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Birst vs Microsoft Power BI vs Tableau Enterprise comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
8.3
Birst offers substantial returns by providing visualization tools that impact the organization through enhanced sales and data access capabilities.
Sentiment score
7.0
Microsoft Power BI offers high ROI due to cost-effectiveness, ease of use, improved analytics, and rapid cost recovery.
Sentiment score
7.0
Tableau Enterprise delivers rapid returns through efficiency, cost reduction, quick insights, and enhanced decision-making within six to twelve months.
In a world surrounded by data, tools that allow navigation of large data volumes ensure decisions are data-driven.
Power BI is easy to deploy within an hour, providing robust security against data leaks.
This saves a significant amount of time, particularly for reports that would have needed around fifty people.
The ROI of using Tableau extends to its seamless integration across various platforms, as it's from Salesforce and thus not limited to any specific cloud provider.
Tableau is saving me time, money, and resources, which I would rate as ten.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.0
Birst's technical support is mixed; praised for responsiveness and customer service but faces challenges with time zones and reliance on forums.
Sentiment score
6.6
Microsoft Power BI's support receives mixed reviews; users often rely on community resources for quicker, more effective solutions.
Sentiment score
6.1
Tableau Enterprise support is praised for professionalism and multilingual assistance but needs improvement in response times and technical expertise.
The significant drawback I notice is that Microsoft's size makes it hard to get specific change requests addressed unless they involve a bug.
We have a partnership with Microsoft, involving multiple weekly calls with dedicated personnel to ensure our satisfaction.
The support is good because there is also a community available.
They provide quick email and phone responses and have Thai-speaking personnel.
There should be consistent standards for all users.
The technical support for Tableau is quite good.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.4
Birst's scalability receives mixed reviews; some praise it, while others face challenges, costs, and complexity, yet cloud solutions impress.
Sentiment score
6.9
Microsoft Power BI offers scalability and integration, though optimizing large deployments may require expertise, especially with complex or large data.
Sentiment score
6.7
Tableau Enterprise's scalability varies, effective with design and configuration, but big data performance concerns and costs remain.
You expect only a small percentage of users concurrently, but beyond a thousand concurrent users, it becomes difficult to manage.
With increasing AI capabilities, architectural developments within Microsoft, and tools like Fabric, I expect Power BI to scale accordingly.
As more data is processed, performance issues may arise.
Tableau is easy to use across various dimensions, whether on-premises or on the cloud.
The solution is fully scalable and performs well even with large datasets, provided there is proper supporting hardware.
Tableau is easy to scale.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.3
Birst users experience varying stability, with issues during upgrades and large datasets, though some report smooth performance improvements.
Sentiment score
7.4
Microsoft Power BI is stable and reliable, though large datasets may impact performance; frequent updates enhance its reputation.
Sentiment score
7.4
Tableau Enterprise is generally stable and reliable, with occasional issues mainly related to large datasets or server configurations.
In terms of stability, there's no data loss or leakage, and precautions are well-managed by Microsoft.
We typically do not have problems with end-user tools like Excel and Power BI.
It is very stable for small data, but with big data, there are performance challenges.
The application hangs after continuous use due to the buildup of cache.
I rate the stability a five or six because Tableau updates very often with new versions or patches.
 

Room For Improvement

Birst struggles with performance, customization, UI, visualization features, inefficiencies, and support, requiring enhancements and modernization in various areas.
Microsoft Power BI is criticized for high costs, complexity, handling large data, and lacking intuitive interfaces and AI integration.
Tableau Enterprise users seek better data integration, improved performance, cost-effective pricing, and enhanced analytics and collaboration features.
This makes Power BI difficult to manage as loading times can reach one or two minutes, which is problematic today.
Access was more logical in how it distinguished between data and its formatting.
Microsoft updates Power BI monthly based on user community feedback.
We cannot send the entire Excel file reports via email within Tableau.
The product owner should enhance its benefits or clarify its role.
It sometimes requires extensive investigation to determine why the data does not appear correctly.
 

