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Microsoft Power BI

Microsoft Power BI

Overview

What is Microsoft Power BI?

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…

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Learn from top reviewers

Microsoft Power BI is Powerful

Rating: 8 out of 10
March 7, 2025
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
I use Microsoft Power BI to prepare an analysis of web content audits - what is completed, late, and coming up. The report pulls data from a SharePoint list and filters based ...
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Sherri MacCheyne
Director - Marketing
Director, Strategic Operations
UNC Greensboro
Microsoft Power BI2 years of experience
Verified on LinkedIn

AI probably wins out but Free Microsoft Power BI beats other traditional dashboarding software.

Rating: 7 out of 10
March 7, 2025
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
I've used Microsoft Power BI at various locations throughout my career. Currently use it as a metrics dashboard for executives & decision makers. Ideally, we have this imp...
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Tanner Ingalls
Manager - Product Management
Data Product Manager & Data Scientist
REDX
Microsoft Power BI8 years of experience

Great Tool for visualising

Rating: 10 out of 10
March 4, 2025
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
We use Microsoft Power BI to analyse our hours for train crew. We have over 1000 train crew who are all on annualised contracts, we need to ensure all the staff are utilised a...
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Susan Hardacre MAAT CIMA DIP MA
Employee - Finance and Accounting
Production Accountant
GB Railfreight
Microsoft Power BI3 years of experience

Microsoft Power BI Changes Your Data Powerfully

Rating: 8 out of 10
March 4, 2025
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
We use Microsoft Power BI for a lot of financial projections, data analysis and budgeting purposes. The features provided make data consolidation and presentation much quicker...
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Luke Holocher
Professional - Finance and Accounting
Business Manager
Jefferson Academy Elementary
Microsoft Power BI2 years of experience

Microsoft Power BI - a powerful scalable solution

Rating: 8 out of 10
February 24, 2025
Vetted ReviewVerified User
Complex calculations and pulling data from multiple sources or objects. We use it when Salesforce reporting becomes insufficient to show the number of data points we want in a...
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David Jensen
Contributor - Corporate
Operations Manager, Customer Success
SaltClick
Microsoft Power BI4 years of experience
Verified on LinkedIn
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

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Pricing

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Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://powerbi.microsoft.com/en…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Starting price (does not include set up fee)

  • $10 per month per user
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Product Demos

Microsoft Power BI Guided Tour

powerbi.microsoft.com
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Features

BI Standard Reporting

Standard reporting means pre-built or canned reports available to users without having to create them.

8.3
Avg 8.1

Ad-hoc Reporting

Ad-Hoc Reports are reports built by the user to meet highly specific requirements.

7.9
Avg 8.0

Report Output and Scheduling

Ability to schedule and manager report output.

8
Avg 8.3

Data Discovery and Visualization

Data Discovery and Visualization is the analysis of multiple data sources in a search for patterns and outliers and the ability to represent the data visually.

7.7
Avg 7.9

Access Control and Security

Access control means being able to determine who has access to which data.

8.5
Avg 8.5

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

8
Avg 7.8

Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding

APIs are a set of routines, protocols, and tools for used for embedding one application in another

7.7
Avg 7.8
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Product Details

What is Microsoft Power BI?

Power BI: Comprehensive Business Intelligence Platform


Capabilities:

  • Discover Insights with AI: Utilizes advanced data-analysis tools, AI features, and a report-creation tool to transform complex data into accessible visuals, making it easier to uncover valuable insights.

  • Consolidate Data with OneLake: Integrates datasets from diverse sources into OneLake, creating a centralized, reliable source of truth for data. This integration reduces data duplication and simplifies analysis.

  • Drive Decision-Making: Infuse actionable insights into everyday applications like Microsoft 365, enhancing decision-making processes across the organization.

  • Empower Data Teams with Microsoft Fabric: Revolutionizes organization's data management and usage by incorporating Microsoft Fabric into the Power BI experience.


Key Differentiators:

  • Scalability: Power BI offers exceptional scalability, capable of transforming petabytes of data and supporting thousands of users without compromising performance.

