Amazon QuickSight vs. Microsoft Power BI

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon QuickSight
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
N/A
$24
per month per user
Microsoft Power BI
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Power BI is a visualization and data discovery tool from Microsoft. It allows users to convert data into visuals and graphics, visually explore and analyze data, collaborate on interactive dashboards and reports, and scale across their organization with built-in governance and security.
$10
per month per user
Pricing
Amazon QuickSightMicrosoft Power BI
Editions & Modules
Reader
$3
per month per user
Author
$24
per month per user
Reader Pro
$24
per month per user
Author Pro
$50
per month per user
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon QuickSightMicrosoft Power BI
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsProspective buyers can also purchase a set number of sessions or questions in lieu of a monthly subscription.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon QuickSightMicrosoft Power BI
Considered Both Products
Amazon QuickSight
Chose Amazon QuickSight
As per our requirement, the Amazon Eco System leads us to use the Amazon Quick Sight platform. It works well with Redshift datasources.
Chose Amazon QuickSight
Due to the fact that our platform infrastructure is mainly based on AWS, it was seamless and effortless for integration. Our second consideration is the operating cost in which QuickSight is reasonably low compared to other tools we had evaluated. From a development …
Microsoft Power BI
Chose Microsoft Power BI
Compared to Amazon QuickSight, if your dataset is coming from Amazon S3, it is much easier to just use QuickSight. However, if you are building a pipeline using prefect to transfer data, MS Power BI would potentially be a good tool to use and visualize the data by some none …
Chose Microsoft Power BI
It Improve business process agility.
TrustRadius Insights
Amazon QuickSightMicrosoft Power BI
Highlights

TrustRadius
Research Team Insight
Published

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.