Setup Cost

Birst offers market-standard pricing with a subscription model, providing comprehensive solutions and flexibility despite high entry costs.
Microsoft Power BI offers flexible pricing, from free to premium, making it a cost-effective business intelligence tool for enterprises.
Tableau's pricing is high yet competitive, with increased costs for added features, posing challenges for small organizations.
I found the setup cost to be expensive
Power BI isn't very cheap, however, it is economical compared to other solutions available.
The pricing for Microsoft Power BI is low, which is a good selling point.
Power BI as a much cheaper alternative.
A license for 150 users costs around $17,000 USD per year.
Looker is known to be quite expensive.
 

Valuable Features

Birst provides scalable data visualization, cloud-based architecture, and integrates ETL, reporting, and dashboards for efficient data-driven decisions.
Microsoft Power BI excels with seamless data integration, customizable dashboards, and user-friendly features, empowering self-service insights across industries.
Tableau Enterprise excels in data integration, visualization, and analytics, offering customization, real-time processing, and advanced capabilities for decision-making.
In today's data-driven environment, these tools are of substantial value, particularly for large enterprises with numerous processes that require extensive data analysis.
Within the organization, Microsoft Power BI is used to create dashboards and gain insights into data, enhancing data-driven decision-making.
To reduce the need for highly skilled personnel, we can engage someone who is just familiar and has a basic understanding of Microsoft Power BI, while AI can handle the major tasks through either agent AI or requirement analysis.
A significant feature for me is the real-time connection to data sources because it effectively manages large data sets.
Tableau serves as a stable dashboarding tool for higher management, aiding in quick decision-making.
Building hyper extracts and visualization capabilities make Tableau a robust tool for data analysis.
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Birst is 0.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 25.3%, up from 25.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau Enterprise is 20.7%, down from 23.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Power BI25.3%
Tableau20.7%
Birst0.4%
Other53.6%
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

SK
Offers dashboards and self-service reports. The report performance is very slow.
Dashboards and self-service reports. These are widely used by customers in the EPM domain Most of our customers are interested in dashboards and self-service reports. We are able to offer them these features with this solution. Customer support takes lot of time to get a solution The report…
Shoury Priyanshu - PeerSpot reviewer
Facilitates seamless data aggregation with some outdated visual elements hindering user appeal
Real-time data integration is an area for improvement. Although I've worked on several solutions involving real-time integration, it's not very user-friendly and often lags, especially with over a million data rows. This makes Power BI difficult to manage as loading times can reach one or two minutes, which is problematic today. There are challenges with scalability, requiring multiple pages in dashboards to manage these issues. Visualization could be improved as it appears outdated. Users, especially newcomers, find it unappealing and not user-friendly.
Uzair Faruqi - PeerSpot reviewer
Ease of developing dashboards and receiving strong technical support have enabled efficient data visualization
Introducing custom features, such as NLP-based reports, is not very good in Tableau. My MD has been asking us for a way to write in natural language to request reports that the system should generate, but that isn't very effective with Tableau. As a developer, I can develop an on-demand report in Python quite easily, but exposing a REST API on the Tableau platform is not a very easy task. AI enablement is an area for improvement for Tableau, and that is something they might have to work upon. I have heard that ThoughtSpot is quite better in this regard, but the cost of ThoughtSpot is much higher. ThoughtSpot has lots of natural language-based report generation features that Tableau lacks.
report
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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
No data available
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business134
Midsize Enterprise57
Large Enterprise165
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business117
Midsize Enterprise66
Large Enterprise182
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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 ...
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 ...
Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?
Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have be...
Which would you choose - Tableau or SAP Analytics Cloud?
Tableau is easy to set up and maintain. In about a day it is possible for the entire platform to be deployed for use....
 

Also Known As

No data available
SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI
Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Citrix Systems, Jive Software, SunnyD, Toshiba Medical Systems, Cisco OpenDNS, RB, Sunny D, Vertafore
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
Accenture, Adobe, Amazon.com, Bank of America, Charles Schwab Corp, Citigroup, Coca-Cola Company, Cornell University, Dell, Deloitte, Duke University, eBay, Exxon Mobil, Fannie Mae, Ferrari, French Red Cross, Goldman Sachs, Google, Government of Canada, HP, Intel, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Macy's, Merck, The New York Times, PayPal, Pfizer, US Army, US Air Force, Skype, and Walmart.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, Oracle and others in Reporting. Updated: August 2025.
866,088 professionals have used our research since 2012.