Microsoft Power BI vs Oracle Essbase comparison

The compared Microsoft and Oracle solutions aren't in the same category. Microsoft is ranked #1 in BIT , with an average rating of 7.8, and holds a 21.4% mindshare in the category. Oracle is ranked #12 in DDM , with an average rating of 8.6, and holds a 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Oracle users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Power BI

Read 321 Microsoft Power BI reviews

20,047 Views
16,081 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Oracle Essbase

Read 14 Oracle Essbase reviews

130 Views
96 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Power BI

Oracle Essbase

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Microsoft Power BI and Oracle Essbase based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools.

To learn more, read our detailed BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Report (Updated: May 2025).

Buyer's Guide

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

May 2025

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Helped 850,671 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

Microsoft Power BI

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

321

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (1st), Reporting (1st)

Oracle Essbase

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

5.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Database Development and Management (12th)

Mindshare comparison

Microsoft Power BI and Oracle Essbase aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Microsoft Power BI is designed for BI (Business Intelligence) Tools and holds a mindshare of 21.4%, down 22.2% compared to last year.
Oracle Essbase, on the other hand, focuses on Database Development and Management, holds 1.0% mindshare, up 0.9% since last year.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Database Development and Management

Featured Reviews

James Balbach

Executive Director, Decision Support at Community Health Network

Robust system consistently elevates data visualization and seamlessly updates with user-driven advancements

Power BI is a general-use visualization system. I can express the performance of our network through high-level key performance indicators. It allows me to show detailed improvements in quality and safety and patient experience. I create improvement dashboards for task forces and work teams. I have built analytic dashboards that guide analytics, enabling research and dataset manipulation.

Read full review

RANOJOY PAUL

Analyst at Tata Consultancy

Stores multidimensional data, good customer support and interface is very easy

It is very fast compared to other normal databases, like SQL and MySQL. It doesn't store data in tables in the back end. To load data into Essbase, we need to prepare it in a table format. When we find the data in the table, we need to verify it. This way, you can rate the data. But Essbase stores multidimensional data. We have dimensions, which means the data belongs to some company or some time period. For example, if you work for three years, your salary should be something. In this way, we prepare top-level members called dimensions. The dimension defines your position, the year, and the section you were working in the company. We get an intersection of all these dimensions for certain data, and fetching that data is very fast in Essbase compared to normal SQL. If you store this data in a normal SQL table, you need to prepare a row with your company name, employee name, employee ID, joining date, and everything, and then you need to push it into a SQL table. You can search it using your query, but here, that thing is different. Here, you can collect data using forms, reports, and we use a Microsoft tool, which is an add-in called Smart View. Using that, you would just take that data. Here, you need to just create an integration of all these dimensions, and then only you can find the data.

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

"The virtualization of Microsoft BI is very good."

"The solution is very easy to use."

"The best feature for me is Power Query. I know that probably sounds strange, but you can't do too much with visuals and reports if the backend stuff is horribly dirty and just bad. But for me, that is absolutely fantastic. I can load the data and do the transformation and be able to load it in a useful way. There are tons of connections, which is absolutely fantastic as well. It's been fairly easy, and it's intuitive."

"Real-time refresh is quite interesting and user-friendly, provided you have access to a gateway. It works well."

"In the process of using data there is the Extract, Transform and Load (ETL). For extracting we are using another software, for transforming we are using our own coding in C#, and then we use Microsoft BI for loading the information. Microsoft BI displays information very well."

"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."

"The solution's initial setup isn't too complicated."

"There is a lot of help and documentation on the Internet, so no special training is needed to use the source code."

More Microsoft Power BI pros

"It is very fast compared to other normal databases, like SQL and MySQL."

"It helps us fetch specific data sets per users' requirements."

"Essbase is extremely stable and low-maintenance."

"The solution is scalable."

"It is highly efficient and easily scalable, particularly for handling large databases."

"Essbase is a kind of backbone, or back end, for systems like Hyperion Planning."

"The solution is stable and reliable."

"Unlike relational, where you're linking together multiple tables, with Essbase, you basically define what the dimensions are beforehand, and you define the hierarchy, and then load the data. This allows you to do a pretty sophisticated analysis so that you can drill into it and slice and dice the data."

More Oracle Essbase pros

Cons

"The dashboards lack a user-friendly appearance."

"The solution doesn't integrate well with third-party tools."

"The licensing needs improvement. There needs to be a middle option between Pro and Premium versions."

"I would like to see more visualization options."

"The solution could improve the mobile application design. It is difficult to use compared to the desktop version."

"Microsoft BI's visualization could be better. Though Power BI's visualization has steadily improved over the years, it's not on the level tools like Tableau and SAS or some of the more expensive products on the market."

"Their technical support can be better. They normally take too long to escalate and resolve a case."

"It should have more integrations."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

"The consolidation engine, which is HFM or FCCS, needs some room for improvement."

"The ability to drive external reporting out for development could be improved."

"They should improve the solution's performance."

"It's an expensive product to use."

"Essbase has a programming language, and it has a couple of functions to do forecasting, however, their feature set for that is not that good."

"The main concern is that Oracle is ending on-premises server support, so it would be better if there was a cloud platform available for Oracle Essbase."

"I would like to see an integration with application performance management and a version control management tool."

"There is room for improvement in terms of cost-effectiveness."

More Oracle Essbase cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our license is paid yearly and we have found that we have to be careful not to over-extend our usage in order to avoid upgrading our capacity plan."

"It is part of our Office 365 license."

"Licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."

"Remove the cost of a licence to show a dashboard within SharePoint. Why should readers of a dashboard have to pay to view? "

"Compared to others, I think it is reasonable."

"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."

"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."

"We are end-users, and we don't take care of the prices and accounting. We get a product and pay the fee to our internal service provider, but its price should be reasonable. Otherwise, they wouldn't have bought it."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

"I believe the licensing is on a monthly base."

"Essbase is competitively priced."

"The solution is expensive."

"It is a costly solution."

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Comparison Review

it_user79932

Senior Manager - BI Head at NVidia

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

Educational Organization

40%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

23%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Essbase?

It's not that expensive, but also not cheap. I'm not sure because it's a private license.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Oracle Essbase?

If I got the opportunity to work with Hyperion, which is the best product, I would definitely go with that. The main concern is that Oracle is ending on-premises server support, so it would be bett...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Oracle Essbase?

We provide complete ownership of this application to Walmart projects. In the UK system, we support and develop for the Asda account, known as Eltham. We provide installation and support to over 50...

See all answers

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Compared 7% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 13% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 13% of the time

IBM Planning Analytics vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 6% of the time

Tableau vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 6% of the time

IBM Cognos vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 5% of the time

More Oracle Essbase Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

April 2025

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Buyer's Guide

Oracle Essbase

April 2025

Download Oracle Essbase product report

Also Known As

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

Essbase

Overview

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

Oracle Essbase is an OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) Server that provides an environment for deploying pre-packaged applications or developing custom analytic and enterprise performance management applications.

Oracle

Sample Customers

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

CHU de Rennes, Bellco Credit Union, Akindo Sushiro Co. Ltd, Deutsche Telekom AG, Samarco MineraÊo S.A., PCCW Ltd., QDQ media S.A.U., Boiron Italia, Specialized Bicycle Components Inc., Akindo Sushiro Co. Ltd., Air Canada, Daelim Industrial Co. Ltd.

Buyer's Guide

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

May 2025

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