  • Integration with Microsoft Ecosystem: Seamlessly embed and share insights across Microsoft services like Teams, PowerPoint, Excel, and the Power Platform, ensuring coherent and unified data handling.

  • Advanced AI Capabilities: Features AI tools that automatically find patterns, generate reports, and provide insights, enhancing efficiency and accuracy.

  • Robust Data Governance: Ensures data security and compliance with Microsoft's comprehensive governance and protection measures.


Copilot in Power BI:

  • Efficient Report Generation: Generates reports rapidly using conversational language. Copilot in Power BI enables quick creation of DAX calculations, summaries, and tailored reports.


Integration with Microsoft Fabric:

  • Enhanced Accessibility: Allows interaction with reports and data across Microsoft Fabric workloads, even for users without paid licenses.

  • OneLake Data Hub: Facilitates the connection and curation of data from varied sources, promoting efficient data engineering.


Power BI PRO:

  • Self-Service Analytics: License individuals for self-service analytics, enabling them to publish and share reports, fostering a culture of self-service BI.


Free Account Options:

  • Power BI Desktop & Free Trial: Offers a free app for data connection, modeling, and visualization, along with an easy-to-use report canvas.

  • Comprehensive Training: Access step-by-step Microsoft training courses to fully leverage Power BI capabilities.


Key Benefits:


  • Unified Data Management: Connect disparate data sources to establish a governed, unified source of truth.

  • Empower All Users: Ensures accessibility and ease of use for everyone, supported by free training resources and numerous accessibility features.

  • Immediate Start: Quickly begin with report creation, AI-generated reports, and a wide range of templates.

  • Customer Engagement: Enhance user engagement in apps by embedding Power BI reports.



Microsoft Power BI Features

BI Platform Features

  • Supported: Administration via Windows App
  • Supported: Administration via Web Interface
  • Supported: Live Connection to External Data
  • Supported: Snapshot of External Data
  • Supported: In-memory data model
  • Supported: OLAP (Pre-processed cube representation)
  • Supported: ROLAP (SQL-layer querying)
  • Supported: Multi-Data Source Reporting (Blending)
  • Supported: Data warehouse / dictionary layer
  • Supported: ETL Capability

Supported Data Sources Features

  • Supported: MS Excel Workbooks
  • Supported: Text Files (CSV, etc)
  • Supported: Oracle
  • Supported: MS SQL Server
  • Supported: IBM DB2
  • Supported: Postgres
  • Supported: MySQL
  • Supported: ODBC
  • Supported: Cloudera Hadoop
  • Supported: Hortonworks Hadoop
  • Supported: EMC Greenplum
  • Supported: IBM Netezza
  • Supported: HP Vertica
  • Supported: ParAccel
  • Supported: SAP Hana
  • Supported: Teradata
  • Supported: Sage 500
  • Supported: Salesforce
  • Supported: SAP
  • Supported: Google Analytics

BI Standard Reporting Features

  • Supported: Pixel Perfect reports
  • Supported: Customizable dashboards
  • Supported: Report Formatting Templates

Ad-hoc Reporting Features

  • Supported: Drill-down analysis
  • Supported: Formatting capabilities
  • Supported: Predictive modeling
  • Supported: Integration with R or other statistical packages
  • Supported: Report sharing and collaboration

Report Output and Scheduling Features

  • Supported: Publish to Web
  • Supported: Publish to PDF
  • Supported: Output Raw Supporting Data
  • Supported: Report Versioning
  • Supported: Report Delivery Scheduling
  • Supported: Delivery to Remote Servers

Data Discovery and Visualization Features

  • Supported: Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)
  • Supported: Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization
  • Supported: Predictive Analytics
  • Supported: Support for Machine Learning models
  • Supported: Pattern Recognition and Data Mining
  • Supported: Integration with R or other statistical packages

