KNIME vs Microsoft BI comparison

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15,868 views|11,484 comparisons
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50,577 views|40,313 comparisons
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Aug 28, 2022

We performed a comparison between KNIME and Microsoft BI based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: Most users tell us the deployment of both solutions is easy and straightforward.
  • Features: KNIME users feel the visualization is extremely valuable. Other top features are the data wrangling and the solution’s ability to easily handle an unlimited amount of data. Users feel the solution could be more user friendly and improve the documentation. Many users feel the solution does not scale very well.

    Microsoft BI users appreciate that the solution allows them to perform numerous analyses very quickly. The interface is seamless and integrates easily with all Microsoft solutions. Many users feel the solution does not handle large amounts of data very well’ the overall performance can become sluggish and buggy.

  • Pricing: KNIME is open-source, offering a free option and also has some other options that are priced competitively. Microsoft BI users feel that the solution can get very expensive very quickly.
  • Service and Support: KNIME has a thriving supportive community that users rely on heavily, in addition to a formal support process that users are very happy with. For the most part. Microsoft BI users are also very satisfied with the support they receive.

Comparison Results: KNIME is a great alternative for organizations that are looking for a cost-saving, flexible, stable solution to handle their Data Mining and Data Science needs. Microsoft BI is a comprehensive, robust solution that performs well with Data Mining and Data Science in addition to exceptional performance as a Business Intelligence (BI) tool. As many PeerSpot users are heavily invested in the Microsoft ecosystem, Microsoft BI is the consistent trusted choice.

To learn more, read our detailed Data Mining Report (Updated: March 2023).
686,748 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The solution allows for sharing model designs and model operations with other data analysts.""The solution is good for teaching, since there is no need to code.""I was able to apply basic algorithms through just dragging and dropping.""Automation is most valuable. It allows me to automatically download information from different sources, and once I create a workflow, I can apply it anytime I want. So, there is efficiency at the same time.""It's a huge tool with machine learning features as well.""Overall KNIME serves its purpose and does a good job.""It also has very good fundamental machine learning. It has decision trees, linear regression, and neural nets. It has a lot of text mining facilities as well. It's fairly fully-featured.""KNIME is quite scalable, which is one of the most important features that we found."

More KNIME Pros →

"The solution is easy to set up and implement.""It is stable enough. It has a lot of powerful functions. It can also be customized with the DAX language. It is also intuitive enough and incremental. You can start with something simple, and then step-by-step, you can increase the reports and dashboards according to your needs.""The most valuable feature is definitely the visual aspect and the DAX capabilities to virtually do anything.""The way data is presented is very valuable. The amount of information that we can get at a glance is also valuable. You can then drill-down and see data from many different angles in the same chart by selecting certain things. Based on the selection, everything changes automatically. If we have four parameters in a particular item, when you select a parameter, the remaining charts on that page automatically change for that particular parameter.""What I have found valuable about Microsoft BI is its performance and ease of use. The interface is very simple and it is accessible to everyone. If someone is new to this type of solution it is straightforward to understand.""It's a very easy-to-use solution.""Microsoft BI allows us to connect to any database or any dataset.""Power BI is a complete ecosystem. It has an integrated ETL tool and good connectivity with applications such as Office 365 and SQL. There are also solutions for RPA, such as Microsoft Power Automate and Microsoft Power Apps. Power BI now has integration with Power Query, which has an AI feature for text analytics. Text analytics is a very good feature. This feature is also there in Tableau, but I like it in Power BI because you can write something like, "What is the total sale in the Eastern region?", and it will give you the answer. For example, when you have different types of user opinions, you just run one algorithm and you will have the output that provides the number of positive and negative responses. You can even have a dashboard with positive remarks. This feature has been introduced recently. Power BI supports the DAX and Power Query M languages. These languages are making Power BI very strong in data analytics, and you can do many types of analysis."

More Microsoft BI Pros →

Cons
"It's very general in terms of architecture, and as a result, it doesn't support efficient running. That is, the speed needs to be improved.""KNIME could improve when it comes to large data markets.""Compared to the other data tools on the market, the user interface can be improved.""There are some parameters that I would like to have at a bigger scale. The upper limit of one node that tries to find spots or areas in photos was too small for us. It would need to be bigger.""The license is quite expensive for us.""The solution is inconvenient when it comes to wrangling data that includes multiple steps or features because each step or feature requires its own icon.""I would prefer to have more connectivity.""KNIME is not scalable."

More KNIME Cons →

"Capacity could be improved.""The solution could use a faster speed on certain interactions and a refresh of the dashboards.""They are improving it all the time. What would be nice is if they could respond to feature requests more quickly. They can provide faster support for new features.""The reporting could be a bit better.""Power BI could have better metadata management. It's easy to use for a single person. However, it lacks an enterprise-grade metadata management system, which can be a problem if you're doing an enterprise deployment with multiple users.""When there are large amounts of data being processed there are additional tools needed to handle it.""The UI is the main improvement that could be made. Specifically, there is something called DAX, in Power BI, which is complicated compared to calculated fields used in Tableau.""In Microsoft Excel, you are able to have tabs. However, in Microsoft BI you do not have this flexibility."

