Microsoft Power BI vs XLCubed comparison

Microsoft and Fluence Technologies are both solutions in the Reporting category. Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.0, while Fluence Technologies is ranked #35. Microsoft holds a 23.8% mindshare in RT, compared to Fluence Technologies’s 0.4% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 50% of Fluence Technologies users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Power BI

Read 326 Microsoft Power BI reviews

22,361 Views
9,392 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

XLCubed

Read 2 XLCubed reviews

313 Views
166 Comparison Views

50% willing to recommend

Microsoft Power BI

XLCubed

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Microsoft Power BI and XLCubed are products in the business intelligence space. Microsoft Power BI seems to have the upper hand with a comprehensive range of tools and integrations fitting various business needs.

Features: Microsoft Power BI includes extensive data visualization tools, seamless integration with Microsoft products, and scalable cloud services. XLCubed offers powerful Excel-based analytics, rich customization options, and the ability to handle complex datasets efficiently.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Power BI has a straightforward deployment process with strong integration capabilities, supported by extensive documentation and community resources. XLCubed offers a tailored deployment experience beneficial for businesses needing in-depth analysis and customization, with personalized customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Power BI generally has a lower initial setup cost with flexible pricing plans catering to different business scales, contributing to a higher perceived ROI due to its broad capabilities. XLCubed, although more expensive upfront, provides high ROI for organizations focused on complex data analytics solutions.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Power BI vs. XLCubed Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI vs. XLCubed

September 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 871,469 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

Ranking in Reporting

1st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

326

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (1st)

XLCubed

Ranking in Reporting

35th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 23.8%, down from 26.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of XLCubed is 0.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Reporting Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Power BI	23.8%
XLCubed	0.4%
Other	75.8%

Reporting

Featured Reviews

Shoury Priyanshu

Senior Manager, Strategy & Consulting at Viacom18 Media Pvt Ltd

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

it_user1391316

Head of Finance Systems at NHS

Cost effective with great capability, performance, flexibility and visuals

In general, we're happy with the solution but we're always looking to see what else is out there. The thing we've struggled with is our partnership with Tagetik UK, the consultants, and the issue we had gaining access to consultants to develop the solution on our behalf. Thankfully we connected directly with XLCubed and now have a pretty close and good relationship with them so the earlier problem we had of actually getting resources to help us develop has now been solved. One of the things that we've been asking for and would like as an additional feature is a sort of benchmarking functionality. The ability to be able to benchmark, directly against the company digital corporate numbers. That said, there seems to be improved functionality within the latest release that could help us develop that further.

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 most valuable features are the flexibility, how many ways you can interrogate the data, and the the graphical visualization."

"The virtualization of Microsoft BI is very good."

"The solution is easy to use."

"Microsoft BI is better than most solutions we have. It's pretty easy to conduct analysis with it."

"It is in the cloud, which makes it easy for mobile access of reports and data."

"It is useful for bringing visualization to data. It calculates counts, ratios, etc."

"It is easy to use. It has got a desktop where people can develop their own dashboards. Basically, we have figured out how to connect finance contracts and all programs for the government agency. So, they can see everything in a dashboard. So, it is very easy to use from a technical standpoint of view."

"The good part of it is that you can do whatever you want with it when it comes to building BI. In terms of languages, it supports Python, and it also natively supports R."

More Microsoft Power BI pros

"Great capability, performance, flexibility, visuals, and the solution is also very cost effective."

"I am looking forward to testing their full graphics that are available, as they looked very interesting in the demo."

Cons

"I would prefer that the solution not be shared. I'm concerned that if we make a mistake we could reveal information to people who shouldn't see it. I would like to have my own on-prem server, to buy my own server and have my own infrastructure for Microsoft BI, with only with my data."

"Our expectation is putting BI to work in real-time data collection systems in the maritime environment."

"It is not yet ready for enterprises. For a big enterprise data model, it is not so stable, and it also doesn't scale so well."

"You do need to do some hard coding for certain things in Microsoft BI."

"If I have to update data automatically, where I have to pin the gateway, it doesn't update. There is a scheduled refresh functionality so that it refreshes automatically, but I find it very hard to make it work."

"If I compare it to Tableau, I'd say the visualizations can be better. We should have multiple options. By that I mean, while there are multiple options for the visualization, the look and feel of the dashboard when you compare to Tableau is on the lower side. Tableau has a much better visualization."

"If you need data in real-time, it's not an ideal solution."

"Automation could be improved and performance enhanced."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

"Would like the ability to be able to benchmark."

"There should be a better or an easier way to establish that connection to external sources."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the product price an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."

"We have a premium Power BI license in-house that's quite an expensive license. It's $10 a month for four users and then I think 35,000 at the premium rate."

"Microsoft BI is free for the personal edition, but there is also a paid-for professional version."

"Power BI's price is reasonable, especially if you can put it in some bigger package and use it with other products. The value of a solution doesn't just come from its features as a standalone product. The price should also reflect how easy it's to set up, clean data, and integrate with other solutions."

"If it has to be applied on the cloud, then it costs around $10 per month per user. For a pro license and for a premium license it's around $20 per month per user. If it has to be applied on-premises then, depending on the course of your server, you have to buy a software assurance version of the database."

"I very much recommend the free trial mode."

"We're charged a monthly subscription fee of 500 rupees per person."

"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

"I am still using the two-week trial, but at first sight, the price is reasonable."

"14,000 Pounds per year for licensing."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Reporting solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

871,469 professionals have used our research since 2012.

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

Financial Services Firm

12%

Government

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	134
Midsize Enterprise	57
Large Enterprise	165

No data available

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

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

Comparisons

Tableau Enterprise vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 14% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 11% of the time

Domo vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 7% of the time

Databricks vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 6% of the time

KNIME Business Hub vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 4% of the time

More Microsoft Power BI Competitors

Tableau Enterprise vs XLCubed

Compared 27% of the time

More XLCubed Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

October 2025

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Buyer's Guide

Reporting

September 2025

Download XLCubed product report

Also Known As

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

No data available

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

Produce insightful, interactive reports on, company-wide metrics for any business audience. Now all in Excel.
Pixel-perfect financial reporting with the skill sets you already have. No IT required.
Meet XLCubed: The data-connected Excel add-in for all your reporting needs.

Fluence Technologies

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

Marshalls Ltd, BP Exploration and Production, Thorntons, Ted Baker, Bristol-Myers, Rank Group, ING Bank Genve, Cargill Value Investment, Chloride Power, Auchan, Erste, UEFA, Novartis, Porsche Informatik, Raiffeisen Bank International

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI vs. XLCubed

September 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Power BI vs. XLCubed

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Power BI vs. XLCubed and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

871,469 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Microsoft Power BI vs. XLCubed report.

See our list of best Reporting vendors.

We monitor all Reporting 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.