Adaptive Insights vs Microsoft Power BI comparison

Workday and Microsoft are both solutions in the Reporting category. Workday is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.2, while Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 7.8. Workday holds a 0.4% mindshare in RT, compared to Microsoft’s 26.7% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Workday users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Adaptive Insights

Read 18 Adaptive Insights reviews

335 Views
220 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Power BI

Read 321 Microsoft Power BI reviews

13,257 Views
10,578 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Adaptive Insights

Microsoft Power BI

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Adaptive Insights and Microsoft Power BI are key competitors in the financial planning and analytics category. Microsoft Power BI holds a competitive advantage due to its extensive data analytics features and integration capabilities within the Microsoft ecosystem, notwithstanding pricing differences.

Features: Adaptive Insights integrates seamlessly with multiple financial systems, focusing on budgeting, forecasting, and financial reporting. It supports instant consolidation, corporate structure updates, and integrates with MS Office for seamless reporting. Microsoft Power BI excels in data visualization and analytics, adeptly integrates with various data sources, and is user-friendly with features like Power Query and interactive dashboards.

Room for Improvement: Adaptive Insights could enhance its user interface for better navigation and expand its analytical functions beyond financial scenarios. It may also improve its integration with non-financial systems. Microsoft Power BI can further refine its user training resources, increase data handling efficiency especially with larger datasets, and enhance mobile capabilities for on-the-go reporting.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Power BI is easy to deploy, especially for organizations already utilizing Microsoft products, complemented by robust online support resources. Adaptive Insights, while offering a more bespoke deployment for financial advisory purposes, provides accessible support but lacks the quick integration benefits seen with Microsoft solutions.

Pricing and ROI: Adaptive Insights generally requires a higher initial investment but offers a notable ROI thanks to its advanced financial management features. Microsoft Power BI, with its flexible pricing models starting as low as free for basic use and scaling to $20 per user for premium services, is an economical choice for businesses prioritizing dynamic data visualization without high upfront costs.

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

Buyer's Guide

Adaptive Insights vs. Microsoft Power BI

April 2025

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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

Adaptive Insights

Ranking in Reporting

12th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Business Performance Management (8th), Financial Performance and Strategy Management (3rd), Data Visualization (12th), ESG Reporting Software (5th)

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)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Adaptive Insights is 0.4%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 26.7%, up from 25.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Reporting

Featured Reviews

Andrew Rosenberg

Adaptive Planning Manager at Alight

Adaptive scales well, simple to create new budget versions and models

For the organization I used to work at, it streamlined the process of creating budgets. It's very simple to create a new version and do some more modeling based on your need for planning things like headcount, other expenses, and revenue, everything is configurable within Workday. So that made it easy. Reporting was pretty easy to set up as well. It streamlined the amount of time it took to do the budget as well as kind of making it simple to implement a rolling forecast process. So, it really was more just a productivity increase and time shortening for the budgeting and forecasting process.

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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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's very stable."

"Forecasting changes that instantly flow through all financial statements."

"Automated reporting."

"Changes to corporate structure, account codes are updated in all versions including prior years, hence "one-version of truth" as claimed."

"It's very simple to create a new version and do some more modeling based on your need for planning things like headcount, other expenses, and revenue, everything is configurable within Workday."

"It helps develop a more unified work format throughout the company."

"We utilize planning on a daily basis, therefore we find it to be the most valuable product for our organization."

"The biggest feature is the source of truth for all of our budget and forecast versions."

More Adaptive Insights pros

"I like that I can use Power BI to upload data. That is very important for me. The visualization is also convenient and easy to use."

"Two valuable most features are the ability to create columns and create measures."

"We can see that it's really improved the way end users can do their own graphs and pick their own fields of information and present that in a nice way."

"It's a powerful platform."

"We found the initial setup to be straightforward."

"This product has a lot of features and most of them are user-friendly."

"The initial setup is relatively simple."

"Its visualizations and dashboards are most valuable. Power BI is great in terms of visualizations and dashboards. The reports that we previously had were not very nice in terms of visualization. It also provides the ability to play with the data."

More Microsoft Power BI pros

Cons

"Adaptive Insights has a limit of 1,00,000 rows for HTML reports. It should be improved because we will have multiple dimensions that need to be populated to enhance the image."

"Being able to drill down when using OfficeConnect needs work."