More Microsoft BI Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "There is a Community Edition and paid versions available."
  • "KNIME assets are stand alone, as the solution is open source."
  • "With KNIME, you can use the desktop version free of charge as much as you like. I've yet to hit its limits. If I did, I'd have to go to the server version, and for that you have to pay. Fortunately, I don't have to at the moment."
  • "The client versions are mostly free, and we pay only for the KNIME server version. It's not a cheap solution."
  • "Scaling to the on-premises version requires a licensing fee per user that is a bit expensive in comparison to R, Python, and SAS."
  • "This is a free open-source solution."
  • "For beginners, the free desktop version is very attractive, but the full server version can be more expensive. I have only used the free version and it offers a fair pricing system. I have been promoting it to others without any compensation or request from the company, simply because I am enthusiastic about it. I am not aware of the pricing for the server version, but it seems to be widely used."
  • "KNIME is an open-source tool, so it's free to use."
  • More KNIME Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Its licensing cost is very high. It is $20 per user, which is very high, but it is a good product, so you pay for it."
  • "It depends upon the tier of your Office 365 subscription. On E5, which is a Microsoft Azure subscription, you get it for free. If you are on a lower tier, you can subscribe for $10 a month per user, which is really cheap."
  • "Power BI premium is really expensive for our market. A lot of small and medium companies would like to purchase it, but they can't afford it."
  • "We pay for users who are publishing on the cloud. The desktop version is free. Its licensing is on a yearly basis."
  • "Compared to what's available on the market, I think we pay a fair price."
  • "The price of the solution can be expensive if you want to synchronize your data more."
  • "Pricing is a big advantage that Power BI has over Tableau. Power BI is three or four times cheaper than Tableau. For my personal use, I will definitely prefer a $20 monthly fee of Power BI rather than a $70 monthly fee of Tableau. If you pay altogether for Power BI, they give you a discount, whereas, with Tableau, there is no discount. There are three versions of Power BI: Free, Pro, and Premium. The Premium version comes with a lot of things. There is no extra or hidden fee. You pay every month, and the software is with you. If you upgrade, there will be some extra charges."
  • "There is a license for this solution and we purchase them annually."
  • More Microsoft BI Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:Automation is most valuable. It allows me to automatically download information from different sources, and once I create a workflow, I can apply it anytime I want. So, there is efficiency at the same… more »
    Top Answer:They have different versions, but I am using the open-source one.
    Top Answer:I downloaded KNIME myself, and it's for self-learning. It's difficult to provide input on the improvement area because it's more of self-learning. However, there are times when I am not able to do… more »
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Ranking
    1st
    out of 15 in Data Mining
    Views
    15,868
    Comparisons
    11,484
    Reviews
    16
    Average Words per Review
    432
    Rating
    8.0
    Views
    50,577
    Comparisons
    40,313
    Reviews
    153
    Average Words per Review
    510
    Rating
    8.1
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    KNIME Analytics Platform
    SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Power BI, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI
    Learn More
    Overview

    KNIME is an open-source analytics software used for creating data science that is built on a GUI based workflow, eliminating the need to know code. The solution has an inherent modular workflow approach that documents and stores the analysis process in the same order it was conceived and implemented, while ensuring that intermediate results are always available. KNIME supports Windows, Linux, and Mac operating systems and is suitable for enterprises of all different sizes. With KNIME, you can perform functions ranging from basic I/O to data manipulations, transformations and data mining. It consolidates all the functions of the entire process into a single workflow. The solution covers all main data wrangling and machine learning techniques, and is based on visual programming.

    KNIME Features

    KNIME has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Scalability through data handling (intelligent automatic caching of data in the background while maximizing throughput performance)
    • High extensibility via a well-defined API for plugin extensions
    • Intuitive user interface
    • Import/export of workflows
    • Parallel execution on multi-core systems
    • Command line version for "headless" batch executions
    • Activity dashboard
    • Reporting & statistics
    • Third-party integrations
    • Workflow management
    • Local automation
    • Metanode linking
    • Tool blending
    • Big Data extensions

    KNIME Benefits

    There are many benefits to implementing KNIME. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Integrated Deployment: KNIME’s integrated deployment moves both the selected model, and the entire data model preparation process into production simply and automatically, allowing for continuous optimization in production and also saving time because it eliminates error.
    • Elastic and Hybrid Execution: KNIME’s elastic and hybrid executions helps you reduce costs while covering periods of high demand, dynamically.
    • Metadata Mapping: KNIME enables complete metadata mapping of all aspects of your workflow. In addition, KNIME offers blueprint workflows for documenting the nodes, data sources, and libraries used, as well as runtime information.
    • Guided Analytics: KNIME’s guided analytics applications can be customized based on reusable components.
    • Powerful analytics, local automation, and workflow difference: KNIME uses advanced predictive and machine learning algorithms to provide you with the analytics you need. In combination with powerful analytics, KNIME’s automation capabilities and workflow difference prepare your organization with the tools you need to make better business decisions.
    • Supports enterprise-wide data science practices: The deployment and management functionalities of KNIME make it easy to productionize data science applications and services, and deliver usable, reliable, and reproducible insights for the business.
    • Helps you leverage insights gained from your data: Using KNIME ensures the data science process immediately reflects changing requirements or new insights.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the KNIME solution.

