Microsoft Power BI vs QBO comparison

Microsoft and Unscrambl, Inc are both solutions in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category. Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 7.8, while Unscrambl, Inc is ranked #62. Microsoft holds a 21.1% mindshare in BIT, compared to Unscrambl, Inc’s 0.1% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 85% of Unscrambl, Inc users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Power BI

Read 321 Microsoft Power BI reviews

18,413 Views
14,752 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

QBO

Read 6 QBO reviews

130 Views
18 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Microsoft Power BI

QBO

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Microsoft Power BI and QBO are key competitors in the business software space, focusing on different functional areas. Power BI appears to have the upper hand in data visualization and integration, whereas QBO is more advantageous for financial management.

Features: Power BI excels in integration capabilities, customization, and data visualization tools, allowing users to conduct seamless data analysis and reporting. QBO is noted for its order processing, efficient sales capabilities, and user-friendliness in handling financial tasks, offering robust integration with various accounting processes.

Room for Improvement: Power BI could improve its performance with large datasets, enhance user-friendliness for non-technical users, and better integrate with AI and enterprise applications. QBO users desire improved inventory management, more customization in its interface, and enhanced integration features.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Power BI provides versatile deployment options including hybrid solutions, but customer service experiences vary, with reports of occasional delays. QBO offers straightforward cloud-based deployment and is criticized for customer support costs. Both excel in cloud deployment, although Power BI offers more deployment flexibility.

Pricing and ROI: Power BI is seen as cost-effective for many businesses, although scalability can become costly for larger enterprises. It offers strong ROI due to increased efficiencies. QBO's pricing is perceived as higher with features like payroll, yet its value in financial management is well-regarded. Both demonstrate valuable returns on investment, with Power BI shining in cost-effectiveness and QBO in comprehensive financial functionalities.

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

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI vs. QBO

June 2025

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Helped 857,585 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 BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

1st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

321

Ranking in other categories

Reporting (1st)

QBO

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

62nd

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 21.1%, down from 22.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of QBO is 0.1%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

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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Mimi Evans

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.

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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

"The most valuable feature is integration with Python."

"It is good for us for onboarding the data. We can connect to multiple data sources, do transformations to make the data usable, and then model it within the transformation. Someone who has come from a Microsoft Excel environment will easily be able to use this solution. Power query and report modeling are easy to understand in this solution. Their technical support is very good. They are extremely responsive, helpful, and hands-on."

"It works well with SSAS, which we use to generate all different kinds of trending and analytics reports. Sometimes we use Power Query and DAX to build some aggregations on the Power BI side as well."

"The solution makes it easy for me to develop reports and publish them."

"The uploading of information is very easy, as you just use an Excel sheet to start work right away and obtain the benefits of Power BI."

"Its ease of use is most valuable."

"Most of the clients I am interacting with are looking towards Power BI because of the cost and simplicities. It provides an entire feature set and a complete solution. It has tight integration with Office 365, Dynamics 365, Microsoft Technology Stack, and datatypes like R and Python."

"Technical support is quite good."

More Microsoft Power BI pros

"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."

"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."

Cons

"The visual outlet or the visualization aspect can be improved because the settings piece is quite problematic. It requires a lot of time to set the visuals and check. It is quite fiddly to change all the settings and font sizes. It just needs better ability in terms of using templates or visualization templates to get the vision. Our users always benchmark based on the product, and they don't appreciate everything under the bonnet. The only rating is based on the actual reports in the settings for the dashboard. They should make it look a bit funky and a bit more aesthetically pleasing on the eye. It is quite a fiddly tool, but other than that, it is pretty slick. Because it is community-driven, the marketplace tends to be changing forever. You get the standard visualizations, and you've also got all other marketplace visualizations that require you to spend a bit more money and purchase things in the marketplace. With certain visualizations, there is no longevity. I had used certain visualizations, but they discontinued them, and I had to rebuild my reports, which is obviously very frustrating. There should be some sort of stabilization around how the marketplace visuals impact the users when they expire."

"An area for improvement is data refresh functionality"

"here are some limitations with the data models needed to build the report."

"From any improvement perspective, I want the product to be made available to users free of cost...The stability and scalability of the product can be better."

"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."

"The real-time data refresh capabilities is one of the things I had issues with"

"We haven't used it that long and I haven't come across anything that's stood out as needing to be fixed."

"It could have more of a hold on big data. Manipulating big data on this solution complicates things. This needs to be improved."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

"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."

"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 Linux Operating System feature is not available. When we access it from the accounting features, it does not transit to installation."

"The dashboards can be improved by making them customizable in a more granular manner."

"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."

"Inventory capabilities are lacking in the cloud version."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I'm unsure about the exact cost, but the Pro license comes out to around $10 per user. There are also additional costs for custom visuals that you can pay for."

"We have a professional license for Microsoft BI and the price is fair."

"I am satisfied with its price. Its price is very less as compared to Tableau and QlikView."

"The price of the solution can be expensive if you want to synchronize your data more."

"Remove the cost of a licence to show a dashboard within SharePoint. Why should readers of a dashboard have to pay to view? "

"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."

"It is a cheap solution for our needs."

"Microsoft BI is not very cheap. A premium license costs roughly 5,000 euros a month."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

"The solution is expensive."

"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."

"I give the pricing a nine out of ten."

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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

28%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

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...

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...

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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 ...

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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 8% 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

No data available

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

May 2025

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Buyer's Guide

QBO

May 2025

Download QBO 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

QBO combines the power of natural language and spontaneous collaboration to deliver on-demand insights to the decision-makers. Winning features of QBO: 1. Easily connect to multiple internal and external datasets 2. Slice-and-diced data in infinite ways using natural language (English) and interactive visualizations 3. Responds easily to descriptive, diagnostic, predictive and prescriptive questions 4. Native integration with Microsoft Teams 5. Save and share your findings easily on interactive boards URL of the product : https://www.unscrambl.com/qbo-insights/ Powered by Unscrambl, we believe that our increasingly complex world of data can be simplified and transformed into actionable insights, saving valuable time and resources for every business. Unscrambl develops next-generation conversational analytics software that gives business users the power to access and consume data instantly and collaboratively. Unscrambl is headquartered in the United States and has offices in Singapore, Turkey, India, and the Philippines. For more information, please visit www.unscrambl.com

Unscrambl, Inc

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

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI vs. QBO

June 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Power BI vs. QBO

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