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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 20.7% mindshare in the category. Oracle is ranked #11 in DDM , with an average rating of 8.6, and holds a 0.9% 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
  • 26,806 Views
  • 16,352 Comparison Views
93% willing to recommend
Oracle Essbase
Read 14 Oracle Essbase reviews
  • 1,949 Views
  • 136 Comparison Views
100% willing to recommend
 

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, SAP and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools.

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To learn more, read our detailed BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Report (Updated: July 2025).
Buyer's Guide
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
July 2025
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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
14
Ranking in other categories
Database Development and Management (11th)
 

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 20.7%, down 21.9% compared to last year.
Oracle Essbase, on the other hand, focuses on Database Development and Management, holds 0.9% mindshare, down 1.0% since last year.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
Database Development and Management
 

Featured Reviews

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Facilitates seamless data aggregation with some outdated visual elements hindering user appeal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.
Read full review
Pratik Phapale - PeerSpot reviewer
Multidimensional cube structure enables complex data storage and Oracle consistently upgrades Essbase
It's definitely growing and has many great features, especially in the cloud. I haven't used the on-premises server as much. Multidimensional data processing: Essbase is a kind of backbone, or back end, for systems like Hyperion Planning and Hyperion Financial Management. It's a multidimensional cube where we can store and process details, generate reports, and do multiple data processing, which isn't possible in Oracle or other alternatives. So, I'm grateful for this experience. Continuous improvement: Recently, I faced a version upgrade from 11.1.2 to 11.4. Now I'm on 11.2.10. Essbase is continuously upgrading its features in different areas, like configuration, properties, and the cloud platform. It's great to have experience with this, as well as working with the fundamental parts of the VM sets.
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

"We can see that it's really improved the way end users can do their own graphs and pick their own fields of information and present that in a nice way."
"Users already using Excel can generate new reports and dashboards within minutes."
"Technical support is quite good."
"Technical support is quite responsive."
"Tech support is very helpful."
"They should add mobile access."
"There are some great automation elements in the product."
"Ease of development and maintenance."
More Microsoft Power BI pros
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"The solution is scalable."
"Essbase is extremely stable and low-maintenance."
"It's a very powerful analytical engine with Essbase as the back end. We can analyze, transform, or utilize a big chunk of data for our calculations."
"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."
"It helps us fetch specific data sets per users' requirements."
"It is highly efficient and easily scalable, particularly for handling large databases."
"It is very fast compared to other normal databases, like SQL and MySQL."
More Oracle Essbase pros
 

Cons

"BI is scalable, but there are some problems with limited online storage."
"These licenses are in US dollars. With a long-term license, the client is unaffected when the exchange rate goes up. However, if the exchange rate goes down, you don't get refunded from the excess money you've paid. I guess that is a risk you take in business."
"When there are large amounts of data being processed there are additional tools needed to handle it."
"Microsoft BI typically connects to a database, often SQL Server, but it's also capable of connecting to multiple databases, pulling data from them, and allowing for data consolidation. You can then aggregate and generate dashboards and reports from this combined data. Personally, I wouldn't claim to have the expertise to suggest significant changes or additional features, as it functions quite well as is."
"Microsoft BI could improve by allowing large-size data sources. We have large data sources, and we have problems loading them in Microsoft BI."
"It has limited performance capabilities in terms of connecting to large transactional databases, but it is fine for simple and quick queries from Excel spreadsheets or one table. The premium level is going to be more applicable for the higher transaction-level databases."
"The data source definition is all over the place."
"The solution doesn't integrate well with third-party tools."
More Microsoft Power BI cons
"The ability to drive external reporting out for development could be improved."
"The initial setup could be simplified."
"I would like to see an integration with application performance management and a version control management tool."
"They should improve the solution's performance."
"There is room for improvement in terms of cost-effectiveness."
"The consolidation engine, which is HFM or FCCS, needs some room for improvement."
"The solution could enhance business analytics. I delved into the data using Oracle Essbase to create a new support tool."
"The initial setup is pretty complex."
More Oracle Essbase cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay on a monthly basis which is approximately $10 per user on the Microsoft Power BI Pro license. At the moment we are still down at 400 users, but once we reach 500 users, we will move to the premium edition. The premium is $5,000 for unlimited users. Currently, with the 40 users, the cost is roughly $500."
"I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten, with one being cheap and ten being expensive."
"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."
"They have a free Power BI Desktop version, but it has limitations."
"Pricing, that's where Microsoft beats Tableau. It is priced much cheaper."
"We view it as an expensive product."
"The solution’s pricing is reasonable."
"The solution is affordable."
More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice
"Essbase is competitively priced."
"The solution is expensive."
"It is a costly solution."
"I believe the licensing is on a monthly base."
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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…
Read full review
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
10%
Insurance Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

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
 

Comparisons

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Domo vs Microsoft Power BI
Compared 8% of the time
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Databricks vs Microsoft Power BI
Compared 8% of the time
Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI Logo
Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI
Compared 7% of the time
KNIME vs Microsoft Power BI Logo
KNIME vs Microsoft Power BI
Compared 5% of the time
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SAP Analytics Cloud vs Oracle Essbase Logo
SAP Analytics Cloud vs Oracle Essbase
Compared 12% of the time
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs Oracle Essbase Logo
SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs Oracle Essbase
Compared 11% of the time
IBM Cognos vs Oracle Essbase Logo
IBM Cognos vs Oracle Essbase
Compared 7% of the time
IBM Planning Analytics vs Oracle Essbase Logo
IBM Planning Analytics vs Oracle Essbase
Compared 7% of the time
Tableau vs Oracle Essbase Logo
Tableau vs Oracle Essbase
Compared 6% of the time
More Oracle Essbase Competitors
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Microsoft Power BI
June 2025
Microsoft Power BI reportDownload Microsoft Power BI product report
Buyer's Guide
Oracle Essbase
June 2025
Oracle Essbase reportDownload 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 MineraÊo 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
July 2025
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