Microsoft Power BI vs Oracle Essbase comparison

Why PeerSpot?

The compared Microsoft and Oracle solutions aren't in the same category. Microsoft is ranked #1 in BIT , with an average rating of 8.4, and holds a 7.6% mindshare in the category. Oracle is ranked #18 in DDM , with an average rating of 7.3, and holds a 1.6% 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 332 Microsoft Power BI reviews

41,703 Views
27,941 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Oracle Essbase

Read 18 Oracle Essbase reviews

3,924 Views
1,177 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, SAP and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools.

To learn more, read our detailed BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Report (Updated: October 2026).

Buyer's Guide

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

October 2026

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Helped 920,929 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

6.6

Number of Reviews

332

Ranking in other categories

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

Oracle Essbase

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

4.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Database Development and Management (18th)

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 7.6%, down 12.6% compared to last year.
Oracle Essbase, on the other hand, focuses on Database Development and Management, holds 1.6% mindshare, up 0.9% since last year.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Microsoft Power BI	7.6%
Tableau Enterprise	6.5%
SAP Business Data Cloud	3.4%
Other	82.5%

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Database Development and Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Oracle Essbase	1.6%
Oracle Enterprise Manager	4.5%
Foglight for Databases	3.9%
Other	90.0%

Database Development and Management

Featured Reviews

Hemanthreddy Vakiti

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.

Read full review

Bhavya N

Senior System Engineer at Infosys

Ensuring efficient data analysis and reporting while identifying areas for calculation and export improvements

The features of Oracle Essbase are valuable, such as its multi-dimensional database used for dynamic calculations and reporting purposes. These features are valuable because they support multi-dimensional data views, allowing users to analyze relationships across various data categories and establish a comprehensive perspective on business operations. Moreover, dynamic calculations allow real-time data analysis, significantly improving the accuracy and depth of financial insights. I have utilized Essbase's data aggregation capabilities. The Oracle Essbase interface provides a good user experience, allowing users to easily navigate and analyze data with fast query performance, effective data visualization tools such as charts, graphs, and tables, and flexibility for customizable analysis and reporting, including the ability to create ad hoc reports. The benefits of the interface include improving productivity and enhancing decision-making.

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

"It offers a lot of information and is very flexible and interactive."

"It is really flexible, the charts and reports are really nice, and you have the flexibility of self-service."

"It provides easy integration with Office tools."

"I love the fact that it's got a very intuitive user interface."

"Microsoft BI is easy to use and to design. I found Microsoft BI a lot easier than Tableau."

"In terms of stability, this product has never failed me."

"However, it is very well integrated with other Microsoft products, including PowerApps and Excel, as well as Access, so it fits well into our workflow."

"The most valuable feature is shareability, where we can publish work to the cloud and share it with team members."

More Microsoft Power BI pros

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

"Oracle Essbase is a web integration system that integrates with other data systems."

"The Oracle Essbase interface provides a good user experience, allowing users to easily navigate and analyze data with fast query performance, effective data visualization tools such as charts, graphs, and tables, and flexibility for customizable analysis and reporting, including the ability to create ad hoc reports."

"It provides for faster and more assertive forecast cycles and enables businesses to improve their process since with this tool, you can do things easily and quicker as the business can create more complex models than were possible before."

"I have found the most valuable aspect is the user-friendly environment and current features."

"Oracle Essbase enables organizations to take their strategic decisions, which helps them make the right decisions at the right time."

"Essbase is a multidimensional database (MOLAP) is undoubtedly leading in that space."

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

More Oracle Essbase pros

Cons

"The look and feel should be updated in terms of the types of dashboards and graphs that you can produce. They aren't as visual as some of its competitors."

"I believe there is room for improvement in terms of authentication and certain functionalities in Power BI. For instance, adjusting the width of columns is not easily done, as there is only an option to enable or disable automatic adjustment. This can be a significant drawback for clients who desire more flexibility."

"Sharing reports with non-Power BI users Use of ISO weeks (European) in relative date options."

"Visualization systems are still relatively young."

