Adaptive Insights vs Microsoft Power BI comparison

Workday and Microsoft are both solutions in the Reporting category. Workday is ranked #26, while Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.1. Workday holds a 1.5% mindshare in RT, compared to Microsoft’s 17.4% 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

2,736 Views
602 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Power BI

Read 329 Microsoft Power BI reviews

24,257 Views
10,188 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: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Adaptive Insights vs. Microsoft Power BI

March 2026

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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

26th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Business Performance Management (10th), Financial Performance and Strategy Management (4th), Data Visualization (20th), ESG Reporting Software (15th)

Microsoft Power BI

Ranking in Reporting

1st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

329

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Adaptive Insights is 1.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 17.4%, down from 27.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Reporting Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Microsoft Power BI	17.4%
Adaptive Insights	1.5%
Other	81.1%

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.

Read full review

Antonio Flor

Lead Anaplanner at Chaucer Group

Data integration has improved reserving and expense control while collaboration drives fast dashboards

Regarding drawbacks or weak points in Microsoft Power BI, it may not be directly related to the tool itself, but with our architecture, as we couldn't get a service account, which is an email address that has no relationship with the employees, just to establish the connection with Anaplan. We couldn't get it to work on SSO, so we use an employee account which could be a point of weakness, meaning if the person leaves, that connection will break. If the person goes on holiday and we need to refresh, we have to change the connection as well, but we have to live with that since we're not using SSO on the service account. Regarding the natural language processing feature, we're trying to avoid using it too much because it can slow down the connection, so as much as possible, we try to build the logic and any transformation in Anaplan, and then deliver an end product to Microsoft Power BI.

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

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

"The reporting tools are what I gain the most benefit from."

"Adaptive saves us huge hours in budgeting, for each roll-up it saves us two hours at least, and we usually have more than 20 roll-ups."

"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."

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

"It has helped us to automate a lot of our processes."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is its dashboard."

"Customer Service: Excellent, always available and hardly needed."

More Adaptive Insights pros

"In my opinion, Microsoft BI is a low-cost solution, and it could be an interesting solution for a tourism company."

"Management reporting solution that's very stable and scalable."

"The sharing features are vital, especially the ability to share and test different shared dashboards."

"The initial setup is straightforward."

"We were able to reduce costs by consolidating the 3 Crystal Report Servers down to just one server running SSRS (with one backup just in case)."

"We have found the solution to be stable."

"We are able to collaborate on things and get insightful data visualizations."

"Because this solution is very easy, and very visual, you can have results in minutes."

More Microsoft Power BI pros

Cons

"Better user interface (UI)."

"It's a Workday product; they could do a little bit better to integrate a pure-play integration with Workday, which really doesn't do that."

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

"Their customer support team is slow to respond and not extremely confident."

"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."

"Their customer support team is slow to respond and not extremely confident."

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

"The planning functionalities are the weakest part of Adaptive Insights."

More Adaptive Insights cons

"There are some problems with the functionality of this solution. The dashboard is not very user friendly and is quite complicated."

"Spatial data support should be enhanced."

"The solution should increase the API functionality so that we can use Microsoft Power BI for other purposes and aggregate 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."

"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."

"Most clients have MacBooks. Therefore, they use Tableau as Power BI Desktop is not available for the MacBook right now."

"The product could have better analytics capabilities."

"Regarding real-time analytics features in Microsoft Power BI, I don't find them particularly useful. I use process mapping, but from my point of view, there are not enough analytical tools."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's affordable."

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

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

"Adaptive Insights' pricing is reasonable."

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

"Downloading Power BI Desktop is free."

"No comment."

"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."

"They have a free Power BI Desktop version, but it has limitations."

"The solution’s pricing is reasonable."

"No comment on pricing."

"Pricing, that's where Microsoft beats Tableau. It is priced much cheaper."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user79932

Senior Manager - BI Head with 5,001-10,000 employees

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

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Real Estate/Law Firm

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	10

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	135
Midsize Enterprise	58
Large Enterprise	166

Questions from the Community

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Earn 20 points

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...

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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

Infor dEPM vs Adaptive Insights

Compared 9% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs Adaptive Insights

Compared 6% of the time

Planful vs Adaptive Insights

Compared 6% of the time

Qlik Sense vs Adaptive Insights

Compared 5% of the time

Oracle Hyperion vs Adaptive Insights

Compared 4% of the time

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Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 17% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 14% of the time

Domo vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 7% of the time

Databricks vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 2% of the time

SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Platform vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 2% of the time

More Microsoft Power BI Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Adaptive Insights

March 2026

Download Adaptive Insights product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

March 2026

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

March 2026

Free Report: Adaptive Insights vs. Microsoft Power BI

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