We performed a comparison between Databricks and Microsoft BI based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Results: Databricks is the winner in this comparison. It is robust, high performing, and received good feedback for its speed.
"Databricks has a scalable Spark cluster creation process. The creators of Databricks are also the creators of Spark, and they are the industry leaders in terms of performance."
"I haven't heard about any major stability issues. At this time I feel like it's stable."
"Its lightweight and fast processing are valuable."
"The ability to stream data and the windowing feature are valuable."
"The load distribution capabilities are good, and you can perform data processing tasks very quickly."
"Ability to work collaboratively without having to worry about the infrastructure."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to use SQL directly with Databricks."
"The solution's features are fantastic and include interactive clusters that perform at top speed when compared to other solutions."
"The stability is good."
"I find Power BI's reporting feature the most valuable. The solution has improved a lot. There are new features getting added day by day. In the past, they didn't even have the printing feature, but now they have it."
"There was a lot of manual work involved with Excel, whereas once we moved on to Microsoft Power BI, it was a cleaner dashboard and it was faster too."
"It is easy to use. It has got a desktop where people can develop their own dashboards. Basically, we have figured out how to connect finance contracts and all programs for the government agency. So, they can see everything in a dashboard. So, it is very easy to use from a technical standpoint of view."
"They should add mobile access."
"The most useful features are the ability to connect different databases to Microsoft BI and explore them. Once the database information has been extracted, you have the ability to construct indicators and dashboards from the information."
"Its connection to every database: Whatever and wherever it is."
"Key features are its dashboard functionality and ease of integration with various data sources."
"Pricing is one of the things that could be improved."
"Scalability is an area with certain shortcomings. The solution's scalability needs improvement."
"If I want to create a Databricks account, I need to have a prior cloud account such as an AWS account or an Azure account. Only then can I create a Databricks account on the cloud. However, if they can make it so that I can still try Databricks even if I don't have a cloud account on AWS and Azure, it would be great. That is, it would be nice if it were possible to create a pseudo account and be provided with a free trial. It is very essential to creating a workforce on Databricks. For example, students or corporate staff can then explore and learn Databricks."
"Support for Microsoft technology and the compatibility with the .NET framework is somewhat missing."
"The product could be improved by offering an expansion of their visualization capabilities, which currently assists in development in their notebook environment."
"Would be helpful to have additional licensing options."
"The initial setup is difficult."
"There are no direct connectors — they are very limited."
"I find the solution to be 70 percent stable."
"The product’s on-premise reporting servers could support real-time data refreshing capabilities like its on-cloud version."
"Microsoft BI comes under pressure when there is a lot of data to be crunched. It gets slower and slower, and the functionality becomes a bit of a problem. The performance goes down with data being fed into the system. The infrastructure requirement also increases if you have to increase the performance. This is the area that can be improved in my opinion. Initially, the product is good, but over the years, when data gets accumulated, it becomes a problem unless the old data is kind of archived and is no longer shown on the visualization. It has a feature by using which a user can query for a report through simple questions to a bot. So, if I want to look for the customer share of revenue by geography, I just simply state that in the chatbot. If I wanted it in a pie chart, then you say, "Please show it to me in a pie chart." It comes out well for basic charts. This feature should be improvised more so that people can very quickly get customized reports on the go."
"Microsoft Power BI can be confusing, because it has two languages that you need to learn if you want to use it, and this makes it more difficult for nontechnical users."
"We did have some issues building the Microsoft blog."
"There are some other visuals that are available in the Microsoft marketplace, however, you need to use them via trial and error. There needs to be a write-up about how to use them with a quick guide describing the visual."
"You need to purchase upgraded support separately."
"Drill-down in dashboards needs to improved. The capability only works in Power BI Desktop today. We need to have an alternative approach today."
Databricks is ranked 1st in Data Science Platforms with 78 reviews while Microsoft Power BI is ranked 1st in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 297 reviews. Databricks is rated 8.2, while Microsoft Power BI is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of Databricks writes "A nice interface with good features for turning off clusters to save on computing". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Power BI writes "A complete ecosystem with an builtin ETL tool, good integrations with python and R, and support of DAX and Power Query (M languages)". Databricks is most compared with Amazon SageMaker, Informatica PowerCenter, Dataiku Data Science Studio, Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio and Alteryx, whereas Microsoft Power BI is most compared with Tableau, Amazon QuickSight, KNIME, Domo and IBM Cognos.
We monitor all Data Science Platforms reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.