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Microsoft Power BI vs Posit 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
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
321
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (1st)
Posit
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
27th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 20.4%, down from 21.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Posit is 0.4%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

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Facilitates seamless data aggregation with some outdated visual elements hindering user appeal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 Visualization could be improved as it appears outdated.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.
SUBRATADEY - PeerSpot reviewer
Addressing installation challenges to utilize interactive dashboards effectively
Posit is valuable because many geo-scientists I work with are more comfortable writing R scripts and using R Shiny, making it a suited choice for them. On top of that, it integrates with the application and database, creating interactive dashboards. While there's a need to manage a significant portion manually, the performance overall is stable.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is more user-friendly compared to SSRS."
"My understanding is that the initial setup is pretty easy."
"It offers a lot of information and is very flexible and interactive."
"Users already using Excel can generate new reports and dashboards within minutes."
"Helped identify bad data, enabling the corrections needed to the data for management."
"Implementation is very quick and the solution is very user-friendly."
"One of the most valuable features of Power BI is the ease of use. It is comfortable and there is not a steep learning curve for this solution. If you have some idea of the data and basic visualization ideas, you can use this solution comfortably."
"The scalability is good. We have 20 people in my organization using this solution and plan to increase usage."
"Overall, I think Posit is a stable product."
"I have found Posit’s integration with R, such as the autocomplete feature and the help panel, to be invaluable."
"The most valuable feature of Posit is that it allows users to host different models in one place, making it easy to share with colleagues and teammates."
 

Cons

"The solution could improve the mobile application design. It is difficult to use compared to the desktop version."
"Spatial data support should be enhanced."
"One of the more difficult things to do is to export some of the data from Power BI to Excel."
"My main complaint is that the error messages need to be made more clear. Currently, they are either too generic or outright misleading, and finding the real problem is like searching for a needle in a haystack."
"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."
"Anything they can do to improve enterprise collaboration is going to help people get set up and utilize the solution."
"Microsoft is behind IBM when it comes to security features."
"The real-time data refresh capabilities is one of the things I had issues with"
"I would like to see improvements in SSH capabilities."
"Posit lacks a smooth solution for the build and release pipeline, requiring duplicate effort for production transitions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"No comment on pricing."
"I would rate them 4 out of 5 for their current pricing. There are no additional costs to the standard licensing fees."
"We have a premium Power BI license in-house that's quite an expensive license. It's $10 a month for four users and then I think 35,000 at the premium rate."
"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."
"I'm not very familiar with the licensing aspect, as it operates in the cloud as a SaaS (Software as a Service) model. Essentially, you pay based on cloud cost models, which might include hourly rates or similar billing structures introduced by Microsoft. Many organizations utilize it and pay for its services, somewhat like Office 365. It's a cloud-based platform that provides the necessary services, including support, for development, and you pay accordingly for the usage."
"They have a free Power BI Desktop version, but it has limitations."
"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."
"In general, Microsoft BI's price is lower compared to Alteryx."
Information not available
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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%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
No data available
 

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...
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 ...
What is your primary use case for Posit?
I use Posit for both Posit Connect and Posit Workbench. The Workbench is used for development, as there are many packages not supported by RStudio because I didn't have RStudio Pro. Posit Connect i...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Posit?
RStudio Pro and Workbench are quite expensive. Workbench is especially costly because it supports multiple sessions, so there's a strategy to use it only during full-phase development, then switch ...
What needs improvement with Posit?
Posit lacks a smooth solution for the build and release pipeline. Its documentation is weak, which can make installation cumbersome for someone without terminal experience. Additionally, there are ...
 

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
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Power BI vs. Posit and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
864,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.