Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Microsoft Power BI vs QBO 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
7.0
Number of Reviews
327
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (1st)
QBO
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
49th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 9.4%, down from 21.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of QBO is 0.6%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Power BI9.4%
QBO0.6%
Other90.0%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

James Balbach - PeerSpot reviewer
Executive Director, Decision Support at Community Health Network
Robust system consistently elevates data visualization and seamlessly updates with user-driven advancements
Power BI is a general-use visualization system. I can express the performance of our network through high-level key performance indicators. It allows me to show detailed improvements in quality and safety and patient experience. I create improvement dashboards for task forces and work teams. I have built analytic dashboards that guide analytics, enabling research and dataset manipulation.
Mimi Evans - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner/Operator at Fearless Bookkeeping Services LLC
Offer great partnership models and relatively simple to use
My only issue with QuickBooks Online is their inventory capabilities. My understanding is that they're rolling out improvements in 2023, but anytime a person asks me about using QuickBooks Online and inventory, then I always recommend the desktop version because otherwise the functionality isn't great. They're trying to become the all-in source that we use for everything. However, the product lakcs a client portal, a feature that would make a huge difference. I'm an accountant and if I can't use it well, I can't train my customers to use it well. There are so many professional service companies that would love to be able to offer a client portal of some sort but they're so industry-specific or they're outrageously expensive because they're meant for enterprise level. I don't like the UI or the functionality of their cash flow planner. I would rather pay for another software than use theirs.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution has a good toggling feature."
"Power BI pricing is generally considered more affordable than Tableau."
"The solution is not that difficult to install, although this will vary with the experience of the person responsible for its installation."
"The main feature I find valuable is the possibility to work with an extensive amount of data."
"It's easy to create reports and it's easy to download the data from the corresponding report."
"The capability to add custom visuals and create Power BI apps. You can package datasets, synchronization details, and dashboards into a single app."
"Its ease of use is most valuable."
"I like the downloadable visualizations a lot. I think that they give the user a very nice starting point in creating awesome dashboards, with the right way to tell their data story."
"The most valuable features of QBO are its order processing and sales capabilities, as well as its invoice and batch processing capabilities. It allows for multiple batch processing and integration with other platforms, such as SAP V1, Oracle, and Dynamics BC. This makes the solution versatile and effective for customers, and they are satisfied with its integration with different platforms. The integration of this solution is not fixed, it can be based on the user's requirements."
"The scheduling feature for salaries and taxes is one of the best features of QBO. It's also very user-friendly."
"The most valuable feature of QBO is that it can be reconnected at any time and anywhere. It is not like other software where you have to back up and restore the data."
"The most valuable feature is the collaboration around allowing many people to ask questions and see the dashboards together."
"QBO has a very good reconciliation tool."
"It's intuitive, electronic, and, as in the old days, eliminates the need for pen and paper. It is the only option. It's the best software."
 

Cons

"Adding paginated reports to this tool could be of great help for users who want to move away from SSRS."
"Sometimes in Power BI, the logic can be challenging to follow."
"The default parameters of the prompt could be improved by including a dynamic option."
"They can provide a user-friendly and easy way to use this tool for people who don't know about programming or technical things. It will be quite good if they can improve the look and feel and make it simpler to operate. They can make it easier to create some of the reports. They can also include predefined templates that you can directly use."
"My data is restricted to my DB and I'm not sure how this would handle an extremely large dataset."
"The solution doesn't integrate well with third-party tools."
"Power BI could have better metadata management. It's easy to use for a single person. However, it lacks an enterprise-grade metadata management system, which can be a problem if you're doing an enterprise deployment with multiple users."
"Its setup and support should be improved. We would like to see more material for developers that provides clear explanations about how we can do data mining by using Microsoft BI. It would also be good if we can connect a feature to other customized machine learning solutions."
"QBO could be improved by adding more flexibility in its invoice and sales order processing capabilities. Customers have requested the ability to integrate with different retail services and the ability to easily integrate with different payment gateways, such as PayPal, by providing API and credentials, with the system automatically processing the integration."
"The internet version is less user-friendly than the desktop version. The desktop version is their flagship, whereas the online version is considerably different, requiring all new learning and having several glitches."
"Inventory capabilities are lacking in the cloud version."
"The Linux Operating System feature is not available. When we access it from the accounting features, it does not transit to installation."
"Compared to offline accounting software with many shortcuts and allows you to operate the software using the keyboard, QBO doesn't have the keyboard feature."
"The dashboards can be improved by making them customizable in a more granular manner."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This product offers good value for the money."
"The cost of this product is very low, at approximately $8 or $9 per month for a developer."
"Pricing is a big advantage that Power BI has over Tableau. Power BI is three or four times cheaper than Tableau. For my personal use, I will definitely prefer a $20 monthly fee of Power BI rather than a $70 monthly fee of Tableau. If you pay altogether for Power BI, they give you a discount, whereas, with Tableau, there is no discount. There are three versions of Power BI: Free, Pro, and Premium. The Premium version comes with a lot of things. There is no extra or hidden fee. You pay every month, and the software is with you. If you upgrade, there will be some extra charges."
"It is a cheap solution for our needs."
"I think it's a good price, from what I've heard. I know it's competitive with other Power BI tools."
"MS BI comes with all the tools and it is, to the best of my knowledge, the most affordable solution."
"The Report Server is pretty expensive on-premise. But as long companies are happy to use the cloud version, that's very cost effective."
"The solution's pricing is medium."
"The solution is expensive."
"I give the pricing a nine out of ten."
"In my opinion, QBO is a bit on the pricey side, but you have no choice. It is still better, in the long run, to go with their pricing or their software than the alternatives."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which BI (Business Intelligence) Tools solutions are best for your needs.
880,954 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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
12%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business135
Midsize Enterprise57
Large Enterprise165
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 ...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

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
SATS, Celcom, EastWest, DBS, Metrobank, XL-Axiata, Etisalat, UnionBank of the Philippines
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Power BI vs. QBO and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
880,954 professionals have used our research since 2012.