Access Control and Security Features

  • Supported: Multi-User Support (named login)
  • Supported: Role-Based Security Model
  • Supported: Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)
  • Supported: Report-Level Access Control
  • Supported: Table-Level Access Control (BI-layer)
  • Supported: Field-Level Access Control (BI-layer)
  • Supported: Single Sign-On (SSO)

Mobile Capabilities Features

  • Supported: Responsive Design for Web Access
  • Supported: Mobile Application
  • Supported: Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile

Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding Features

  • Supported: REST API
  • Supported: Javascript API
  • Supported: Java API
  • Supported: Themeable User Interface (UI)

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 growScreenshot of Microsoft Power BI - Data Governance

Microsoft Power BI Competitors

Microsoft Power BI Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsWindows
Mobile ApplicationApple iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Mobile Web
Supported CountriesAsia Pacific, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Europe, France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Norway, South Africa, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States
Supported LanguagesArabic, Basque - Basque, Bulgarian - Български, Catalan - català, Chinese (Simplified) - 中文(简体), Chinese (Traditional) - 中文(繁體), Croatian - hrvatski, Czech - čeština, Danish - dansk, Dutch - Nederlands, English - English, Estonian - eesti, Finnish - suomi, French - français, Galician - galego, German - Deutsch, Greek - Ελληνικά, Hebrew, Hindi - हिंदी, Hungarian - magyar, Indonesian - Bahasa Indonesia, Italian - italiano, Japanese - 日本語, Kazakh - Қазақ, Korean - 한국어, Latvian - latviešu, Lithuanian - lietuvių, Malay - Bahasa Melayu, Norwegian (Bokmål) - norsk (bokmål), Polish - Polski, Portuguese (Brazil) - Português, Portuguese (Portugal) - português, Romanian - română, Russian - Русский, Serbian (Cyrillic) - српски, Serbian (Latin) - srpski, Slovak - slovenčina, Slovenian - slovenski, Spanish - español, Swedish - svenska, Thai - ไทย, Turkish - Türkçe, Ukrainian - українська, Vietnamese - Tiếng Việt

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

Microsoft Power BI starts at $10.

Tableau Cloud, Looker, and Domo are common alternatives for Microsoft Power BI.

Reviewers rate Customizable dashboards and Multi-User Support (named login) highest, with a score of 8.8.

The most common users of Microsoft Power BI are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews From Top Reviewers

View all reviews
(1-5 of 193)

Easy to use inexpensive analytics tool

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized
April 27, 2021
Verified User
Team Lead in Information Technology
Computer Software Company, 51-200 employees
Vetted Review
Verified User
Microsoft Power BI
2 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
  • It is used by cognitive solutions team (AI/ML, Data Science and Analytics).
  • It is used as data analytics and visualisation tool.
Pros
  • Nice custom visualisations.
  • Seamless excel integration.
  • Cheaper compared to the other options.
  • Regular updates incorporating creativity, innovation & state-of-the-art approaches.
Cons
  • Power BI has a very bulky user interface.
  • Slow performance and time-outs while handling large data sources.
  • Custom visuals are not configurable.
Likelihood to Recommend
  • Very good and easy to use tool for generating reports and visualisations.
  • It can't handle huge amount of data (over million rows, etc.) as well as other tools & peer options.

Easy to use data visualization tool

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized
March 13, 2025
Verified User
Program Manager in Manufacturing
Mechanical Or Industrial Engineering Company, 1001-5000 employees
Vetted Review
Verified User
Microsoft Power BI
1 year of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Microsoft Power BI is useful for designing and developing visual dashboards by connecting data from sources such as SQL, sharepoint, etc .The development canvas supports drag and drop allowing to drag a visualization and also configure the fields of the visualization using drag and drop. Also it allows the automatic refresh of data from the original source by just scheduling the time of refresh which helps to ensure that the users are viewing the latest and most accurate data in the visualizations of the dashboard
Pros
  • Connects easily to the Microsoft data sources such as sharepoint files,onedrive,SQL etc very seamlessly and authenticates directly using your account
  • Has a lot of inbuilt visual charts which are useful for creating visualizations in the dashboard
  • The data query editor is very powerful and supports a wide variety of data transformations
Cons
  • Carrying out data transformation on large data sets is very time consuming as previewing data at each step takes a lot of time
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft Power BI is useful to convert data which is stored as eg table in sharepoint lists to meaningful visuals with simple drag and drop . Once the dashboard is published into a workspace there are options to configure views for selected audience which can help in sharing only required data to selective users. The mobile app is useful as you can quickly view the dashboard directly on your mobile device

Microsoft BI makes data visualization easy to implement and easy to use.

