Knowage vs Microsoft Power BI comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Knowage and Microsoft are both solutions in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category. Knowage is ranked #34, while Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.3. Knowage holds a 1.1% mindshare in BIT, compared to Microsoft’s 7.1% mindshare. Additionally, 85% of Knowage users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Knowage

Read 18 Knowage reviews

3,548 Views
2,590 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Microsoft Power BI

Read 332 Microsoft Power BI reviews

39,361 Views
25,978 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Knowage

Microsoft Power BI

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Knowage and Microsoft Power BI are competitive offerings in the business intelligence sector, each with distinct advantages. Microsoft Power BI is often favored due to its extensive features and integration capabilities, even if it comes with higher initial costs, compared to Knowage’s pricing flexibility and open-source nature.

Features: Knowage provides robust data integration capabilities, customizability, and support for various data sources. It is an open-source tool, allowing organizations to configure and enhance as needed. Microsoft Power BI excels in offering powerful analytics tools, seamless integration with Microsoft services, and a highly intuitive data visualization experience. Its comprehensive insights and advanced features provide a strong competitive edge.

Room for Improvement: Knowage can improve in terms of user interface design, user documentation, and expanding community support for troubleshooting. Microsoft Power BI may enhance through offering more cost-effective tiers, improving performance on large datasets, and supporting more open-source integrations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Knowage offers a flexible deployment model compatible with diverse systems and a detailed setup process. Microsoft Power BI, benefiting from Microsoft's extensive support infrastructure, ensures a smooth deployment experience through its cloud-based approach, coupled with a robust customer service framework.

Pricing and ROI: Knowage’s open-source model translates to lower initial costs, making it an attractive option for budget-conscious organizations. In contrast, Microsoft Power BI involves higher upfront costs; however, its extensive features and integration capabilities lead to higher ROI, making it a justified choice for many businesses despite the expense. Power BI's pricing starts at $9.99 per user per month, with more advanced features available at higher price points.

To learn more, read our detailed Knowage vs. Microsoft Power BI Report (Updated: September 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Knowage vs. Microsoft Power BI

September 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 913,806 peers since 2012

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

Knowage

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

34th

Ranking in Reporting

22nd

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Microsoft Power BI

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

1st

Ranking in Reporting

1st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

332

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Knowage is 1.1%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 7.1%, down from 14.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Microsoft Power BI	7.1%
Knowage	1.1%
Other	91.8%

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

Albert Masanja

Margin Assurance Analyst at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees

A stable open source suite for modern business analytics with a useful replication feature

It would be better if more resources were available to help us learn how to use it. I wanted to use Knowage for a more extended period, but learning materials around the product were not really available and were not really straightforward. I've also seen inconsistencies between versions. For example, under the tools, especially in the cockpit, the way you create reports is now different. You will also find some configurations within a particular state, like a line chart, which differs from version to version. I think consistency is an essential feature in a product, especially for business intelligence products.

Read full review

Hemanthreddy Vakiti

Junior Data engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Interactive dashboards have transformed restaurant data into faster daily business decisions

Microsoft Power BI has many features and there is not a lot to improve. However, the licensing can be confusing. When deciding between Pro and Premium, I find it difficult to distinguish what features are offered by Pro and what features are offered by Premium, including the particular differences to choose between both licensing models. Additionally, some features such as DAX, which I mentioned previously, involve DAX calculations and complex data modeling, which are somewhat advanced and not easily understandable. Prior knowledge is required or you need to go through the documentation. If the documentation is made comprehensive so that anyone with no knowledge on DAX can easily use it by going through the documentation, it would be really helpful. Additionally, if the integration with non-Microsoft tools is improved and performance is optimized, then Microsoft Power BI can become a top-ranked visualization tool. The user experience with Microsoft Power BI is quite good. The intuitive user interface makes it easy for both technical and non-technical users to create reports. However, only the advanced features are somewhat complex, and if the documentation is improved, it can be easily accessible.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Unified interface, a lot of tools for BI, easy configuration, standalone SDK."

"In terms of ROI, much better than any other solution when it offer full fledged features in open source, planned to have direct contact with SpagoBI for better support."

"Customer Service: Excellent."

"SpagoBI makes delivering reports to our clients very easy."

"I would use SpagoBI if a company wants to use a free tool that has enough features."

"The concept of engines is quite powerful allowing the user to work with report authoring/provisioning tools of their choice."

"I am satisfied with the product in general given what the company invested in it, which was just our time."

"Being able to schedule necessary jobs needed for production jobs and programming run times"

More Knowage pros

"We use a couple of professionals from Microsoft directly for our clients, and we are really satisfied with them."

"The initial setup is simple to do."

"There is continual improvement year-over-year."

"Our customers really like the dashboard."

"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."

"Easy to use. End-users can make changes to the graphics."

"It's user-friendly and provides data abstracting capabilities. We are also able to share reports with our colleagues very easily."

"It is good for us for onboarding the data; we can connect to multiple data sources, do transformations to make the data usable, and then model it within the transformation."

More Microsoft Power BI pros

Cons

"I encountered a lot of issues when I tried to integrate the map in order to realize Intelligent Location Dashboards."

"The support is very meager: We had to break our heads to figure out everything"

"I faced difficulties when using the email feature and documentation was scant."

"We are not happy with the poor graphic user interface. It looks a bit old and sometimes it is not properly user friendly."

"Yes, using Mobile and Desktop Editions, we would sometimes need to restart the service."

