Based on 37 reviews and ratings
Microsoft Power BI
Based on 1274 reviews and ratings
Highlights
Microsoft Power BI and Amazon QuickSight are business intelligence (BI) tools aimed at helping companies interpret and understand business data. Amazon QuickSight is a lightweight solution optimized for as-needed use. In contrast, Microsoft Power BI is designed for dedicated usage across a company, with standard per-user pricing and deep customizability.
Microsoft Power BI is almost equally popular with mid-size businesses as well as enterprise-level corporations, likely due to its per-user licensing and integration with the Microsoft Office 365 suite. Amazon QuickSight is most popular with mid-size companies and larger enterprises as well, although it also has a strong presence among SMB users. This is likely because its pricing model’s pay-as-you-go feature makes it affordable for smaller organizations.
Features
Although both products offer shareable charts and other data visualizations, they have individual strengths that set them apart from each other.
Microsoft Power BI thrives on its variety and customization capability. Its open-source repository contains a broad selection of high-quality user-submitted visualizations, all of which can be individually tweaked by end users. Its sharing features make it easy to show others the visualizations you’ve created, and it integrates well with MS Azure and Office 365.
Amazon QuickSight, as its name suggests, is designed for speed and ease of use. It’s lightweight and runs well even on large datasets with many users. QuickSight’s library of standard charts and visualizations can be quickly applied to various data sources, especially data from other Amazon Web Services (AWS) products. Users without an Amazon QuickSight license can access charts for a small per-usage fee, making it an attractive option for businesses that don’t require regular access to BI software for their employees.
Limitations
Amazon QuickSight and Microsoft Power BI both provide essential BI functionality, but they each have unique drawbacks to consider before purchasing.
Amazon QuickSight can be lightweight to a fault for some users. Its library of graphs and charts is limited when compared to some other BI solutions, and it doesn’t allow for the extensive customization Microsoft Power BI supports. New users report that its UI can be unintuitive at times. Amazon’s active development of the product means new features and improvements, but it can also introduce unexpected bugs and errors for end users.
Microsoft Power BI’s extensive variety, though helpful for many, can cause its own problems. Finding proper documentation for user-submitted visualizations may be difficult, and some may be missing documentation entirely. Some users may face a steep learning curve before they’re able to use the software’s advanced features. Microsoft Power BI can also consume a large amount of computer resources and may run slowly for some users. Finally, its pricing model may be reasonable compared to its competitors, but is less granular than Amazon Quicksight’s model.
Pricing
Amazon Quicksight offers two pricing models for its base product, and an add-on pricing structure for its data anomaly detection service.
Amazon QuickSight’s Standard Edition is $9.00 per user per month with an annual subscription, or $12.00 per user per month for a month-to-month subscription, with 10 GB per user of storage and $0.25 per GB for additional storage.
Amazon QuickSight’s Enterprise Edition has two separate pricing structures for Authors and Readers. Authors can create and publish data visualizations, while Readers have access to the dashboards created by Authors. For Authors, pricing is $18.00 per user per month for an annual subscription, or $24.00 per user per month for a month-to-month subscription, with 10 GB per user of storage and $0.38 per GB for additional storage. For Readers, pricing can vary from $0.30 to $5.00 per 30-minute session, per user, per month, depending on the number of Readers and how often they use the product. For more details, refer to the vendor’s pricing page.
Microsoft Power BI offers two options for pricing. The Power BI Pro tier is $9.99 monthly per user and includes all of its data visualization and BI features on the cloud, with 10 GB of storage per user and a limitation of 1 GB for each individual dataset. The Power BI Premium tier is $4,995 monthly with no additional per-user fee and adds features aimed at enterprise-level BI, including big data analytics and on-premises deployment. It also expands the storage to 100 TB total, with a 10 GB maximum size per dataset.
Provided by the TrustRadius Research Team
Published on September 10, 2020
Feature Set Ratings
- Microsoft Power BI ranks higher in 7 feature sets: BI Standard Reporting, Ad-hoc Reporting, Report Output and Scheduling, Data Discovery and Visualization, Access Control and Security, Mobile Capabilities, Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
BI Standard Reporting
Amazon QuickSight
Microsoft Power BI
Pixel Perfect reports
Customizable dashboards
Report Formatting Templates
Ad-hoc Reporting
Amazon QuickSight
Microsoft Power BI
Drill-down analysis
Formatting capabilities
Integration with R or other statistical packages
Report sharing and collaboration
Report Output and Scheduling
Amazon QuickSight
Microsoft Power BI
Publish to Web
Publish to PDF
Report Versioning
Report Delivery Scheduling
Delivery to Remote Servers
Data Discovery and Visualization
Amazon QuickSight
Microsoft Power BI
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
Predictive Analytics
Access Control and Security
Amazon QuickSight
Microsoft Power BI
Multi-User Support (named login)
Role-Based Security Model
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
Single Sign-On (SSO)
Mobile Capabilities
Amazon QuickSight
Microsoft Power BI
Responsive Design for Web Access
Mobile Application
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Amazon QuickSight
Microsoft Power BI
REST API
Javascript API
iFrames
Java API
Themeable User Interface (UI)
Customizable Platform (Open Source)
Attribute Ratings
- Amazon QuickSight is rated higher in 2 areas: Likelihood to Recommend, Support Rating
- Microsoft Power BI is rated higher in 1 area: Usability
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon QuickSight
Microsoft Power BI
Likelihood to Renew
Amazon QuickSight
Microsoft Power BI
Usability
Amazon QuickSight
Microsoft Power BI
Support Rating
Amazon QuickSight
Microsoft Power BI
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon QuickSight
Microsoft Power BI
Pros
Amazon QuickSight
- Easily to set up for data sources, already supports quite a few of AWS and non-AWS data sources
- Cost friendly since users are charged only for basis of usage