Rating: 7 out of 10
Incentivized
January 06, 2019
Verified User
Analyst in Information Technology
Government Administration Company, 5001-10,000 employees
Vetted Review
Verified User
Microsoft Power BI
3 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Microsoft Power BI is currently in use by departments who really want to dig into their data and give additional meaning to what they typically might see on a spreadsheet. It is not in use across the entire organization here, but rather by individual departments who have taken some initiative to get more out of their data. The big problem it addresses is the ability to visualize large complex data sets in simple, easy to read ways.
Pros
  • It integrates easily with other applications, especially true of Microsoft products.
  • No specialized technical training needed to get using it quickly.
  • A simple learning curve for people used to a Microsoft environment, familiar feel.
Cons
  • There are only a few data sources that permit real-time connections to reports
  • Limit of 1GB per dataset.
  • On-prem installs of the product are very expensive.
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft BI is well suited for a small or large department that really wants to get into the details of their data. It is not that difficult to set up, and it is easy for those coming from a Microsoft background. The downside is the cost, especially for on-prem installs. It is not cheap to host your own instance.

Nice dashboards and easy to adapt when you know Excel.

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized
November 15, 2019
Verified User
Consultant in Finance and Accounting
Management Consulting Company, 51-200 employees
Vetted Review
Verified User
Microsoft Power BI
1 year of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
I have used Microsoft Power BI to create automated reports, dashboards for our clients finance department. The reports were consisting of financial targets, actual and forecasts. Along with the reports, we used formula generation functionalities and made auto calculations. It is a good reporting dashboard when it comes to display most current values along with auto calculations. Before Power BI, excel reports or ppt presentations would be distributed within the organization. With Power BI, the dashboards and data visualization became more professional looking.
Pros
  • It has a free version offered with Microsoft Office 365. So businesses with this type of license can enjoy it free.
  • Good dashboards, auto calculation and database connection capabilities.
  • Easy to learn and use when you have familiarity with Excel. You can reach free training material on many platforms.
  • Well integrated with other Microsoft programs (Excel, Access)
Cons
  • Expensive if you want on premise version. Choose the best fitting license.
  • There are some functionalities that require detailed learning. You need to have good experience with Excel, database connections, DAX.
  • Data quality matters. If you have uncleaned data, then your work on Power BI can be frustrating as it is poor on providing suggestions.
  • You may encounter with performance issues when your data is big.
Likelihood to Recommend
It actually depends on the size of the organization and person who will work with Power BI. If you have a big organization, need many reports and need dashboard visualization. Choose it. But be sure the user has good knowledge on Excel, database connections and DAX. If you are a small business you may want to stay on Excel. In any case you can try.

Power BI: powerful and easy tool to build complex data model

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized
December 30, 2019
MD
Marco De Angelis
Project and Portfolio Manager Officer
Angelini Holding (Pharmaceuticals, 5001-10,000 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
Microsoft Power BI
3 years of experience
View profile
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Microsoft Power BI is used by the entire IT department and by other users with personal objectives, like Excel. Power BI is used on top of other software to create business models where the software standard reports do not cover our needs and to integrate diverse data source coming from diverse software.
Pros
  • Create data models.
  • Use dax language.
Cons
  • Manage production and test environments.
  • Build and share model incrementally.
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft Power BI is easy to learn and use. With a little effort, you can integrate a lot of different data sources and, very importantly, you don't need to have a big infrastructure, thanks to Microsoft Cloud. It is also well suited for personal use, to extend Excel functionalities and analyze big amount of data.
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