Elasticsearch vs. Microsoft Power BI

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Elasticsearch
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Elasticsearch is an enterprise search tool from Elastic in Mountain View, California.
$16
per month
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.
$168
per year per user
Pricing
ElasticsearchMicrosoft Power BI
Editions & Modules
Standard
$16.00
per month
Gold
$19.00
per month
Platinum
$22.00
per month
Enterprise
Contact Sales
Power BI Pro
$14
per month (billed annually) per user
Power BI Premium
$24
per month (billed annually) per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
ElasticsearchMicrosoft Power BI
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPower BI Desktop is the data exploration and report authoring experience for Power BI, and is available as a free download.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
ElasticsearchMicrosoft Power BI
Considered Both Products
Elasticsearch
Chose Elasticsearch
Elasticsearch is very well packed in a broad set of features, ranging from customization capabilities to security and add-ons, and also comes with a great visualization tool named Kibana. Most of the competitors are strong in some of these areas, but I know of no other that's …
Microsoft Power BI
Chose Microsoft Power BI
[Microsoft] Power BI is practical and effective, like a hammer for a nail, it is easy to use and produces very quickly the results that in most cases are urgently required by clients (nice reports to share on the web). To start using [Microsoft] Power BI you need a business …
Features
ElasticsearchMicrosoft Power BI
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Elasticsearch
-
Ratings
Microsoft Power BI
8.2
198 Ratings
0% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports00 Ratings8.2169 Ratings
Customizable dashboards00 Ratings8.7197 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates00 Ratings7.8180 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Elasticsearch
-
Ratings
Microsoft Power BI
7.9
196 Ratings
2% below category average
Drill-down analysis00 Ratings8.3193 Ratings
Formatting capabilities00 Ratings7.7193 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages00 Ratings7.4143 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration00 Ratings8.3191 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Elasticsearch
-
Ratings
Microsoft Power BI
8.0
189 Ratings
3% below category average
Publish to Web00 Ratings8.1179 Ratings
Publish to PDF00 Ratings7.9174 Ratings
Report Versioning00 Ratings7.7145 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling00 Ratings8.3148 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers00 Ratings7.9111 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Elasticsearch
-
Ratings
Microsoft Power BI
7.7
189 Ratings
4% below category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)00 Ratings8.3183 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization00 Ratings8.1168 Ratings
Predictive Analytics00 Ratings7.3138 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining00 Ratings7.339 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Elasticsearch
-
Ratings
Microsoft Power BI
8.4
180 Ratings
1% below category average
Multi-User Support (named login)00 Ratings8.7169 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model00 Ratings8.2148 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)00 Ratings8.2160 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control00 Ratings8.249 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings8.6141 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Elasticsearch
-
Ratings
Microsoft Power BI
7.9
162 Ratings
1% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access00 Ratings7.6152 Ratings
Mobile Application00 Ratings7.5133 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile00 Ratings7.9155 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Elasticsearch
-
Ratings
Microsoft Power BI
7.6
116 Ratings
2% below category average
REST API00 Ratings7.9104 Ratings
Javascript API00 Ratings7.585 Ratings
iFrames00 Ratings8.055 Ratings
Java API00 Ratings6.869 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)00 Ratings7.491 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)00 Ratings8.444 Ratings
Best Alternatives
ElasticsearchMicrosoft Power BI
Small Businesses
Yext
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Score 7.8 out of 10
Yellowfin
Yellowfin
Score 8.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Guru
Guru
Score 9.4 out of 10
Reveal
Reveal
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Guru
Guru
Score 9.4 out of 10
Kyvos Semantic Layer
Kyvos Semantic Layer
Score 9.5 out of 10
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User Ratings
ElasticsearchMicrosoft Power BI
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(48 ratings)
8.5
(197 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.5
(3 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.3
(113 ratings)
Support Rating
7.8
(9 ratings)
10.0
(52 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
ElasticsearchMicrosoft Power BI
Likelihood to Recommend
Elastic
Elasticsearch is a really scalable solution that can fit a lot of needs, but the bigger and/or those needs become, the more understanding & infrastructure you will need for your instance to be running correctly. Elasticsearch is not problem-free - you can get yourself in a lot of trouble if you are not following good practices and/or if are not managing the cluster correctly. Licensing is a big decision point here as Elasticsearch is a middleware component - be sure to read the licensing agreement of the version you want to try before you commit to it. Same goes for long-term support - be sure to keep yourself in the know for this aspect you may end up stuck with an unpatched version for years.
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
Elastic
  • As I mentioned before, Elasticsearch's flexible data model is unparalleled. You can nest fields as deeply as you want, have as many fields as you want, but whatever you want in those fields (as long as it stays the same type), and all of it will be searchable and you don't need to even declare a schema beforehand!
  • Elastic, the company behind Elasticsearch, is super strong financially and they have a great team of devs and product managers working on Elasticsearch. When I first started using ES 3 years ago, I was 90% impressed and knew it would be a good fit. 3 years later, I am 200% impressed and blown away by how far it has come and gotten even better. If there are features that are missing or you don't think it's fast enough right now, I bet it'll be suitable next year because the team behind it is so dang fast!
  • Elasticsearch is really, really stable. It takes a lot to bring down a cluster. It's self-balancing algorithms, leader-election system, self-healing properties are state of the art. We've never seen network failures or hard-drive corruption or CPU bugs bring down an ES cluster.
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
Elastic
  • Joining data requires duplicate de-normalized documents that make parent child relationships. It is hard and requires a lot of synchronizations
  • Tracking errors in the data in the logs can be hard, and sometimes recurring errors blow up the error logs
  • Schema changes require complete reindexing of an index
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
Elastic
We're pretty heavily invested in ElasticSearch at this point, and there aren't any obvious negatives that would make us reconsider this decision.
Read full review
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
Elastic
To get started with Elasticsearch, you don't have to get very involved in configuring what really is an incredibly complex system under the hood. You simply install the package, run the service, and you're immediately able to begin using it. You don't need to learn any sort of query language to add data to Elasticsearch or perform some basic searching. If you're used to any sort of RESTful API, getting started with Elasticsearch is a breeze. If you've never interacted with a RESTful API directly, the journey may be a little more bumpy. Overall, though, it's incredibly simple to use for what it's doing under the covers.
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.
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Support Rating
Elastic
We've only used it as an opensource tooling. We did not purchase any additional support to roll out the elasticsearch software. When rolling out the application on our platform we've used the documentation which was available online. During our test phases we did not experience any bugs or issues so we did not rely on support at all.
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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.
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Implementation Rating
Elastic
Do not mix data and master roles. Dedicate at least 3 nodes just for Master
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Microsoft
It was integrated with our erp easily and was accessible on cloud.
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Alternatives Considered
Elastic
As far as we are concerned, Elasticsearch is the gold standard and we have barely evaluated any alternatives. You could consider it an alternative to a relational or NoSQL database, so in cases where those suffice, you don't need Elasticsearch. But if you want powerful text-based search capabilities across large data sets, Elasticsearch is the way to go.
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.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Elastic
  • We have had great luck with implementing Elasticsearch for our search and analytics use cases.
  • While the operational burden is not minimal, operating a cluster of servers, using a custom query language, writing Elasticsearch-specific bulk insert code, the performance and the relative operational ease of Elasticsearch are unparalleled.
  • We've easily saved hundreds of thousands of dollars implementing Elasticsearch vs. RDBMS vs. other no-SQL solutions for our specific set of problems.
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