Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on May 17, 2022
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM Cognos
Sponsored
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
132
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (4th)
Amazon QuickSight
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
4th
Average Rating
6.8
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Power BI
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
302
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2024, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of IBM Cognos is 3.2%, down from 4.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon QuickSight is 8.2%, down from 12.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 24.4%, up from 23.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
Unique Categories:
Reporting
3.1%
No other categories found
 

Featured Reviews

it_user286518 - PeerSpot reviewer
Oct 26, 2016
​The ability to quickly get an engaging view of my data, with no scripting or SQL knowledge is a winner.
This version of Cognos combines a new modern interface and intent-driven data discovery, with the scalable, governed and managed architecture for which it has always been valued. Also: The ability to quickly get an engaging view of my data, with no scripting or SQL knowledge is a winner. The true…
Julio Caldas - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 5, 2023
Powerful, easy to use, with excellent pricing plan
Our primary use case bank in the financial sector, we review the information and make some validation with the legacy system and a book of indicators of KPIs with directors and CEOs The data is very powerful and the splice is fast. The most valuable feature I have found is the low-level…
RH
Sep 27, 2021
Intuitive design, good support, and reliable
We are using Microsoft BI for various reports, such as overall cost management, credit overview, and sales The solution is very intuitive, you do not need to have too much programming knowledge to use it. Advanced Excel users can use it very easily.  The solution could improve by providing more…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution's initial setup process is easy."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable feature is developing reports from different data sources, making it a reliable data source."
"We use the account statement report. When you use an account in HSBC, you receive various types of accounts, such as the stock market, fixed accounts, credit cards, and business accounts. We can create one consolidated report called CCS support, which includes all these accounts. In that statement, we are consolidating all those accounts."
"The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools."
"The most valuable features of IBM Cognos are governance and enterprise reporting."
"Security administration tools are powerful and flexible."
"The three IBM Cognos features I find the most valuable are Dynamic Cubes, PowerPlay, and Watson."
"Easily able to connect with our other services and easy to manage."
"The query and dashboard capabilities are entirely good."
"The solution is simple to implement."
"It is notably fast in handling large data set refreshes, making it efficient for data analysis."
"From an analytics perspective, it's really good for self-service analytics."
"I like that with Amazon QuickSight, you don't need to install an app to use its services. With other BI tools, you need to install the app, so Amazon QuickSight is better for me in this area."
"It has a lot of valuable features, but the most important aspect is the affordable cost. This solution costs much less in comparison to the competitors like Qlik Sense, Power BI, and Tableau."
"It helped the managers to visualize the data activities."
"I've seen no issues with BI's stability."
"What I like about Power BI is how fast you are able to create dashboards and how fast you are able to fetch the data. You can connect to the database or data source, and then you can design your dashboards very easily."
"I like the fact that Power BI lets me use Excel data. At least 90% of my state data is in Excel spreadsheets. Having the ability to just attach a spreadsheet as a data source is very, very important. It's also good for training and teaching. Sometimes you don't always have access to a live production database, so having a spreadsheet with sample data is always nice."
"The most effective feature of Microsoft Power BI for data analysis is the ability to use Power Query directly from Excel. Power BI's integration capabilities impacted our data management by allowing us to push all reporting down to the end user, giving them the capability to perform "what if" scenarios and discover and validate their own data without needing to refer to IT. Additionally, it provided insights that we couldn't get from Oracle Cloud. We wrote an extract routine to transfer our Oracle Cloud database to Power BI, which was a game changer in terms of giving people confidence in the finances."
"The Microsoft Power BI app is very good. It's also very flexible."
"The solution is very intuitive, you do not need to have too much programming knowledge to use it. Advanced Excel users can use it very easily."
"Microsoft BI's dashboards are helpful."
"Microsoft BI is easy to use and to design. I found Microsoft BI a lot easier than Tableau."
 

