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Dremio vs Microsoft Power BI 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Dremio
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (6th), Data Science Platforms (10th)
Microsoft Power BI
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
326
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (1st), Reporting (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Dremio is designed for Data Science Platforms and holds a mindshare of 3.1%, down 4.0% compared to last year.
Microsoft Power BI, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 14.1% mindshare, down 21.7% since last year.
Data Science Platforms Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Dremio3.1%
Databricks13.9%
KNIME Business Hub11.9%
Other71.1%
Data Science Platforms
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Power BI14.1%
Tableau Enterprise10.3%
Amazon QuickSight4.9%
Other70.7%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

KamleshPant - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution offers quick data connection with an edge in computation
It's almost similar, yet it's better than Starburst in spinning up or connecting to the new source since it's on SaaS. It is a similar experience between the based application and cloud-based application. You just get the source, connect the data, get visualization, get connected, and do whatever you want. They say data reflection is one way where they do the caching and all that. Starburst also does the caching. In Starburst, you have a data product. Here, the data product comes from a reflection perspective. The y are working on a columnar memory map, columnar computation. That will have some edge in computation.
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Facilitates seamless data aggregation with some outdated visual elements hindering user appeal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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We primarily use Dremio to create a data framework and a data queue."
"Dremio has positively impacted my organization by helping us create a single source of truth, a singular data warehouse where we can have access to all of the data sets."
"The first feature that stands out for me in Dremio is the federated type of query, which allows the possibility to use multiple endpoints without worrying about writing custom SQL that runs only for SQL Server or for Postgres and Redshift."
"Dremio allows querying the files I have on my block storage or object storage."
"The most valuable feature of Dremio is it can sit on top of any other data storage, such as Amazon S3, Azure Data Factory, SGFS, or Hive. The memory competition is good. If you are running any kind of materialized view, you'd be running in memory."
"Everyone uses Dremio in my company; some use it only for the analytics function."
"Dremio is very easy to use for building queries."
"Dremio gives you the ability to create services which do not require additional resources and sterilization."
"You don't need much support with Microsoft Power BI because it has such a large base of users who can answer your questions on their forums. There are also many video tutorials and webinars available online that offer solutions to whatever problems you may have."
"In my opinion, Microsoft BI is a low-cost solution, and it could be an interesting solution for a tourism company."
"It ingegrates nicely with Office 365."
"The data manipulation and data cleaning tasks are handled in the backend by Power Query in Microsoft Power BI."
"It integrates better with other Microsoft products. It is very easy to use and has very powerful visualizations. It has also got a lot of development going on."
"Implementation is very quick and the solution is very user-friendly."
"The dashboards of Microsoft BI are easy to use."
"The interface is very fluid."
 

Cons

"Dremio could be improved by making it easier for data cataloging, especially when working with open table formats, as you have to choose a data format and then go into it."
"We had a memory leak on some versions, which sometimes stopped the service."
"It shows errors sometimes."
"I cannot use the recursive common table expression (CTE) in Dremio because the support page says it's currently unsupported."
"We've faced a challenge with integrating Dremio and Databricks, specifically regarding authentication. It is not shaking hands very easily."
"Dremio doesn't support the Delta connector. Dremio writes the IT support for Delta, but the support isn't great. There is definitely room for improvement."
"There are performance issues at times due to our limited experience with Dremio, and the fact that we are running it on single nodes using a community version."
"Dremio takes a long time to execute large queries or the executing of correlated queries or nested queries. Additionally, the solution could improve if we could read data from the streaming pipelines or if it allowed us to create the ETL pipeline directly on top of it, similar to Snowflake."
"I think that there should be visuals for financial reporting videos. It should just be a plug and play because there is a lot of coding that goes into it with different clients."
"There is no specific area that I have a problem with. It's just that, with whatever feature you come across, every visual has its own formatting and behavior. What you get in one visual for a feature, you don't seem to get in another."
"It should be more user-friendly. There are very small or tiny icons that you need to move very carefully. If you go a little bit up and down, some of the values change. Its user interface should be improved. It should be like Tableau. Its performance is also slow and should be improved. I definitely feel some sort of speed issues with Power BI. The integration of Excel with Power BI would also be good."
"The solution could improve by providing more free visuals. A lot of them are very nice but you have to purchase them."
"Power BI doesn't support some open-source data sources that are new, such as SnowSQL, Iceberg, or ClickHouse."
"It should have more integrations."
"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."
"In the future, Microsoft BI can be better by increasing user-friendliness"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Right now the cluster costs approximately $200,000 per month and is based on the volume of data we have."
"Dremio is less costly competitively to Snowflake or any other tool."
"In the beginning, the solution cost approximately $1,000 per month, we have a Microsoft startup subscription. There is a subscription pack for startups company which we are able to have for one year."
"If you purchase a license for a server, for users, or the professional version, you might not have to. The free version I think it can satisfy many customers' needs."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"This product offers good value for the money."
"There is room for at least 45% discount as compared to the initial price."
"Microsoft BI is very cost-effective and this is why we use it."
"You don't need a license for development, but if you want to publish to external users, you need a license. The licensing is very costly, but I think that since the advantages and benefits of Power BI are so high, people are willing to pay. I can't blame them."
"The premium capacity is very costly in respect of the market in Egypt, amounting to $5,000 monthly."
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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
Financial Services Firm
29%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business134
Midsize Enterprise57
Large Enterprise165
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Dremio?
Dremio allows querying the files I have on my block storage or object storage.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dremio?
The licensing is very expensive. We need a license to scale as we are currently using the community version.
What needs improvement with Dremio?
They need to have multiple connectors. Starburst is rich in connectors, however, they are lacking Salesforce connectivity as of today. They don't have Salesforce connectivity. However, Starburst do...
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 would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...
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 information, control users accessing information, the configuration of governance po...
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 fully customizable and very user-friendly. This solution is very stable. Oracle ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

UBS, TransUnion, Quantium, Daimler, OVH
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 Databricks, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Knime and others in Data Science Platforms. Updated: October 2025.
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