"Many things need to be improved, most of all robustness."

"Unfortunately, many interesting features do not work when you are using a custom database for storing the metadata."

"There are additional features such as Data Integration, Data Visualization, MobileBI, Cloud BI, Data enrichment and massaging should be implemented in the next release."

More Knowage cons

"It should have more report outputs. They should expand the report outputs. Its documentation should also be better."

"Its setup and support should be improved. We would like to see more material for developers that provides clear explanations about how we can do data mining by using Microsoft BI. It would also be good if we can connect a feature to other customized machine learning solutions."

"There is room for improvement in terms of pricing for the solution."

"However, the licensing can be confusing."

"Its desktop tool is a little bit memory CPU intensive, and it can be improved, but the machines nowadays come with a lot of memory. For the desktop users who are using it on the desktop, we recommend that they do an upgrade. It is a minor issue. We can fix it on the desktop."

"Regarding drawbacks or weak points in Microsoft Power BI, it may not be directly related to the tool itself, but with our architecture, as we couldn't get a service account, which is an email address that has no relationship with the employees, just to establish the connection with Anaplan."

"I think that they can make the solution easy to use for people who are not experts in data because many clients try to use it, but they need to be prepared before using it."

"Their technical support is bad. I didn't like the technical support of Microsoft."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It allows the implementation of an effective reporting system using internal skills at a limited upfront cost."

"Knowage is open-source, and an enterprise edition is also available."

"No comment on pricing."

"They have a free Power BI Desktop version, but it has limitations."

"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with one being cheap and ten being expensive."

"All of the licenses are on an annual basis, but Microsoft will amortize it to an extent. If it's five years, they'll include the possible interest they might have the following year. Ideally, their licensing scheme is an annual license, but they make it easier for some of our clients to take a five-year license but package everything inside for them to buy the license for five years."

"Microsoft BI is not expensive."

"Both cost-wise and implementation-wise, this product is a good choice."

"I would advise that Microsoft BI products are rightly priced and the licensing is easy to follow and to fulfill."

"There are a few options available for purchasing a license. Typically the number of users you have will determine the price of the license. The more users you have the more you will pay."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user79932

Senior Manager - BI Head with 5,001-10,000 employees

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Construction Company

22%

Outsourcing Company

12%

Comms Service Provider

Marketing Services Firm

Financial Services Firm

14%

Construction Company

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	7
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	137
Midsize Enterprise	59
Large Enterprise	171

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 would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...

See all answers

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...

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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 ...

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Comparisons

Tableau Enterprise vs Knowage

Compared 8% of the time

Pentaho Business Analytics vs Knowage

Compared 7% of the time

Procurify vs Knowage

Compared 6% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs Knowage

Compared 4% of the time

ElegantJ BI vs Knowage

Compared 4% of the time

More Knowage Competitors

Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 14% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 10% of the time

Domo vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 5% of the time

IBM Cognos vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 2% of the time

QlikView vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 2% of the time

More Microsoft Power BI Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Knowage

September 2026

Download Knowage product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

September 2026

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Also Known As

SpagoBI

SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI

Overview

Knowage is an open-source business intelligence suite offering features like engine concepts and report customization. It's favored for its integration capabilities and self-service BI functionality, allowing users to leverage cross-platform access and conduct comprehensive data analysis.

Knowage stands out in the BI landscape by providing tools that facilitate autonomous data exploration, with an emphasis on flexibility and extensive integration options. With capabilities for embedding reports and dynamic dashboards, it supports various analysis needs through integration with databases and tools like Jasper and BIRT. Despite its technical complexity and interface limitations, Knowage's features such as GIS integration and big data visualization enhance operational efficiency and profitability analysis.

What are the key features of Knowage?

Powerful engines: Facilitate complex data processing with high efficiency.
Report customization: Tailor reports to meet specific business requirements.
Cross-platform access: Enable data accessibility across different devices.
Open-source: Leverage the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of open-source solutions.
Embedding capabilities: Integrate seamlessly with tools like Jasper for enhanced functionality.
Python support: Use Python for advanced data correlation and analyses.
GIS integration: Incorporate geographical data for enriched insights.

What benefits should you consider in reviews?

Increased efficiency: Streamlined report deployment and big data visualization.
Comprehensive analysis: Tools for evaluating activities and profitability.
Data export options: Support for exporting data in preferred formats simplifies reporting tasks.
Operational cost savings: Eliminates the need for third-party BI solutions.

In the healthcare and financial sectors, Knowage is used for deriving insights from health data warehouses and performing financial analyses. Companies use it to create dashboards and reports from MySQL databases, embedding them for wider distribution, and enabling effective resource evaluation and decision-making.

Knowage

Microsoft Power BI is a powerful tool for data analysis and visualization. This tool stands out for its ability to merge and analyze data from various sources. Widely adopted across different industries and departments, Power BI is instrumental in creating visually appealing dashboards and generating insightful business intelligence reports. Its intuitive interface, robust visualization capabilities, and seamless integration with other Microsoft applications empower users to easily create interactive reports and gain valuable insights.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

FIAT Group, Italian air navigation service provider, Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, Telecom Italia, ASL Genovese, San Giovanni Battista University Hospital

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

Buyer's Guide

Knowage vs. Microsoft Power BI

September 2026

Free Report: Knowage vs. Microsoft Power BI

Find out what your peers are saying about Knowage vs. Microsoft Power BI and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.

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