and there is not a steep learning curve for this solution. If you have some idea of the data and basic visualization ideas, you can use this solution comfortably."
"It reduces time to reproduce reports, provides easy access to organisational data, and has the ability to generate a wide range of reports and analysis."
"It is a central source of up-to-date data and information."
"It is able to create information dashboards for various users' throughout."
 

Cons

"The solution could improve by having more attractive graphical charts."
"We would like to have better SQL support for queries."
"If I have to update data automatically, where I have to pin the gateway, it doesn't update. There is a scheduled refresh functionality so that it refreshes automatically, but I find it very hard to make it work."
"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."
"Powerpoints are not available in the report server."
"I would like to see a more user-friendly interface with Microsoft BI."
"The only concern I have faced with Microsoft BI is the time it takes to find out an issue and rectify it."
"Maybe they can enhance the UI a bit. Right now, it's very basic, I would say, compared to the MicroStrategy or Qlik."
"It needs more presentation/charting capabilities and integration with GIS."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft BI is not very cheap. A premium license costs roughly 5,000 euros a month."
"For my primary use case, i.e. teaching students, the free version of Power BI is adequate."
"I very much recommend the free trial mode."
"The Report Server is pretty expensive on-premise. But as long companies are happy to use the cloud version, that's very cost effective."
"Microsoft BI is not expensive. Compared to the price of other BI products, the price is very fair."
"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with one being cheap and ten being expensive."
"The price of the solution can be expensive if you want to synchronize your data more."
"Its pricing is great."
Information not available
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager - BI Head with 5,001-10,000 employees
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
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Educational Organization
17%
Healthcare Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business135
Midsize Enterprise58
Large Enterprise165
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...
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 ...
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Also Known As

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

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
NCS, Universitat Konstanz, AT&T, PG&E, SingTel, InternetStores
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Power BI vs. Yellowfin and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
882,606 professionals have used our research since 2012.