Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Altair RapidMiner vs Microsoft Power BI comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Altair RapidMiner
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Predictive Analytics (3rd), Data Science Platforms (7th)
Microsoft Power BI
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
319
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (1st), Reporting (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Business Intelligence solutions, they serve different purposes. Altair RapidMiner is designed for Predictive Analytics and holds a mindshare of 15.9%, down 19.8% compared to last year.
Microsoft Power BI, on the other hand, focuses on BI (Business Intelligence) Tools, holds 21.6% mindshare, down 22.4% since last year.
Predictive Analytics
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Laurence Moseley - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good tutorials that make it easy to learn and use, with a powerful feature to compare machine learning algorithms
When I started using RapidMiner, I found it difficult to get it to read the metadata. I wanted to use, for example, a pivot table, and it did not have the variable or the attribute names in it. There were no values. It took a long while to figure out how to do that, although it tends to do it automatically nowadays. RapidMiner is not utterly intuitive for beginners. Sometimes people have trouble distinguishing between a file in their own file system and a repository entry, and they cannot find their data. This is an area where this solution could be improved. It would be helpful to have some tutorials on communicating with Python. I found it a bit difficult at times to figure out which particular variable, or attribute, is going where in Python. It is probably a simple thing to do but I haven't mastered it yet. I'd like them to do a video on that. There are a large number of videos that are usually well-produced, but I don't think that they have one on that. Essentially, I would like to see how to communicate from RapidMiner to Python and from Python to RapidMiner. One of the things I do a lot of is looking at questionnaires where people have used Likert-type scales. I don't recommend Likert-type scales, but if they're properly produced, which is a lot of hard work and it's not usually done, they're really powerful and you can do things like normalizing holes on the Likert scale. That's not the same as normalizing your data in RapidMiner. So, I would want to get results with these Likert scales, pass it through RapidMiner, do a normalization and pass back both the raw scores and the normalized scores and put in some rules, which will say if it's high on the raw score and on the normalized score and low on the standard deviation, then you can trust it.
James Balbach - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The GUI capabilities of the solution are excellent. Their Auto ML model provides for even non-coder data scientists to deploy a model."
"I've been using a lot of components from the Strategic Extension and Python Extension."
"The solution is very intuitive and powerful."
"The documentation for this solution is very good, where each operator is explained with how to use it."
"One of the most valuable features is the built-in data tuning feature. Once the model is built, we often struggle to increase its accuracy, but RapidMiner allows us to fine-tune variables. For Example, when working on a project, we can adjust the number of nodes or the depth of trees to see how accuracy changes. This flexibility lets us achieve higher accuracy compared to traditional automated machine-learning models"
"Scalability is not really a concern with RapidMiner. It scales very well and can be used in global implementations."
"The most valuable feature is what the product sets out to do, which is extracting information and data."
"The best part of RapidMiner is efficiency."
"Good CS and administration."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is real-time report tracking."
"We have found the product to be scalable."
"It works well with SSAS, which we use to generate all different kinds of trending and analytics reports. Sometimes we use Power Query and DAX to build some aggregations on the Power BI side as well."
"Many of my customers already use Microsoft products like Office 365, so I often propose Microsoft Power BI because it integrates well with all the standard Microsoft business tools. And it's the quickest tool to implement and start using daily."
"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."
"Its ease of use is most valuable."
"The initial setup is easy."
 

Cons

"RapidMiner would be improved with the inclusion of more machine learning algorithms for generating time-series forecasting models."
"The biggest problem, not from a platform process, but from an avoidance process, is when you work in a heavily regulated environment, like banking and finance. Whenever you make a decision or there is an output, you need to bill it as an avoidance to the investigator or to the bank audit team. If you made decisions within this machine learning model, you need to explain why you did so. It would better if you could explain your decision in terms of delivery. However, this is an issue with all ML platforms. Many companies are working heavily in this area to help figure out how to make it more explainable to the business team or the regulator."
"In the Mexican or Latin American market, it's kind of pricey."
"In terms of the UI and SaaS, the user interface with KNIME is more appealing than RapidMiner."
"I would like to see all users have access to all of the deep learning models, and that they can be used easily."
"About twenty-five percent of my problems involve image processing, and I found RapidMiner lacking in this domain. While we work on OCR and similar tasks, RapidMiner hasn't been as engaged in that field as other models. Some other models also support email processing, but RapidMiner doesn't offer this feature."
"The server product has been getting updated and continues to be better each release. When I started using RapidMiner, it was solid but not easy to set up and upgrade."
"Many things in the interface look nice, but they aren't of much use to the operator. It already has lots of variables in there."
"Its desktop tool is a little bit memory CPU intensive, and it can be improved, but the machines nowadays come with a lot of memory. For the desktop users who are using it on the desktop, we recommend that they do an upgrade. It is a minor issue. We can fix it on the desktop."
"There could be an integrated AI that can automatically analyze some of your data and highlight or provide suggestions. For example, when you are looking at a data set, it can suggest putting it into a certain type of chart so that you gain different insights or a trend line. You would almost have templates that it would recommend for you."
"The product’s on-premise reporting servers could support real-time data refreshing capabilities like its on-cloud version."
"We found out that you can't share a report with others unless you have an additional package. That caught us off guard. It came as a program that somebody could go in, build a report, and show it, but you can't share it without having additional licenses."
"If you need data in real-time, it's not an ideal solution."
"From a scalability and performance perspective and based on my understanding and feedback from end users, there's room for improvement in data processing, scaling up, and leveraging the cloud. That could be an enhancement area for me to look into."
"Things can slow down if you create too many pages."
"I think that they can add more types of charts because the selection on the desktop version is limited."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I'm not fully aware of RapidMiner's price because we had licenses provided, but from my analysis, it's moderately priced, not too high or too low. It's worth the investment."
"For the university, the cost of the solution is free for the students and teachers."
"Although we don't pay licensing fees because it is being used within the university, my understanding is that the cost is between $5,000 and $10,000 USD per year."
"I used an educational license for this solution, which is available free of charge."
"The client only has to pay the licensing costs. There are not any maintenance or hidden costs in addition to the license."
"This product offers good value for the money."
"There is a license for this solution and we purchase them annually."
"My company needs to make monthly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the product."
"Paid for itself in the first month."
"Our license is paid yearly and we have found that we have to be careful not to over-extend our usage in order to avoid upgrading our capacity plan."
"The solution’s pricing is reasonable."
"Globally, we evaluated a number of products, including Salesforce's product, Microsoft won on the ground of simple functionally and cost."
"We have enterprise licenses and some of the other tools or features come as a package and others you have to purchase separately."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Predictive Analytics solutions are best for your needs.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
University
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Educational Organization
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Educational Organization
43%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about RapidMiner?
RapidMiner is a no-code machine learning tool. I can install it on my local machine and work with smaller datasets. It can also connect to databases, allowing me to build models directly on the dat...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for RapidMiner?
I'm not fully aware of RapidMiner's price because we had licenses provided, but from my analysis, it's moderately priced, not too high or too low. It's worth the investment.
What needs improvement with RapidMiner?
Altair RapidMiner needs updates to its examples, particularly in business and marketing areas, and to the tool itself. The user interface should be improved. Incorporating generative AI as an AI as...
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...
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...
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 ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

PayPal, Deloitte, eBay, Cisco, Miele, Volkswagen
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Alteryx, SAP, Altair and others in Predictive Analytics. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.