Microsoft Power BI vs Yellowfin comparison

Microsoft and Yellowfin are both solutions in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category. Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 7.9, while Yellowfin is ranked #42. Microsoft holds a 21.4% mindshare in BIT, compared to Yellowfin’s 0.2% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Yellowfin users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Power BI

Read 321 Microsoft Power BI reviews

22,103 Views
17,369 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Yellowfin

Read 2 Yellowfin reviews

214 Views
160 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Power BI

Yellowfin

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Microsoft Power BI and Yellowfin are competing products in the business intelligence space. Power BI generally holds an edge in customer satisfaction for its intuitive interface, while Yellowfin's comprehensive features make it a strong contender.

Features: Power BI thrives in integration with Microsoft products, making it ideal for organizations within the Microsoft ecosystem. It offers real-time analytics and impressive data visualization options. Yellowfin stands out with its storytelling feature, advanced collaboration tools, and strong mobile support, focusing on interconnected insights and user collaboration.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Power BI's deployment benefits from seamless integration with Microsoft’s suite, simplifying the process for existing customers and offering extensive support and documentation. Yellowfin provides flexible deployment options, whether cloud-based or on-premises, with personalized support services, increasing adaptability to various business environments.

Pricing and ROI: Power BI offers a competitive pricing model, particularly for businesses already invested in the Microsoft suite, delivering substantial ROI through its scalability. Yellowfin may have higher initial costs but promises significant ROI with its extensive features and value-driven approach for larger deployments requiring advanced analytics.

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

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI vs. Yellowfin

April 2025

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Helped 849,686 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

Ranking in Reporting

1st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

321

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Yellowfin

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

42nd

Ranking in Reporting

30th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Visualization (26th), Embedded BI (13th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 21.4%, down from 22.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Yellowfin is 0.2%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

James Balbach

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.

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it_user86469

Director with 51-200 employees

Very scalable design and easy to implement. It can reside alongside more complex enterprise systems.

I have been involved with the implementation of many BI products; many products are expensive, require complex and difficult implementations, and once installed it is only the start of a lengthy consulting engagement to get the installation to where the customer wants it to be. Yellowfin is the antithesis of this; it installs easily, the configuration is done quickly, and the user can come up to speed quickly (especially if they have used other BI products). As an implementer, this changes how we operate, because we can focus on providing the customer what they want, not just on technical wizardry to get the product operational.

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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

"In a world surrounded by data, tools that allow navigation of large data volumes ensure decisions are data-driven."

"Its visualization capabilities are pretty good. It is very easy to use. You can easily make your dashboard."

"The best feature of this solution is the way you can plan, communicate, and visualize all the knowledge you extract from the data for the customers. I like the way you can show or visualize the information a client needs to answer a business question."

"Microsoft BI's initial setup is very straightforward."

"The solution is stable."

"They find Power BI's data pull mechanism to be sufficient and cost-effective, especially considering the stability it provides. In comparison with other solutions, Power BI stands out as a fantastic choice. Therefore, I would definitely recommend sticking with the Pro license."

"It allows individuals to do the analysis themselves."

"What I like about Power BI is how fast you are able to create dashboards and how fast you are able to fetch the data. You can connect to the database or data source, and then you can design your dashboards very easily."

More Microsoft Power BI pros

"It is able to create information dashboards for various users' throughout."

"It reduces time to reproduce reports, provides easy access to organisational data, and has the ability to generate a wide range of reports and analysis."

"It is a central source of up-to-date data and information."

Cons

"We would like improvements made to the paginated reports so that it produces quality similarly to SSRS."

"People without private emails cannot publish and, frankly, this doesn't allow for easy training."

"A few features available in Tableau are not available in Power BI. For example. Tableau has the ability to make up the physical layer and all other stuff at runtime. In Power BI, we have to develop a proper physical layer to connect it. The limitation that we normally face is related to the direct query mode. When it comes to the direct query mode, most of the functionality is not working, which is an issue for us. We have to use the direct query mode frequently because the client needs real-time data. They should work on this limitation. There are a lot of other technical things that need to be improved. I am also following the Power BI platform and Microsoft Support Center platform on the web where users have put their requirements. Microsoft is also working on improving this solution. In every update, they add new features to this solution."

"I would like to see a change in the premium capacity."

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

"We have used other solutions and the reporting functionality should be user-friendly and have a drag and drop feature should be available, but Microsoft BI doesn't have these features. When you are creating reports and you can't change as a user. Every time you need one developer or one technical person to make the changes."

"There are certain features that are only available in the cloud version. It would be beneficial if they could be brought down to the on-premise version without the necessity of using the enterprise SQL database, as that can be very costly. We need more cost-effective features that are available in the cloud to be accessible on-premise."

"From an improvement perspective, I think if the Power BI developers of that platform would really focus on being more detailed and specific on the error messages, it would help a lot of developers troubleshoot and maintain the report ECT or the dashboard ECT."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

"It needs more presentation/charting capabilities and integration with GIS."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its licensing cost is very high. It is $20 per user, which is very high, but it is a good product, so you pay for it."

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

"The license is on a yearly basis."

"We pay for users who are publishing on the cloud. The desktop version is free. Its licensing is on a yearly basis."

"If you purchase a license for a server, for users, or the professional version, you might not have to. The free version I think it can satisfy many customers' needs."

"There is a license for this solution and we purchase them annually."

"While Power BI is generally a paid product, particularly for enterprise features and scalability, you can start with the free version and still achieve significant functionality."

"The solution’s pricing is reasonable."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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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

40%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

Computer Software Company

23%

Educational Organization

13%

Government

11%

Healthcare Company

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 14% of the time

Domo vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 8% of the time

Databricks 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

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Apache Superset vs Yellowfin

Compared 55% of the time

Tableau vs Yellowfin

Compared 45% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

April 2025

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Buyer's Guide

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

March 2025

Download Yellowfin 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

Yellowfin offers a business intelligence (BI) platform that allows users to interact with big data in a variety of ways. Yellowfin works to provide big data access to companies of all sizes, from small business to billion-dollar enterprises. It is designed for providing data quickly and allowing users to filter for specific results, maximizing gain from big data. Yellowfin has a variety of dashboards so the user can filter, drill to detail, and have data analysis in the same browser. The data can also be easily shared with others via email, wiki embed, and reports. There is a mobile app as well, which works automatically with the desktop dashboards to allow users to access their data on the go, and alerts can be set up to notify a user via email or push to a mobile device if the data is indicating a critical event taking place. Yellowfin also can map data to locations, providing not only the what of data, but also the where. Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust provides its community in England with mental health and community care services. Using Yellowfin's mobile business intelligence capabilities to deliver reporting and analytics to approximately 6000 clinicians, Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust was able to greatly improve the quality of its patient care. Yellowfin allowed the Trust to access and share independent data from mobile devices as well as create a Balanced Scoreboard to quickly gather and report information on the company's performance to its executives, management, and directors.

Yellowfin

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

NCS, Universitat Konstanz, AT&T, PG&E, SingTel, InternetStores

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI vs. Yellowfin

April 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Power BI vs. Yellowfin

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