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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
6.6
Number of Reviews
331
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Yellowfin
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
34th
Ranking in Reporting
24th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (22nd), Embedded BI (15th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 8.1%, down from 21.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Yellowfin is 1.1%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Power BI8.1%
Yellowfin1.1%
Other90.8%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Hemanthreddy Vakiti - PeerSpot reviewer
Data engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Interactive dashboards have transformed restaurant data into faster daily business decisions
Microsoft Power BI has many features and there is not a lot to improve. However, the licensing can be confusing. When deciding between Pro and Premium, I find it difficult to distinguish what features are offered by Pro and what features are offered by Premium, including the particular differences to choose between both licensing models. Additionally, some features such as DAX, which I mentioned previously, involve DAX calculations and complex data modeling, which are somewhat advanced and not easily understandable. Prior knowledge is required or you need to go through the documentation. If the documentation is made comprehensive so that anyone with no knowledge on DAX can easily use it by going through the documentation, it would be really helpful. Additionally, if the integration with non-Microsoft tools is improved and performance is optimized, then Microsoft Power BI can become a top-ranked visualization tool. The user experience with Microsoft Power BI is quite good. The intuitive user interface makes it easy for both technical and non-technical users to create reports. However, only the advanced features are somewhat complex, and if the documentation is improved, it can be easily accessible.
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

"Microsoft BI is worth it."
"The most valuable aspect of Microsoft Power BI in my field is the insights it provides from analyzing data. Sometimes, these insights go beyond what traditional analysis can reveal due to the large volume of data involved. In terms of improving our data analysis process, it starts with identifying data sources, followed by cleaning and filtering out irrelevant data. Then, we categorize and structure the data to achieve the best visualization and insights. Regarding Power BI's integration with other tools, although we haven't implemented it ourselves, it's known that Power BI can integrate with systems like SAP or ERP software, which could enhance our analytics capabilities if needed."
"This is a self-service BI tool, so it doesn't require a huge amount of technical training, knowledge, or a background in BI in order to induct new people into it."
"We've used Microsoft BI for the general use cases around reporting and dashboarding."
"We are able to collaborate on things and get insightful data visualizations."
"It is more user-friendly compared to SSRS."
"Constant collaboration is the most valuable, I can build a dashboard, and several co-workers can access this dashboard, and we can share information that is important for decision-making."
"The most significant implementation was to reduce the Financial consolidation time for one hundred and twenty companies into one shareholder report, from thirty days to four minutes."
"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."
"Yellowfin doesn’t try to do everything – it is a BI presentation and communication tool, and it does it brilliantly."
"It is a central source of up-to-date data and information."
"It is able to create information dashboards for various users' throughout."
"It is a central source of up-to-date data and information."
 

Cons

"Integration with products that are not Microsoft could be more improved."
"Microsoft has made a lot of progress with Power BI in the past couple of years, but there is still some room for improvement."
"I would like to see a change in the premium capacity."
"It is getting better but still, there are opportunity areas in some aspects, especially the Windows OS dependency."
"Integration with artificial intelligence would help. Humans take time to review the data and eliminate errors."
"Its performance and stability can be improved. It takes time to load, and sometimes, it also breaks down for the whole region."
"Needs single sign-on."
"Its setup and support should be improved. We would like to see more material for developers that provides clear explanations about how we can do data mining by using Microsoft BI. It would also be good if we can connect a feature to other customized machine learning solutions."
"The first release was a bit buggy, but they seem to have gotten on top of that very quickly."
"It needs more presentation/charting capabilities and integration with GIS."
"It needs more presentation/charting capabilities and integration with GIS."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Regarding cost, the initial investment wasn't too high, but ongoing licensing could add up."
"We are end-users, and we don't take care of the prices and accounting. We get a product and pay the fee to our internal service provider, but its price should be reasonable. Otherwise, they wouldn't have bought it."
"The cost of the solution is more flexible for us because the desktop is free and we pay as we use it in the cloud."
"It is reasonably priced."
"Setup is easy, and the cost is economical. You do sometimes need to pay additional costs for third party products which "plug-in" to Microsoft BI."
"The only other cost, besides the licensing fee, would be to cover support."
"Microsoft BI is not expensive. Compared to the price of other BI products, the price is very fair."
"All of the licenses are on an annual basis, but Microsoft will amortize it to an extent. If it's five years, they'll include the possible interest they might have the following year. Ideally, their licensing scheme is an annual license, but they make it easier for some of our clients to take a five-year license but package everything inside for them to buy the license for five years."
Information not available
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893,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
Construction Company
18%
Educational Organization
14%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business135
Midsize Enterprise59
Large Enterprise169
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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Comparisons

 

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: April 2026.
893,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.