Name: Microsoft Power BI
Rating: 4.4 (4097 reviews)

Overview

Product Information on Microsoft Power BI

Updated 13th October 2025

What is Microsoft Power BI?

Microsoft Power BI is a software designed for business analytics and data visualization. It enables users to aggregate, analyze, and share data through interactive dashboards and reports. The software supports integration with various data sources including databases, cloud services, and spreadsheets, allowing for real-time insights and data-driven decision making. Power BI provides features such as customizable visualizations, data modeling, and automated data refresh. It addresses business challenges related to data accessibility and analysis by offering tools to simplify complex data sets and present information in an understandable format. The software is suitable for organizations seeking to centralize business intelligence tasks within their workflow.

Overall experience with Microsoft Power BI

BUSINESS ANALYST

<50M USD, IT Services

FAVORABLE

“Real-Time Dashboards And App Features Enhance Power BI Despite Performance Issues”

4.0

Jan 13, 2026

Overall Experience is overwhelming with Power BI due to its open source platform where you have leverage to use sheet and make dashboard over the sheet and not limited to just sheet they have lot of data source available from where you can pull your data to make dashboard real time which is awesome.

DATA ANALYTICS MANAGER

50M - 250M USD, Retail

CRITICAL

“Similar Features Ease Learning but Sudden Changes and Licensing Remain Challenging”

3.0

Dec 18, 2025

It's right now not the best but the easiest to understand, the similarities with some other products in the suite help a lot to this product.

About Company

Company Description

Microsoft enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Microsoft is dedicated to advancing human and organizational achievement. Microsoft Security helps protect people and data against cyberthreats to give peace of mind.

Company Details

Company type

Public

Year Founded

1975

Head office location

Redmond, Washington, United States

Number of employees

10000+

Annual Revenue

30B+ USD

Website

https://microsoft.com

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A Snapshot of What Matters - Based on Validated User Reviews

User Sentiment About Microsoft Power BI

Reviewer Insights for: Microsoft Power BI

Deciding Factors: Microsoft Power BI Vs. Market Average

Performance of Microsoft Power BI Across Market Features

Microsoft Power BI Likes & Dislikes

Couple of things which I liked the most: 1) You have multiple options of data sources where you can connect your data to build dashboards 2) Second thing which I like most is that you can work on the dashboard with the desktop feature and when you are ready with the dashboard you can publish it on the web where everyone can see it. 3) Third thing is the App feature introduced by power bi where you can collate multiple dashboards in one place and you can even access the dashboard through with the mobile devices which is very useful.

* Capability of some other products that you will find here making your time to market improve. * If you want to start you do not have to pay, it's reachable for everyone just searching on store. * A lot of documentation and community with years of experiences.

One of its biggest strengths is how well it integrates with other Microsoft tools, which makes it easy to embed into existing workflows and data environments. It's also very accessible for new users, with a relatively low learning curve for building basic dashboards and reports. The pace of development is another positive, with regular updates and new features being introduced. From a cost perspective, it's also easier to scale across a wider organisation compared to many other enterprise BI tools.

These are the places where I realised they have to improve: 1) underlying data you can't access within the dashboard - I think this should be required because if you see that a metric has dipped then you can just click on that metric and see the underlying data to see who is contributing to the dip so you do not have to download raw data and apply multiple filters to see who is contributing to the dip in that metric. 2) Some pre-formatted graphics need to exist in power bi so that let's say if I have created a dashboard with multiple widgets and visualizations and apply that format it will make our whole dashboard in a better way. 3) When the dashboard file is exceeding more than 400 mb it will be very slow in responding if we are doing any changes which is very painful for us to work.

* Using it is like having some excel with visualization and relational model, it's not something that helps you to talk easily with data just easy to use and connect. * It's pretty difficult to understand licenses if you are looking for it. * Some features and changes will just happen with no alert or communication.

The platform can feel less polished in certain areas, particularly when working with more complex data models or advanced use cases. There are times where flexibiltiy feels a bit constrained compared to more mature tools, especially when building highly customised visualisations or calculations. Performance can also vary depending on how well models are structured, and managing content and governance at scale can require careful setup. The user experience is good overall, but not always as consistent across different parts of the platform.

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Peer Discussions

Microsoft Power BI Reviews and Ratings

Recommended Gartner Insights

CIO

Leading indicators are super useful because they give you a heads-up about potential problems instead of just telling you what’s already gone wrong. We are using an AI powered tool ( can't be named here, I guess) that gets you insights that help you notice issues before they escalate. Plus, it really encourages everyone to be transparent about project status so the whole team knows what’s going on from the get-go. This openness motivates everyone to take responsibility and helps build strong teams that tackle problems early on and stay focused on their goals together. Traditional reporting often comes too late to make necessary changes. By being proactive and embracing transparency with some AI support, teams can adapt and improve on their own. The key is to catch issues early and empower teams to make adjustments as needed. AI plays a role in all team decisions, like a performance coach, and also helps out at the management level. It identifies risks and suggests improvements for senior executives. I hope that helps? 🙂

Data Manager

SAP Analysis for Office is not something I would recommend after using it for five years. It is clunky. The Azure storage/ Azure Data Factory/Power BI is perhaps the way to go. You can easily convert your SAP BO SQL to direct query method in PBI.

<50M USD

IT Services

Review Source

Real-Time Dashboards And App Features Enhance Power BI Despite Performance Issues

Senior Digital Analytics Manager

1B-10B USD

Retail

PowerBI Balances Integration and Accessibility With Some Gaps in Maturity and Flexibility

Apr 7, 2026

Overall our experience with PowerBI has been positive, particularly in terms of accessibility and value. It's a platform that has evolved quickly and continues to improve, with a steady flow of new features and enhancements. While it doesn't always feel as mature or polished as some longer-established tools, it makes up for that with strong integration across the wider Microsoft ecosystem and a relatively low barrier to entry. For many use cases, it offers a good balance between capability, cost and ease of adoption.

Director of Supply Chain

10B+ USD

Manufacturing

A powerful, intuitive analytics platform that elevates Demand planning visibility and decision-making

5.0

Jan 24, 2026

My overall experience with Power BI has been very positive. It provides a powerful, user-friendly platform for building interactive dashboards and turning large, complex datasets into clear, actionable insights. The interface is intuitive, and features like drilldowns, dynamic filters, and natural language queries make it easy to explore data quickly. Integration with Excel, SharePoint, and other MS tools also streamlines reporting and collaboration across teams. While there is a learning curve for advanced modeling, the flexibility and visualization capabilities have significantly enhanced our ability to analyze performance, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions.

Engineer

50M-1B USD

Construction

Premium Licensing Costs And Vendor Lock-In Among Key Considerations For Power BI Users

Apr 1, 2026

Power BI works very well within in the Microsoft environment, so for us it was a logical and easy choice because we are already using Azure and Microsoft 365 and many more Microsoft services. The deployment was not so complicated and the free viewer license is a big advantage because not every user needs a paid licence. This brings monetary benefits.

Ingeniero De Proyectos

Telecommunication

Collaboration and Visual Options Stand Out Among PowerBI’s Data Integration Features

Apr 16, 2026

PowerBI is a powerful tool for data analytics, you need to have basic knowledge about data bases and data modeling so you can get the best results out of it. It offers a variety of graphics and functionalities that can help your business to take better desicions. You can use data from multiple sourcers and transform according to your needs. It provides a desktop version and cloud platform and you can share your projects with others collaborators to work together.