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Microsoft Power BI pros and cons

Vendor: Microsoft

4.0 out of 5

332 reviews
93% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

Microsoft Power BI integrates with Microsoft tools like Excel and Office 365 for enhanced workflow and offers cost-effective solutions with features like DAX coding. It improves data visualization and decision-making but struggles with scalability for large data volumes. Difficult installation requirements and licensing costs may impact smaller businesses, and integration with non-Microsoft data sources needs enhancement. Technical support and error messages require improvement for efficient troubleshooting.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Power BI integrates seamlessly with Microsoft products like Excel and Office 365, enhancing the workflow across platforms.

It offers cost-effective solutions with tight integration capabilities and features like DAX coding, making it suitable for budget-conscious organizations.

Power BI improves data visualization and decision-making capabilities with its powerful analytics and real-time report tracking.

This tool simplifies data connectivity and enables easy extraction, transformation, and presentation from various data sources.

It supports a scalable architecture, allowing growth in data and user management, while maintaining ease of use and deployment.

CONS

Microsoft Power BI struggles with scalability when handling large volumes of data, resulting in performance issues and challenges with scaling up effectively.

The complexity and demanding installation requirements create difficulties for users with lower processing power and memory capacity.

Integration capabilities with other non-Microsoft data sources could be improved, affecting seamless connectivity and data consolidation.

Licensing costs and structure can be prohibitive for smaller businesses or large-scale deployments, creating budget constraints for many users.

Technical support and error messaging need improvement for clearer troubleshooting and efficient resolution of user issues.

Microsoft Power BI Pros review quotes

Founder & Principal Architect at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Feb 28, 2013

Microsoft SSAS is one of the best BI suites on the market.

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CEO at a tech company with 51-200 employees

May 6, 2013

Automated reports can be generated using SQL Reporting and Analysis in XML and PDF formats which are easier to read and understand.

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BI Junior consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Jun 5, 2014

Power BI reduced time to develop and deployment projects.

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Microsoft Power BI

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Microsoft BI Consultant with 51-200 employees

Dec 14, 2014

I do work on projects to switch clients to MS BI usually due to its attractive pricing and tight integration with MS Office suite.

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MSBI Technology Architect/Developer at a pharma/biotech company with 51-200 employees

Dec 22, 2014

With MSBI, we realized automation from data loading, transformation and reporting.

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Microsoft BI Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Jan 15, 2015

For example, I recently migrated an application from TeraData to SQL Server and the response times for some functions were cut down from 90 seconds to about less than 1 second!

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Database Analyst at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Feb 15, 2015

Very high, as it is a very cost effective application compared to any BI tools in the market.

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Analyst in XBRL Projects at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Apr 22, 2015

All the features are valuable.

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MSBI Technical Lead at a tech company with 10,001+ employees

Aug 13, 2015

Without this solution, the business can’t think of successful operations.

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Senior Consultant | Architect at DHL

Aug 23, 2016

You should get it and implement it.

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Microsoft Power BI Cons review quotes

Founder & Principal Architect at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Feb 28, 2013

Price of the SQL Server bundle is potentially cost prohibitive for smaller businesses

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CEO at a tech company with 51-200 employees

May 6, 2013

The installation requirements are quite demanding and only computers with relatively high processing power and large primary memory are able to run some SQL Reporting and Analysis tools.

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BI Junior consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

Jun 5, 2014

PowerQuery is so long and something exists in SSAS cube but I cannot do the same in tabular.

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Microsoft Power BI

Free Report: Microsoft Power BI Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Microsoft Power BI. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2026.

886,932 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Microsoft BI Consultant with 51-200 employees

Dec 14, 2014

End-user tools such as Excel is not good enough for all business scenarios.

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MSBI Technology Architect/Developer at a pharma/biotech company with 51-200 employees

Dec 22, 2014

The aggregate functions in SSRS.

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Microsoft BI Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Jan 15, 2015

The SQL Server Reporting Services can certainly use some more help.

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Database Analyst at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Feb 15, 2015

The robustness of the stack could be improved as it fails when we import/extract large amounts of data.

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Analyst in XBRL Projects at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Apr 22, 2015

Microsoft has poor support for XML.

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MSBI Technical Lead at a tech company with 10,001+ employees

Aug 13, 2015

Reporting or SharePoint needs a lot of learning so you can build reports

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Senior Consultant | Architect at DHL

Aug 23, 2016

Well definitely the connectors, which is always a huge space for improvement in configurations, especially the amount of connectors etc.

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Product Categories

Product Categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Legacy BI Tools

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

Tableau Enterprise vs Microsoft Power BI

Teradata vs Microsoft Power BI

IBM Cognos vs Microsoft Power BI

SAP Business Data Cloud vs Microsoft Power BI

Domo vs Microsoft Power BI

Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence vs Microsoft Power BI

Oracle OBIEE vs Microsoft Power BI

QlikView vs Microsoft Power BI

MicroStrategy vs Microsoft Power BI

ThoughtSpot vs Microsoft Power BI

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