Microsoft Power BI
- Quickly filter and view granular data sets with easily configurable reporting figures.
- The ability to quickly switch between tabs allows for historical data comparisons and progress tracking.
- It's helpful to dive into the data and break it down from high levels to small.
- Achieve actionable insights faster by using real-time data. It's incredible to have online access to reports.
Cons
Amazon QuickSight
- It is still immature as a cloud-based BI tool.
- Its functionality is about 40-50% of its competitor's products.
- Application is still a little buggy and non-intuitive at times.

Microsoft Power BI
- The desktop app is great but needs a lot of performance improvements
- No MacOS Version for the Desktop app, this is a big limitation for business since executives prefer Macs
- Premium Cloud Version of Power BI is awfully expensive
- On-Premise Version of the Power BI Reports Server is bundled only with SQL Server Enterprise License and cannot be purchased separately and requires Software Assurance Subscription
- On-Premise Power BI Report Server doesn't support ADFS, AzureAD or any Claims-Based authentication platform, a sad disadvantage for enterprises

Pricing Details
Amazon QuickSight
General
Free Trial
—Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
Starting Price
Amazon QuickSight Editions & Modules
Edition
Authors | $24.001 |
---|---|
Readers | $5.001 |
- per month
Additional Pricing Details
—Microsoft Power BI
General
Free Trial
Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
Starting Price
Microsoft Power BI Editions & Modules
Edition
Power BI Pro | $9.991 |
---|---|
Power BI Premium | $20.001 |
Power BI Premium | $4,995.002 |
- Per User/Per Month
- Per Capacity/Per Month
Additional Pricing Details
—Likelihood to Renew
Amazon QuickSight
Microsoft Power BI
Usability
Amazon QuickSight
Microsoft Power BI
Support Rating
Amazon QuickSight
Microsoft Power BI
Alternatives Considered
Amazon QuickSight
Microsoft Power BI
Return on Investment
Amazon QuickSight
- Reduce lots of setup and maintenance cost.
- Latest technology in market.
- Full eco system provided under on roof.
- Cost effective.
Microsoft Power BI
- It helps us track and achieve company goals.
- It shows us [our] performance in areas we could not previously track and allows us to see and work on how to improve their performance.
- Quick easy access for executives to use in helping teams and addressing issues.