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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

Real-Time Dashboards and Seamless Microsoft Integration with Microsoft Power BI

Rating: 9 out of 10
March 25, 2025
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
I found Microsoft Power BI to be very user-friendly and efficient. The smooth integration with Excel and SQL databases is a real saver, allowing for real-time data access and ...
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Manan Soni
Technician - Information Technology
Application Engineer
Citrix
Microsoft Power BI1 year of experience

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

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 8.2

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.

8.1
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.

7.8
Avg 7.9

Access Control and Security

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

8.6
Avg 8.5

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

8
Avg 7.9

Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding

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

7.8
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 190)

Almost perfect for large organisations!

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized
March 03, 2025
MA
Matt Aldridge
Learning Analytics Lead
Ryman Healthcare (Hospital & Health Care, 5001-10,000 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
Microsoft Power BI
5 years of experience
View profile
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Microsoft Power BI is a fundamentally important suite of software, used almost as often as Microsoft Office, Excel, Word, Outlook etc, within our organisation. Power BI enables us to process and analyse complex data and present information in a way that is easy to share, and display data to tell important stories.
Pros
  • Easy for non-developers to learn and use
  • Visual data analysis
  • Complex data modelling
  • Design
  • Licensing
Cons
  • Confusing to find settings and features for new users
  • Licensing limitations without premium licensing
  • Word clouds and other expected features require add ons
  • Requiring compute cost for basic machine learning analysis
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft Power BI is perfect for organisations already paying for Office 365 licensing which includes the Power BI Pro license. This will enable organisations to create a community that analyses and presents data effectively, to better understand their business. It also enables useful collaboration between the data technology team, and business areas.

Data Visualization and Data Analyzes

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized
June 13, 2019
MC
Maria Carver
Production Specialist
The Dow Chemical Company (Chemicals, 10,001+ employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
Microsoft Power BI
1 year of experience
View profile
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Great platform for data visualization and data analyzes. The organization is migrating to Power BI because of its integration with Microsoft applications. R is very well integrated with Power BI which makes statistical modelling easier to use. Report generation and sharing has become very simple. Very useful to create dashboards for the top management to make data driven business decisions.
Pros
  • Intuitive and User-Friendly
  • R Statistical Modelling modules integrated
  • Very well integrated with Microsoft applications.
Cons
  • Not very easy to make custom graphs and charts
  • Requires some time to get used to the interface
  • Documentation can be more detailed
Likelihood to Recommend
For generating value out of data, the dashboards are very intuitive and showcases a great volume of data. Very easy to make decisions out of it. Also, report generation and sharing has become very easy which makes it easier for the top management. Production reports are generated daily, weekly, monthly and yearly.

The Power of BI

Rating: 7 out of 10
Incentivized
September 01, 2017
DD
Derek Davis
Inside Sales
Lockstep Technology Group (Information Technology and Services, 11-50 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
Microsoft Power BI
1 year of experience
View profile
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
We are using the reporting features in Power BI, to track Account Receivable and Managed Service Profitability.

We currently use it to import templates of Excel files, and visual the data with its graphs. We also pull multiple data points from other applications we use to track VDI and other latency issues. We also have used it to show our managed service customers a custom dashboard they can dig into to see what we services we are performing in their environment.
Pros
  • The data input from multiple sources, such as excel, Salesforce, odbc connection. It handles data connections and data imports very well.
  • The ability to take static data and query it to make it dynamic is vital to the data scientist, this is something Power BI does very well.
  • Th e
  • The learning curve isn't huge, I was able to get some basic graphs up and running, and learn as I went.
Cons
  • Power Bi currently doesn't let you add your own connection packs, like we would like one for connectwise, but that is handled by the microsoft team.
  • Power Bi currently does not support Mac client and I have a hard time using it in my virtual machine.
  • The Power BI documentation and sample reports are not available for download and it is hard to recreate what they have done.
Likelihood to Recommend
Power BI is well suited for people who are using it to track and manage large data sets. We have a huge customer data base and we are able to slice and dice the data to meet our needs. I would also recommend the tool to anyone in the IT field who is looking for an opportunity to provide customers more value.

Power BI - The best perfumes come in a small bottle.

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized
March 01, 2018
AG
Arlex Guzman
VICEPRESIDENT
EYEMAR EXPRESS (Airlines/Aviation, 1-10 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
Microsoft Power BI
2 years of experience
View profile
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Power BI is a very powerful data visualization tool (BIG DATA), with versions and add-ons in the cloud, server, desktop and smartphone, and free access. I have explored Power BI as part of an investigation to choose a platform that allows visualizations of data necessary for the executive reports of the company.
Pros
  • You do not need advanced knowledge to create your own dashboards and reports. Simply build, edit, publish and share to collaborate with whoever needs it.
  • Represent your data with amazing, animated infographics or if you prefer something more traditional, use the usual graphics, but with a more attractive presentation than usual.
  • It has native applications for mobile phones and tablets. Whether your operating system is iOS or Android.
Cons
  • One of the main limitations of the BI Power is that it does not have the capacity to publish reports with all the associated data. This means that some data may be left out of visualizations.
Likelihood to Recommend
It's simple, Power BI is suitable for an intermediate volume of data. I think it is designed for small and medium-sized organizations; for large data volumes, there are more functional solutions.

Microsoft Power BI was the best choice for our organization

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized
April 24, 2019
Verified User
Project Manager in Information Technology
Computer Software Company, 201-500 employees
Vetted Review
Verified User
Microsoft Power BI
4 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
Our organization uses Power BI across the organization and globally to our network of partners. Several problems were addressed by implementing Power BI.
  1. Report building: Reports can now be built by anyone in the organization with access to the data source where previously it required a developer.
  2. Time required: Along the same lines, the time required to release a new report or update an existing report has decreased significantly and can usually be done the same day.
  3. Embedding: Reports needed to be embedded in our partner portal and allow filtering based on the user so that we're showing the right data to the right people.
  4. One-off reports: There used to be an alarming number of requests for one time or monthly or weekly reports that were manually generated. The data is now accessible via Power BI in a controlled way that allows our users to find their own insights in the data.
Pros
  • Easy to build the reports you need. Allows users with any level of experience to start building reports.
  • Users can interact with reports in a natural way allowing them to start using the reports with no/little training or guidance.
  • Powerful enough to handle any report from any data source and size.
  • Secure handling of data and able to ensure the right data is visible to the right people.
  • Large community of users and resources.
Cons
  • Greater flexibility in formatting the look and feel or reports and dashboards.
  • Embedding Dashboards the way reports can be embedded.
Likelihood to Recommend
Power BI is the best / easiest option when:
  1. You want to be able to leverage non-development staff to author reports
  2. You need to be able to embed your reports
  3. You need security around the data you are presenting
  4. You need to be able to access a wide variety of data sources
  5. You want to have access to a large online community for support/learning
Microsoft Power BI may not be the best choice if you have a limited dataset, few reports you are interested in, don't require much functionality in the report, and don't have resources familiar with Power BI.
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