    An Emeritus Professor at a university says, “It can read many different file formats. It can very easily tidy up your data, deleting blank rows, and deleting rows where certain columns are missing. It allows you to make lots of changes internally, which you do using JavaScript to put in the conditional. It also has very good fundamental machine learning. It has decision trees, linear regression, and neural nets. It has a lot of text mining facilities as well. It's fairly fully-featured.”

    Benedikt S., CEO at SMH - Schwaiger Management Holding GmbH, explains, “All of the features related to the ETL are fantastic. That includes the connectors to other programs, databases, and the meta node function. Technical support has been extremely responsive so far. The solution has a very strong and supportive community that shares information and helps each other troubleshoot. The solution is very stable. The initial setup is pretty simple and straightforward.”

    Piotr Ś., Test Engineer at ProData Consult, says, “What I like the most is that it works almost out of the box with Random Forest and other Forest nodes.”

    Microsoft BI is a business intelligence solution that connects to all your data sources and turns your data into insightful and useful business information that is relevant to all levels of the business, ensuring data accuracy, consistency, and security.

    Microsoft BI combines familiar Microsoft tools - Office, SharePoint, and SQL server - with extra features for end-users, such as Power View and Power Pivot. This powerful product gives businesses a competitive advantage by allowing end users to better analyze their data, collaborate, and better present their data.

    The BI platform empowers members of your organization to make data-driven decisions that drive strategic actions quickly by allowing them to work together easily on the same data, share insights, and collaborate on reports using other Microsoft Office applications.

    Microsoft BI Benefits

    Some of the benefits of using Microsoft BI include: 

    • Scalability: Easily scale the Microsoft BI platform to help reduce costs and minimize the security risks and complexities that arise as a result of maintaining multiple systems.
    • Secure analytics: Protect your data with sophisticated data security features, including sensitivity labeling, end-to-end encryption, and real-time access monitoring. View and share meaningful AI-based insights enriched by data visualizations.
    • Regular user-driven innovative updates: Get weekly and monthly updates that improve the capabilities of Power BI based on thousands of ideas submitted each year from a community of over 500,000 members worldwide.
    • Seamless integration with Microsoft products: Microsoft BI connects with Microsoft 365, allowing you to create Excel queries, data models, and reports for the Power BI dashboards. These integrations make it easy to collect, analyze, publish, and share Excel business data.
    • Access Microsoft BI from any location: BI can be accessed at any time from anywhere using its mobile app, allowing ease of access to distributed teams or businesses across many locations. The business intelligence platform also enables teams to work on any file at the same time.
    • User-friendly dashboard: View and manage your data in a user-friendly and intuitive customized dashboard. The Microsoft BI platform enables teams to work independently while exchanging analytics between different departments and users. With Microsoft BI, you can easily create personalized dashboards that combine on-premises and cloud data into a single view, allowing you to monitor enterprise data from multiple business applications.
    • Easy installation: Install the platform in minutes just by creating an API key and inputting it into the software.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Microsoft BI stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its integration options and its data analytics capabilities.

    Tariq R., an operations & BI analyst at American Hospital Dubai, writes, “Power BI is a complete ecosystem. It has an integrated ETL tool and good connectivity with applications such as Office 365 and SQL. Power BI supports the DAX and Power Query M languages. These languages are making Power BI very strong in data analytics, and you can do many types of analysis. ”

    Offer
    Learn more about KNIME
    Learn more about Microsoft BI
    Sample Customers
    Infocom Corporation, Dymatrix Consulting Group, Soluzione Informatiche, MMI Agency, Estanislao Training and Solutions, Vialis AG
    Konica Minolta, Klout, Mahindra Satyam, The Weather Channel, Argus, Credit Suisse, NCR, and Sysmex.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    University26%
    Retailer22%
    Comms Service Provider13%
    Government9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Manufacturing Company11%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Comms Service Provider9%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Manufacturing Company14%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Government9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company14%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    Comms Service Provider8%
    Government8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise29%
    Large Enterprise45%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise70%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business39%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise45%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business18%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise67%
    Buyer's Guide
    Data Mining
    March 2023
    Find out what your peers are saying about Knime, IBM, Weka and others in Data Mining. Updated: March 2023.
    686,748 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    KNIME is ranked 1st in Data Mining with 16 reviews while Microsoft BI is ranked 1st in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 152 reviews. KNIME is rated 8.0, while Microsoft BI is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of KNIME writes "Allows you to easily tidy up your data, make lots of changes internally, and has good machine learning". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft 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)". KNIME is most compared with Alteryx, RapidMiner, Weka, Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio and Dataiku Data Science Studio, whereas Microsoft BI is most compared with Amazon QuickSight, Tableau, Oracle OBIEE, Domo and MicroStrategy.

    We monitor all Data Mining 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.