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Microsoft Power BI vs Plotly vs Tableau comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 25.8%, up from 25.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Plotly is 1.3%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau is 21.6%, down from 23.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

Shoury Priyanshu - PeerSpot reviewer
Facilitates seamless data aggregation with some outdated visual elements hindering user appeal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 Visualization could be improved as it appears outdated.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.
VenkateshJuloori - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Nattawat Choosuwan - PeerSpot reviewer
Real-time data connection enhances workflow and decision-making process
An area for improvement in Tableau is the Explorer license type. It is not as useful, and the product owner should enhance its benefits or clarify its role. Additionally, the frequent updates with many versions available for download can be confusing and could affect stability. They should avoid providing access to older versions on their website.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Initial setup was very straightforward. Users can get up and running reporting on databases within minutes."
"There are some great automation elements in the product."
"What I like most is that I can do everything in Power BI that I can do in Excel."
"It's similar to Excel, but it's much more powerful than Excel."
"The solution's initial setup isn't too complicated."
"It is useful for bringing visualization to data. It calculates counts, ratios, etc."
"I like that I can use Power BI to upload data. That is very important for me. The visualization is also convenient and easy to use."
"Everything that's in M Query and DAX is the heart of Power BI because with these tools you can make up for a lot of other missing features."
"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."
"The action feature which Tableau has is very useful for us. If we click on one visualization, it will pass the value to another visualization. That interactivity within different visualizations is the most valuable feature of Tableau."
"All features are valuable. It is very user-friendly, and it is mostly drag-and-drop. If we have the dataset available, then we can develop any dashboard very quickly."
"The product offers an intuitive user interface, detailed screens and widgets, and the absence of data limitations"
"Tableau has comprehensive, insightful charts, which allow you to build stunning dashboards and enrich your support decision-making."
"The solution is configurable and flexible. We can customize the dashboards and configure the interface the way that we want. The data can be manipulated and arranged in different ways, such as columns."
"Tableau's performance is really good, and it is adding new features."
"It's very user-friendly. It's not like Power BI, Tableau is very user-friendly. Anybody can use Tableau. It's very easy to adopt things. I can visualize the stats."
"It has been the best tool to work with from a self-service point of view."
 

Cons

"The product doesn't support unstructured data. It doesn't support video, streaming, and strings of files."
"Whenever you work on the same dashboard or on the same code, Microsoft Power BI doesn't have a good architecture that allows multiple people to work on the same project."
"In my opinion, the software is a little bit limited in terms of the flexibility it offers, with regard to the design of the visualization."
"The interface could be improved."
"I would like to see a feature that connects with a Machine Learning platform like a RapidMiner or Azure Machine Learning Studio. It would be great to have a Machine Learning application link to connect."
"Performance can be an issue when there's too much data, and getting data into Microsoft Power BI via APIs can be slow."
"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."
"Power BI's administration could use some work, and the user experience needs to improve because it is a client-based tool. If you want to generate a model or report, you need to use client tools, but client tools are limited for end-users who don't have enough hardware. For example, maybe a client lacks enough memory or CPU power for report generators. If you use a model that requires a massive amount of data, your client will face several problems."
"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 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."
"The solution cannot be deployed on the website and shared with others through its own platform."
"The user story model is the most deceptive part of Tableau. It is a big marketing option, however, the reality is that it is not enough."
"Formatting controls could use some improvement."
"It needs a little bit more advanced modeling. I would like to see functionality like Cognos has in the Framework Manager."
"Tableau's automatic insight could be improved. It has some predefined capabilities to understand the data, but I think they need more. Customers need more insight automatically from data—they don't want to discover them, they want to get the forecast automatically. The data preparation should also be improved because it's not easy. Tableau tries to focus on the business side, but the backend side has not improved much. They also have an ETS solution, but it's limited."
"I would like the solution to have certain features allowing the delivery of reports to the email."
"I take a long time to process the hundreds of thousands or millions of records that must be processed every day."
"Tableau support could be improved."
"Its documentation can be improved so that a user can get a good hands-on experience. Tableau is well documented, and on their website, there are a lot of tutorials that are available for free. I started my learning process through those tutorials, but there are certain loopholes in those tutorials, which only got filled through a couple of good YouTube channels that talk about Tableau. YouTube helped me a lot. So, the documentation could be better, I understand that it is evolving day by day, and with more usage, there would be more such documentation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Microsoft BI is very cost-effective and this is why we use it."
"The cost of licensing depends on the number of people that are going to be using the reports, and we are satisfied with it at $10 per user."
"The current licensing model that Microsoft BI has is expensive. My customers have told me the cost is approximately $20 per user and this can get expensive fast. There should be a one-time purchase option if the customer has a lot of users."
"Microsoft BI is not very cheap. A premium license costs roughly 5,000 euros a month."
"The price of the solution can be expensive if you want to synchronize your data more."
"Its pricing is great."
"This product offers good value for the money."
"I only use the free tier of the product."
"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."
"The price is definitely a point because smaller firms don't use Tableau as it's an expensive tool."
"It is fairly expensive. I have no idea what they paid. We were on an enterprise license, so whatever it is they licensed at the enterprise level is what we paid."
"At $70 per month, I think the price is a bit scary. I have a small consulting firm in Ghana, working in about 15 different African countries, and when it comes to our part of the world, $70 a month is a lot of money for software."
"Tableau is an expensive solution, though it comes with its advantages."
"Tableau is free."
"If they want to be competitive in the market, the price must be improved."
"Pricing could be better. I believe they should offer better pricing for deployment in small to mid-sized companies."
"It is reasonable and cheap as compared to other major tools. It has a good price, and people go for it because of its pricing."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
12%
Educational Organization
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Educational Organization
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

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 wou...
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 info...
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 ...
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.
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 ...
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 f...
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik ...
Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?
Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have be...
Which would you choose - Tableau or SAP Analytics Cloud?
Tableau is easy to set up and maintain. In about a day it is possible for the entire platform to be deployed for use....
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

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

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
Google, Goji, VIT, Smpl Bio, U.S. Air Force, C12 Energy, New York University
Accenture, Adobe, Amazon.com, Bank of America, Charles Schwab Corp, Citigroup, Coca-Cola Company, Cornell University, Dell, Deloitte, Duke University, eBay, Exxon Mobil, Fannie Mae, Ferrari, French Red Cross, Goldman Sachs, Google, Government of Canada, HP, Intel, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Macy's, Merck, The New York Times, PayPal, Pfizer, US Army, US Air Force, Skype, and Walmart.
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