"The product's configuration process could be faster."

"The upload feature exists, but isn't terribly useful."

"Adaptive Insights could improve the data designer interface to make integrations easier to set up."

"The integrations could be simpler. It takes quite a bit of internal and IT know-how to set up."

"Users continue to become more advanced and are looking for more advanced solutions."

"Discovery (the data visualization module): Needs to catch up with BI leaders, such as MS and Tableau. E.g., sorting by amounts in column charts and page slicers to control all visuals."

More Adaptive Insights cons

"The admin view could be improved by making it more simplified to manage a users' activity and other things."

"Microsoft has got a very large repository of all change suggestions which have been raised by the BI community. They keep on adding features that are very widely sought after by the community. We don't focus on product features. We focus on business requirements. To use the solution, we find that existing features are good enough and offer us a very effective solution."

"I think that they can add more types of charts because the selection on the desktop version is limited."

"Technical support could be a bit better."

"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."

"There needs to be improved guidance and documentation for the initial setup of Power BI as it currently remains complex."

"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."

"The setup took a lot of tinkering with InfoSec to allow us to do stuff."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Everything is negotiable, but this solution is low cost compared to others."

"Ensure that you have the proper pricing plan in place."

"Licensing seems to be worth the cost considering the efficiency Adaptive brings."

"Prior to purchasing licenses, make sure you understand which users will only need planning and which users will need both planning and OfficeConnect."

"Pricing is in line with other cloud-based EPM tools. It is a subscription-based model based upon the number of users and site type if it's an admin or end-user type thing."

"It's affordable."

"Adaptive Insights' pricing is reasonable."

"Adaptive Insights' pricing is relative to its peer competitors. It's certainly competitive compared to a spreadsheet template that you build in Excel. It can be expensive if you need to have 100-500 budget holders giving input and building financial plans. However, in that case, it becomes an extremely good bargain. Compared to its competitors, it offers an excellent value."

"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."

"Power BI comes with enterprise Microsoft licensing. So for the user, you don't have to pay, but you do have to pay a one-time cost."

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

"Microsoft BI requires licenses."

"Microsoft Power BI has reasonable pricing."

"Downloading Power BI Desktop is free."

"The cost of licensing depends on the number of people that are going to be using the reports, and we are satisfied with it at $10 per user."

"The cost of this product is very low, at approximately $8 or $9 per month for a developer."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

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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

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Real Estate/Law Firm

Healthcare Company

Educational Organization

37%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Adaptive Insights?

It's very simple to create a new version and do some more modeling based on your need for planning things like headcount, other expenses, and revenue, everything is configurable within Workday.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Adaptive Insights?

12 years ago, it was very affordable. Workday has definitely increased its price since it acquired Adaptive a few years ago. So, it's affordable. But there are other more affordable solutions that ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Adaptive Insights?

The integrations could be simpler. It takes quite a bit of internal and IT know-how to set up. So, there could be room for just improving the integrations, making it easier to integrate outside sys...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Tableau vs Adaptive Insights

Compared 9% of the time

Jedox vs Adaptive Insights

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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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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Adaptive Insights

May 2025

Download Adaptive Insights product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

May 2025

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Also Known As

Workday Adaptive Planning, Adaptive Discovery , Workday Adaptive Planning

SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI

Overview

Adaptive Insights is a cloud-based financial planning and analysis software that helps businesses streamline their budgeting, forecasting, and reporting processes.

With its intuitive interface and powerful analytics, it enables organizations to make data-driven decisions and drive business performance.

Workday

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

Sample Customers

1. Cisco Systems 2. Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated 3. Deloitte 4. DocuSign 5. Dropbox 6. Electronic Arts 7. Fender Musical Instruments Corporation 8. Fitbit 9. Fossil Group 10. Groupon 11. Hilton Worldwide 12. HP Inc. 13. Intuit 14. Johnson & Johnson 15. LinkedIn 16. Lyft 17. McAfee 18. Medtronic 19. Netflix 20. Oracle 21. Pandora 22. PayPal 23. Pinterest 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. ServiceNow 27. Slack Technologies 28. Spotify 29. Symantec 30. Tableau Software 31. Twitter 32. Workday

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

Buyer's Guide

Adaptive Insights vs. Microsoft Power BI

April 2025

Free Report: Adaptive Insights vs. Microsoft Power BI

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