Cons

"Cognos is quite slow - it's missing the performance of the PowerPlay cubes."
"They should provide improved visual reporting."
"It would be nice to offer free online training on the tool for end-users."
"Most of our company's customers want to be able to deploy IBM Cognos on a web application and use it as a desktop application, which is not possible currently."
"There are a lot of limitations with the out-of-the-box tool."
"I would like to see the introduction of mapbooks for supporting some geographical information."
"Cognos charts are not as fast as those of the other tools, even with DQM (dynamic query mode)."
"Extending features on dashboards so it becomes a real dashboard building application, not only a data exploration tool."
"An area for improvement in Amazon QuickSight is storage. Data cleanup also needs improvement because I'm experiencing errors when cleaning the data. Amazon QuickSight needs video tutorials showing its different functions and purposes."
"I would like to see a feature that allows us to save a draft version before making it public and publishing it."
"One area is that integrating data from different sources into QuickSight can be a bit tricky, especially with Amazon Connect. To get data flowing, you need to use two additional services and configure them correctly."
"It's not ideal for reports that are more complex."
"The solution must be more user-friendly."
"Compared to Power BI, I felt QuickSight lacks some features, like delayed drill-downs. Drill-downs were the main area where we found QuickSight lacking."
"It should support integration with Python or R."
"They could provide more options for graphics and other features."
"More connections with other systems should be added, which would allow for other integrations."
"It has come a long way in terms of how it was working two years ago, but there are some things that you still can't do with it. For example, permission management and user access management are still a bit limited. It is basically based on the idea that everybody from the organization can see everything or limit the type of data they can see. If I want you to see only one report and the other guy to see another report, I can't do it. There should be a better way to manage permissions and users. It should also support external users much better."
"When there are large amounts of data being processed there are additional tools needed to handle it."
"The visualization aspect, while being the most visible to business users, also happens the be the weakest point in the entire Microsoft BI stack."
"Its performance and stability can be improved. It takes time to load, and sometimes, it also breaks down for the whole region. Its usability could also be better, and it could also have more connections with different data sources."
"The DAX features need some improvement. It's not as easy as Excel. They need more DAX formulas."
"In Microsoft Excel, you are able to have tabs. However, in Microsoft BI you do not have this flexibility."
"Trend data and dashboards need improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"IBM Cognos offers competitive pricing similar to other BI vendors in the market."
"Cognos is super expensive compared to Tableau ($70/month) and Power BI ($20/month) — I think Cognos is roughly $200 a month."
"On a scale from one to ten where one is low pricing and ten is high pricing, I would rate this solution at eight."
"There is need to assess the purchase license accordingly so as to avoid audit penalties."
"I rate the product price as four or five on a scale from one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."
"The cost of IBM Cognos it's more or less the same as most of the other solutions on the market. They're very competitive with the rest of the market and it is not the most expensive product."
"The solution is affordable."
"It is my understanding that the cost is very low. It's not very expensive."
"I'm using a paid version of Amazon QuickSight, paying about $22 monthly. As I have yet to learn about the pricing for other tools, such as Power BI, I won't be able to compare."
"It is simpler and cheaper than other solutions."
"The pricing is cost-effective with a good plan."
"The solution is not affordable."
"It's affordable compared to other long-term contractor business tools available in the market."
"The product pricing is better than other vendors."
"Amazon QuickSight you subscribe and you use the service."
"The standard edition is free to use for exploration purposes while the enterprise edition needs to be paid for. The pricing for this solution is very reasonable."
"Their price is good."
"The solution is affordable."
"Price is the best feature of Power BI! You get a lot of value for the price. If you know how to use it, it's a great BI solution for your money."
"Our license is paid yearly and we have found that we have to be careful not to over-extend our usage in order to avoid upgrading our capacity plan."
"Make it low in cost. It is a no-brainer!"
"Globally, we evaluated a number of products, including Salesforce's product, Microsoft won on the ground of simple functionally and cost."
"All in all, for the price, this is an excellent tool for helping your organization turn mounds of data into useful insights."
"We pay for users who are publishing on the cloud. The desktop version is free. Its licensing is on a yearly basis."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 4, 2015
Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho
1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
60%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Computer Software Company
5%
Government
4%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
38%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Seeking lightweight open source BI software
It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik ...
What do you like most about IBM Cognos?
The solution's most valuable feature is its ease of use, which makes it easily compatible with other tools.
What needs improvement with IBM Cognos?
The tool does not have much documentation on the internet. It is not easy to resolve issues by finding the reason for...
What do you like most about Amazon QuickSight?
The integration is very seamless. We stored our result CSV files in S3 and connected directly from there.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon QuickSight?
My company had a corporate discount and other arrangements, so I'm not familiar with the standard pricing.
What needs improvement with Amazon QuickSight?
Compared to Power BI, I felt QuickSight lacks some features, like delayed drill-downs. Drill-downs were the main area...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I wou...
Is Power BI a complete platform or only a visualization tool?
Power BI is an advanced visualization tool oriented to big data with a very complete set of widgets to visualize info...
How does Oracle OBIEE compare with Microsoft BI?
Oracle OBIEE is great in allowing design and creativity per the individual needs of the organization. Dashboards are ...
 

Also Known As

Cognos, Cognos Analytics, IBM Cognos Analytics
QuickSight
SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

More than 23,000 leading organizations across multiple industries use Cognos. Some examples of Cognos customers include BMW Financial Services, Quinte Health Care, Troy Corporation, Michigan State University, and GKN Land System.
MLB Advanced Media, Infor, HotelBeds, Gemini, Jivochat, Edmunds.com
Accenture Adidas Aetna AIG Airbus Alibaba Allstate Amazon American Express Aon AT&T Audi Bank of America BASF Bayer Berkshire Hathaway Boeing Coca-Cola Comcast Cisco Coca-Cola Dell Disney Emirates Equinix FedEx Ford GE Google H&M Home Depot Honda IBM Intel JPMorgan Chase Kellogg's Kroger L'Oréal McDonald's Merck MetLife Microsoft Nike Oracle P&G PepsiCo Procter & Gamble Prudential Financial SAP Siemens Snapchat Spotify Starbucks Target Toyota T-Mobile Unilever Visa Walmart WeWork World Bank Xerox
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon QuickSight vs. Microsoft Power BI and other solutions. Updated: July 2024.
793,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.