"The only concern I have faced with Microsoft BI is the time it takes to find out an issue and rectify it."

"People without private emails cannot publish and, frankly, this doesn't allow for easy training."

"Integrating it with the physics build model or the engineering model should be included."

"The mobile app is very poor."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

"They should improve the solution's performance."

"The solution could enhance business analytics. I delved into the data using Oracle Essbase to create a new support tool."

"The licensing costs are too high."

"Variable attributes functionality needs to be incorporated in Planning, though it is available in Essbase I believe it is still not in Planning."

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

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

"When it comes to scalability, I note that the on-premise solution of Oracle Essbase is not very scalable. In the cloud solution, I think it is easier, because that is the point; however, in the on-premise solution, there is no scalability, so if the server goes down, Oracle Essbase is not reachable."

"It's an expensive product to use."

More Oracle Essbase cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a cheap solution for our needs."

"The price for this solution is reasonable. However, there is an additional cost if you want to publish the dashboard privately."

"It is based on the usage. If you're using it, you pay for it, and if you're not using it, you stop paying for it."

"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."

"The cost of the solution is more flexible for us because the desktop is free and we pay as we use it in the cloud."

"It's straightforward licensing."

"Paid for itself in the first month."

"The pricing is very reasonable compared to any other tool."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

"It is a costly solution."

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

"Essbase is competitively priced."

"The solution is expensive."

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Comparison Review

it_user79932

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Outsourcing Company

Financial Services Firm

14%

Construction Company

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	137
Midsize Enterprise	59
Large Enterprise	171

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	14

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 needs improvement with Oracle Essbase?

A significant area for improvement in Oracle Essbase is that financial statement analysis, CAPEX and OPEX analysis, and financial consolidation must be done manually, as Oracle Essbase doesn't incl...

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What is your primary use case for Oracle Essbase?

The initial setup of Oracle Essbase is dependent on whether you select BSO or ASO cubes. First, you need to set up the type of information and once the type of cubes is defined, you need to define ...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Oracle Essbase?

The pricing functionality in Oracle Essbase is handled through the model you develop, where each cube can be customized with members and dimensions for pricing and entities. You can implement any f...

See all answers

Comparisons

Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 14% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 8% of the time

Domo vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 4% of the time

IBM Cognos vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 3% of the time

Looker Studio vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 1% of the time

More Microsoft Power BI Competitors

Tableau Enterprise vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 9% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 9% of the time

Oracle Essbase Cloud Service vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 4% of the time

SAP Business Data Cloud vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 4% of the time

Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 4% of the time

More Oracle Essbase Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

October 2026

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Buyer's Guide

Oracle Essbase

October 2026

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 provides robust multi-dimensional analysis with a strong calculation engine and aggregate storage, enabling fast calculations and swift response times for large data volumes.

Essbase offers scalable, stable multi-dimensional analysis capabilities, important for enterprises managing large datasets. Its flexibility and efficiency support detailed reporting, strategic decision-making, and advanced modeling. An intuitive interface allows fast data visualization and dynamic analysis, aiding strategic business operations. Continuous upgrades enhance performance and productivity.

What are the key features of Oracle Essbase?

Multi-dimensional Analysis: Enables complex data insights through powerful analysis capabilities.
Calculation Engine: Provides swift calculations essential for timely decision-making in business environments.
Aggregate Storage: Ensures efficient data handling, supporting fast response times and large data volumes.
Intuitive Interface: Facilitates fast visualization and enhances productivity through easy data management.

What benefits or ROI should users focus on in reviews?

Scalability: Supports growing data needs efficiently, maintaining stability.
Performance Upgrades: Continuously improves data processing speeds and system functionality.
Flexibility: Adapts to diverse reporting and analysis needs effectively.
Enhanced Productivity: Increases organizational efficiency with dynamic data analysis capabilities.

In industries like telecommunications, banking, and healthcare, Essbase is used extensively for financial management, including planning, budgeting, and reporting. It facilitates decision-making in multinational firms by supporting enterprise performance management and generating comprehensive financial statements. Users leverage it for complex data processing and intensive queries, improving operational efficiency.

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

October 2026

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