Microsoft Power BI vs XLCubed comparison

Microsoft and Fluence Technologies are both solutions in the Reporting category. Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 7.8, while Fluence Technologies is ranked #32. Microsoft holds a 26.4% mindshare in RT, compared to Fluence Technologies’s 0.4% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 50% of Fluence Technologies 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

XLCubed

Read 2 XLCubed reviews

171 Views
15 Comparison Views

50% willing to recommend

Microsoft Power BI

XLCubed

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Microsoft Power BI and XLCubed are products in the business intelligence space. Microsoft Power BI seems to have the upper hand with a comprehensive range of tools and integrations fitting various business needs.

Features: Microsoft Power BI includes extensive data visualization tools, seamless integration with Microsoft products, and scalable cloud services. XLCubed offers powerful Excel-based analytics, rich customization options, and the ability to handle complex datasets efficiently.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Power BI has a straightforward deployment process with strong integration capabilities, supported by extensive documentation and community resources. XLCubed offers a tailored deployment experience beneficial for businesses needing in-depth analysis and customization, with personalized customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Power BI generally has a lower initial setup cost with flexible pricing plans catering to different business scales, contributing to a higher perceived ROI due to its broad capabilities. XLCubed, although more expensive upfront, provides high ROI for organizations focused on complex data analytics solutions.

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

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI vs. XLCubed

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)

XLCubed

Ranking in Reporting

32nd

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

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 XLCubed is 0.4%, up from 0.3% 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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it_user1391316

Head of Finance Systems at NHS

Cost effective with great capability, performance, flexibility and visuals

In general, we're happy with the solution but we're always looking to see what else is out there. The thing we've struggled with is our partnership with Tagetik UK, the consultants, and the issue we had gaining access to consultants to develop the solution on our behalf. Thankfully we connected directly with XLCubed and now have a pretty close and good relationship with them so the earlier problem we had of actually getting resources to help us develop has now been solved. One of the things that we've been asking for and would like as an additional feature is a sort of benchmarking functionality. The ability to be able to benchmark, directly against the company digital corporate numbers. That said, there seems to be improved functionality within the latest release that could help us develop that further.

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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 ROI is high for small teams or basic use cases with limited datasets."

"Previously we used Excel, which took a long time - two or three weeks - to bring the data into a uniform format, whereas BI can do the same job in a day."

"It provides good visibility."

"The visuals are great and make everything look very professional. We can change the look and feel or manipulate the data according to our requirements. It's extremely flexible."

"Our setup is very straight forward and can be done in a matter of hours."

"The use of graphics to show and view the data indicators is the most valuable feature. It is also very stable."

"The feature I find most valuable is the ability to publish Power Bi reports, using an embedded link, directly onto a website."

"There is a feature in Microsoft BI that allows JSON data to SQL on the dashboards effectively and quickly."

More Microsoft Power BI pros

"Great capability, performance, flexibility, visuals, and the solution is also very cost effective."

"I am looking forward to testing their full graphics that are available, as they looked very interesting in the demo."

Cons

"The challenge of this product is in truncating the table data."

"When it comes to improvement, I would say there could be more tutorials for students in universities who are just learning it. And it wouldn't have to be just for students in universities. It might also be for the people who use it in the real world."

"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."

"Microsoft BI could improve by having better collaboration between developers working on the same dashboard. The developer platform is all done on a single laptop and it's difficult to have the same project files work. Two developers have to go back and forth. You have to have the project file on one developer's laptop making it difficult to co-develop."

"The solution could improve the mobile application design. It is difficult to use compared to the desktop version."

"The cost of the solution can get high."

"Our expectation is putting BI to work in real-time data collection systems in the maritime environment."

"Microsoft needs to provide more drivers to connect other data sources in a native way."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

"There should be a better or an easier way to establish that connection to external sources."

"Would like the ability to be able to benchmark."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

"No comment."

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

"The price of Microsoft BI is reasonable. Other solutions such as SAP Cloud are more expensive."

"I have never worked on licensing, but I have heard that it is reasonable."

"Microsoft BI is considered to be competitively priced when compared to other similar solutions in the market."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

"14,000 Pounds per year for licensing."

"I am still using the two-week trial, but at first sight, the price is reasonable."

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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…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

30%

Financial Services Firm

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 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

No data available

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

May 2025

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Buyer's Guide

Reporting

June 2025

Download XLCubed 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

Produce insightful, interactive reports on, company-wide metrics for any business audience. Now all in Excel.
Pixel-perfect financial reporting with the skill sets you already have. No IT required.
Meet XLCubed: The data-connected Excel add-in for all your reporting needs.

Fluence Technologies

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

Marshalls Ltd, BP Exploration and Production, Thorntons, Ted Baker, Bristol-Myers, Rank Group, ING Bank Genve, Cargill Value Investment, Chloride Power, Auchan, Erste, UEFA, Novartis, Porsche Informatik, Raiffeisen Bank International

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI vs. XLCubed

June 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Power BI vs. XLCubed

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

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