Microsoft Power BI vs Plotly comparison

Microsoft and Plotly are both solutions in the Reporting category. Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 7.8, while Plotly is ranked #19 with an average rating of 7.7. Microsoft holds a 26.4% mindshare in RT, compared to Plotly’s 1.2% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Plotly users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Power BI

Read 321 Microsoft Power BI reviews

12,177 Views
2,330 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Plotly

Read 3 Plotly reviews

618 Views
100 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Power BI

Plotly

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Microsoft Power BI and Plotly are both significant players in the data visualization arena. While Power BI often stands out due to its integration with other Microsoft tools, Plotly impresses with its advanced graphing features and interactivity.

Features: Power BI integrates seamlessly into the Microsoft ecosystem, providing smooth data access, real-time analytics, and analytics capabilities. Plotly offers interactive graph generation and sophisticated visualization tools, appealing for those seeking advanced graphical representations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Power BI is praised for a straightforward deployment process and robust customer support, especially for enterprises using Microsoft products. Plotly requires more technical expertise for setup but provides comprehensive documentation. Both offer strong support, but Power BI's environment streamlines deployment.

Pricing and ROI: Power BI is seen as offering good value due to its integration capabilities and relatively low setup costs. Plotly may involve higher initial investment but delivers high-quality visual insights. Power BI's ROI often links to its lower costs, while Plotly's high-quality graphs contribute to its ROI.

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

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI vs. Plotly

June 2025

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Helped 856,873 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

7.3

Number of Reviews

321

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (1st)

Plotly

Ranking in Reporting

19th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 26.4%, up from 25.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Plotly is 1.2%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

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.

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VenkateshJuloori

Founder & CEO at Ira

A flexible tool that offers an open-source version

It is a scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine to ten out of ten. In my company, there are around five resources that use the product. My company's clients use the product a lot on a daily basis. I use the product twice a week in my company before I get any call from our clients.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's the analytic engine in terms of the interface on the Power BI environment, as opposed to pivot tables, and it's a mobile solution."

"The product's most valuable features are DAX functions for formulas and calculations."

"The most valuable features are the easy creation of reports, dashboards, and the ability to perform analysis. It is important for us to create reports because we have some operations during certain hours and we can use this tool to track the information."

"Like all Microsoft products, it is very easy to set up initially."

"The most useful features are the ability to connect different databases to Microsoft BI and explore them. Once the database information has been extracted, you have the ability to construct indicators and dashboards from the information."

"It is low-cost and easy to deploy. It is fully-featured."

"Good reporting and data analysis tool that's user-friendly, easy to deploy, stable, and scalable."

"The reports are easy to create."

More Microsoft Power BI pros

"The level of interactivity that the product provides is valuable to me."

"When reviewing and interpreting data, I typically examine it in a tabular form to understand its structure. However, when explaining or presenting the findings to others, I often use visualization tools such as Plotly. These tools allow me to create visual representations of datasets."

"It is a scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine to ten out of ten."

Cons

"When I create measures, sometimes the error messages aren't clear. It makes me spend more time searching for solutions. I need the error messages to be more specific. So, I would like clearer error messages when creating measures."

"We need more integration capabilities."

"It should have more report outputs. They should expand the report outputs. Its documentation should also be better."

"Integration with products that are not Microsoft could be more improved."

"The formatting template could be improved."

"The solution is somewhat costly in comparison with MSBI tools."

"The setup took a lot of tinkering with InfoSec to allow us to do stuff."

"Areas of Power BI that could be improved are the learning curve for developers who come from non-technical backgrounds."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

"I believe that the prices of the tool's paid services could be on the premium side, so the pricing model can be considered for improvement."

"The solution cannot be deployed on the website and shared with others through its own platform."

"The tool needs to improve its pie charts. Regarding Plotly, I find the online documentation somewhat challenging to navigate, especially when dealing with many parameters. Searching through thousands of parameters can be a tedious and less straightforward process. While the documentation is available online and serves its purpose, I often encounter difficulties in finding the information."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Setup is easy, and the cost is economical. You do sometimes need to pay additional costs for third party products which "plug-in" to Microsoft BI."

"Paid for itself in the first month."

"MS BI comes with all the tools and it is, to the best of my knowledge, the most affordable solution."

"It's straightforward licensing."

"Price is the best feature of Power BI! You get a lot of value for the price. If you know how to use it, it's a great BI solution for your money."

"Microsoft BI is very cost-effective and this is why we use it."

"They have a free Power BI Desktop version, but it has limitations."

"I believe that the price is reasonable, at least for an enterprise solution."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

"It is an open-source tool. My company hasn't explored Plotly's premium services yet, but I believe the prices could be on the premium side."

"I only use the free tier of the product."

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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

Educational Organization

30%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

18%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

What do you like most about Plotly?

It is a scalable solution. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine to ten out of ten.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Plotly?

It is an open-source tool. My company hasn't explored Plotly's premium services yet, but I believe the prices are on the premium side. I rate the product price as five or six on a scale of one to t...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Plotly?

I believe that the price of the tool's paid services is on the premium side, so the pricing model can be considered for improvement.

See all answers

Comparisons

Tableau vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 13% of the time

Databricks vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 8% of the time

Domo vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 7% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 7% of the time

KNIME vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 5% of the time

More Microsoft Power BI Competitors

Tableau vs Plotly

Compared 30% of the time

TIBCO Spotfire vs Plotly

Compared 12% of the time

Looker Studio vs Plotly

Compared 10% of the time

Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services vs Plotly

Compared 8% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

May 2025

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Buyer's Guide

Reporting

June 2025

Download Plotly 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

Plotly creates leading open source tools for composing, editing, and sharing interactive data visualization via the Web.

Our collaboration servers (available in cloud or on premises) allow data scientists to showcase their work, make graphs without coding, and collaborate with business analysts, designers, executives, and clients.

Plotly

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

Google, Goji, VIT, Smpl Bio, U.S. Air Force, C12 Energy, New York University

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI vs. Plotly

June 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Power BI vs. Plotly

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

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