Features
Amazon QuickSightMicrosoft Power BI
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Amazon QuickSight
10.0
6 Ratings
20% above category average
Microsoft Power BI
8.4
193 Ratings
3% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports10.05 Ratings8.3164 Ratings
Customizable dashboards10.06 Ratings8.8192 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates10.06 Ratings8.0175 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Amazon QuickSight
10.0
6 Ratings
22% above category average
Microsoft Power BI
7.9
191 Ratings
2% below category average
Drill-down analysis10.06 Ratings8.2188 Ratings
Formatting capabilities10.06 Ratings7.7188 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages10.04 Ratings7.3140 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration10.06 Ratings8.5186 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Amazon QuickSight
8.4
6 Ratings
2% above category average
Microsoft Power BI
8.1
184 Ratings
2% below category average
Publish to Web8.03 Ratings8.3174 Ratings
Publish to PDF10.03 Ratings8.2169 Ratings
Report Versioning10.05 Ratings7.7141 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling7.04 Ratings8.3144 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers7.03 Ratings7.9107 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Amazon QuickSight
10.0
6 Ratings
23% above category average
Microsoft Power BI
7.8
184 Ratings
2% below category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)10.06 Ratings8.2178 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization10.05 Ratings8.1163 Ratings
Predictive Analytics10.03 Ratings7.4133 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining10.01 Ratings7.434 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Amazon QuickSight
10.0
6 Ratings
16% above category average
Microsoft Power BI
8.6
175 Ratings
1% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)10.06 Ratings8.8165 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model10.06 Ratings8.5143 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)10.06 Ratings8.4155 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control10.01 Ratings8.444 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)10.05 Ratings8.7137 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Amazon QuickSight
3.9
4 Ratings
67% below category average
Microsoft Power BI
8.0
157 Ratings
2% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access4.03 Ratings7.8147 Ratings
Mobile Application3.52 Ratings7.7128 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile3.84 Ratings8.0150 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Amazon QuickSight
6.0
3 Ratings
25% below category average
Microsoft Power BI
7.8
113 Ratings
1% above category average
REST API6.12 Ratings8.2101 Ratings
Javascript API6.62 Ratings7.682 Ratings
iFrames7.03 Ratings8.055 Ratings
Java API6.12 Ratings6.967 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)7.03 Ratings7.588 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)3.03 Ratings8.444 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Amazon QuickSightMicrosoft Power BI
Small Businesses
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 8.9 out of 10
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Reveal
Reveal
Score 10.0 out of 10
Reveal
Reveal
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Kyvos Insights
Kyvos Insights
Score 9.5 out of 10
Kyvos Insights
Kyvos Insights
Score 9.5 out of 10
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User Ratings
Amazon QuickSightMicrosoft Power BI
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(6 ratings)
8.5
(195 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.5
(3 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(2 ratings)
8.3
(111 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(1 ratings)
9.8
(52 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon QuickSightMicrosoft Power BI
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
Amazon Quicksight is a truly cloud-based solution so it works perfectly fine and saves a lot of expense in terms of hardware and maintenance. We can maintain it by ourselves by giving commands on UI. If you have connectivity issues then it can cause headaches because it's a cloud platform and it's a bit costly as compared to other services
Read full review
Microsoft
Has significantly improved collation of data and visualisation especially with business across Europe. Has given me the ability to see the Site availability at the click of a button to see which Site is in the "money" and seize opportunities based on Market data
Read full review
Pros
Amazon AWS
  • 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
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Options for data source connections are immense. Not just which sources, but your options for *how* the data is brought in.
  • Constant updates (this is both good and bad at times).
  • User friendliness. I can get the data connections set up and draft some quick visuals, then release to the target audience and let them expand on it how they want to.
Read full review
Cons
Amazon AWS
  • 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.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • It would be easier for users could Microsoft Power BI and Excel used the same programming languages.
  • Would like to see the online version of Microsoft Power BI be as powerful as the desktop version.
  • Publishing a Microsoft Power BI file online and then having to save the file is somewhat redundant.
  • Would like to export each page or chart as an image.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Microsoft Power BI is an excellent and scalable tool. It has a learning curve, but once you get past that, the sky is the limit and you can build from the most simple to the most complex dashboards. I have built everything from simple reports with only a few data points to complex reports with many pages and advanced filtering.
Read full review
Usability
Amazon AWS
It was helping us a lot as per our business needs. Reporting is way easy with QuickSight that helps us to understand the performance of campaigns effectively and so does the performance of sales individual. We can analyze the data and create a new strategies effectively. Setup and maintenance was way easy
Read full review
Microsoft
Automating reporting has reduced manual data processing by 50-70%, freeing up analysts for higher-value tasks. A finance team that previously spent 20+ hours per week on Excel-based reports now does it in minutes with Microsoft Power BI's automated Real-time dashboards have shortened decision cycles by 30-40%, enabling leadership to react quickly to sales trends, operational bottlenecks, and customer behavior.
Read full review
Support Rating
Amazon AWS
They provide proper support when needed. They are always ready to provide the box solution and make things easier for users.
Read full review
Microsoft
It is a fantastic tool, you can do almost everything related with data and reports, it is a perfect substitutive of Power Point and Excel with a high evolution and flexibility, and also it is very friendly and easy to share. I think all companies should have Power BI (or other BI tool) in their software package and if they are in the MS Suite, for sure Power BI should be the one due to all the benefits of the MS ecosystem.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
It was integrated with our erp easily and was accessible on cloud.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
All of the other reporting platforms my organization has used previously were within our CRM and not a standalone program. In that we were very limited in being able to slice and dice the data the way that we wanted to
Read full review
Microsoft
Microsoft Power BI is free. If I didn't want to create a custom platform (i.e. my organization insisted on an existing platform that I *had* to use), I'd use Microsoft Power BI. For any start-up or SMB, I'd just use Claude & Grok to build it quickly, also for free. Would not pay for Tableau or Sigma anymore. Not worth it at all.
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Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • Cost Effective
  • Easy setup and maintenance
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Power BI usage reduced the effort of analytical reports creation by about 80%
  • Empowered all the level of employee to be more vigilant of the data and business insights, gained the profit of 8% overall.
  • AI-powered predictive analytics improved forecasting accuracy by 17%, that topped the overall sales.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Microsoft Power BI Screenshots

Screenshot of Microsoft Power BI - Turns insights into impact for business usersScreenshot of Power BI integrates easily with Microsoft 365Screenshot of Microsoft Power BI - AI-Powered CapabilitiesScreenshot of Microsoft Power BI - Copilot can be used to create reportsScreenshot of Microsoft Power BI - Data HubScreenshot of Microsoft Power BI - Scales as organizational needs grow