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Microsoft Power BI vs Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 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 Reporting
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
332
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (1st)
Oracle Business Intelligenc...
Ranking in Reporting
27th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 12.9%, down from 25.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer is 1.0%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Power BI12.9%
Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer1.0%
Other86.1%
Reporting
 

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.
Useful for business reports and helps to drill down accounting information
The tool's most valuable feature is table creation. One of the most important capabilities is the supplier assessment reports. These reports provide a balance during transactions, which is crucial for auditing. This feature is not standard in other ERP systems, making it highly valuable. The solution helps to drill down details from sources like payables and inventory, which the accounting department requires.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like data modeling. You can connect with your database, which is quite useful for me. It is a good tool if you have a large amount of data and you want to gather different data and interconnect it. The Power Query functionality is quite an interesting feature. If you have a query in Excel, you can also copy your query and run it in Power BI. Its dashboard is also very nice and not complicated. You don't need to be a developer to be able to use it. I am not an IT guy, and it is quite easy to use for somebody who is not an IT person."
"Microsoft BI's most valuable features are the user interface, which is easy to use and light."
"It is a very good software solution; it makes life very easy for us, is easy to grasp, and is useful."
"The scalability of the product is great."
"The biggest improvement comes from a do it once, refresh many concept, where users build their reports once and then simply refresh the data, giving them a lot more time to perform analysis, which is the real added value to the business."
"Tech support is very helpful."
"Power BI is more powerful than other tools because it is new for us. Each new version has more capabilities, and we're expecting AI and ML features in the next version."
"The solution is very helpful for managing the business."
"Discoverer has been very stable and we've had no real issues."
"The tool's most valuable feature is table creation. One of the most important capabilities is the supplier assessment reports. These reports provide a balance during transactions, which is crucial for auditing."
 

Cons

"Regarding real-time analytics features in Microsoft Power BI, I don't find them particularly useful. I use process mapping, but from my point of view, there are not enough analytical tools."
"If you compare it to Tableau and Qlik Sense, they are doing much better work."
"I have been doing trial and error to figuring out how to do the data analyzing and modeling. There could be some improvement to simplify it."
"The orchestration module for refreshing data flows is something that is missing and we have to do it manually."
"I'm not overly technical, and so I can't really speak to any shortcomings from a technical standpoint."
"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."
"The initial setup is a little bit technical."
"For someone who is new, I think that Power BI can be a little complicated."
"Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer needs to improve its performance and HTML reports."
"They need to try to develop reports to tie different tables together. Currently, to pull the data into one nice, neat report takes a more advanced technically minded person to develop."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft Power BI has reasonable pricing."
"The licensing can be complicated."
"We have premium licenses, but you can use it for free. You can share the content with anyone else, so you can use it for free."
"They have a free Power BI Desktop version, but it has limitations."
"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."
"While Power BI is generally a paid product, particularly for enterprise features and scalability, you can start with the free version and still achieve significant functionality."
"Its price is very low. It is like $10 per user, per month. The clients pay for their own licenses. It is not on us. There are no costs in addition to the standard licensing fees. That's the beauty. With other systems, you need to spend a couple of thousand dollars just to get started, and then you need to spend $500 per year for the license, which becomes much more costly. You have a system here where for $120 to $140 a year, you can start with two people and start developing and deploying. You can see why the cost difference is huge, especially when you are on a low scale, like us, and you're not building something very huge."
"I'm unsure about the exact cost, but the Pro license comes out to around $10 per user. There are also additional costs for custom visuals that you can pay for."
"Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer is more expensive than its alternatives. You need to pay additional costs for implementation."
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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
13%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Government
8%
Media Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business137
Midsize Enterprise59
Large Enterprise171
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 ...
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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
Georg Fischer Central Plastics
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Power BI vs. Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,099 professionals have used our research since 2012.