No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Microsoft Power BI vs Yellowfin comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

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 BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
1st
Ranking in Reporting
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
331
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Yellowfin
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
34th
Ranking in Reporting
25th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (22nd), Embedded BI (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 8.0%, down from 21.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Yellowfin is 1.0%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Power BI8.0%
Yellowfin1.0%
Other91.0%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Hemanthreddy Vakiti - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
AC
‎IS Executive at SAINS
It is a central source of up-to-date data and information, but needs more charting capabilities
Management information Reporting Statistics Data analysis It reduces sending copies of different report/spreadsheet versions over email, which makes it difficult to access the right report. It is also able to create information dashboards for various users' throughout.  All management…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is by far the easiest system not only for querying but also for data modeling, data visualization, and deployment."
"Microsoft BI provides insights for top management to help them make more accurate decisions."
"The stability is good."
"Constant collaboration is the most valuable, I can build a dashboard, and several co-workers can access this dashboard, and we can share information that is important for decision-making."
"Power BI stands out because it provides considerable flexibility in creating reports, dashboards, and various types of analytics to meet those dynamic requirements. It is lightweight and easy to use with good support."
"This product has a lot of features and most of them are user-friendly."
"For organizations starting on their business intelligence journey, I believe Power BI is a very good tool to start with."
"The most valuable feature is the infinite possibilities when it comes to visualizations."
"Yellowfin doesn’t try to do everything – it is a BI presentation and communication tool, and it does it brilliantly."
"It is a central source of up-to-date data and information."
"It is a central source of up-to-date data and information."
"It reduces time to reproduce reports, provides easy access to organisational data, and has the ability to generate a wide range of reports and analysis."
"It is able to create information dashboards for various users' throughout."
 

Cons

"For someone who is new, I think that Power BI can be a little complicated."
"For example, permission management and user access management are still a bit limited."
"The Power Query feature needs to be improved to handle large amounts of data. This feature is also slow for large data transfers making it better to use some kind of script."
"This solution is resource-heavy."
"PowerQuery is so long and something exists in SSAS cube but I cannot do the same in tabular."
"The interface could be improved."
"Performance can be an issue when there's too much data, and getting data into Microsoft Power BI via APIs can be slow."
"Its licensing cost is very high."
"It needs more presentation/charting capabilities and integration with GIS."
"The first release was a bit buggy, but they seem to have gotten on top of that very quickly."
"It needs more presentation/charting capabilities and integration with GIS."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing is on a monthly basis, but I am not sure."
"Power BI is cost-effective compared to other reporting tools."
"All in all, for the price, this is an excellent tool for helping your organization turn mounds of data into useful insights."
"The only other cost, besides the licensing fee, would be to cover support."
"Their price is good."
"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."
"The premium licensing is approximately $5,000 per month which is pretty expensive."
"The price of the solution can be expensive if you want to synchronize your data more."
Information not available
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which BI (Business Intelligence) Tools solutions are best for your needs.
890,027 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
Construction Company
18%
Educational Organization
14%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business135
Midsize Enterprise59
Large Enterprise169
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...
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...
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 ...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI
No data available
 

Overview

 

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
NCS, Universitat Konstanz, AT&T, PG&E, SingTel, InternetStores
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Power BI vs. Yellowfin and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
890,027 professionals have used our research since 2012.