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

Dremio 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

Dremio
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Data Warehouse (9th), Data Science Platforms (9th)
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. Dremio is designed for Data Science Platforms and holds a mindshare of 4.3%, up 2.8% 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.
Data Science Platforms
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

KamleshPant - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution offers quick data connection with an edge in computation
It's almost similar, yet it's better than Starburst in spinning up or connecting to the new source since it's on SaaS. It is a similar experience between the based application and cloud-based application. You just get the source, connect the data, get visualization, get connected, and do whatever you want. They say data reflection is one way where they do the caching and all that. Starburst also does the caching. In Starburst, you have a data product. Here, the data product comes from a reflection perspective. The y are working on a columnar memory map, columnar computation. That will have some edge in computation.
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

"Dremio is very easy to use for building queries."
"Dremio allows querying the files I have on my block storage or object storage."
"We primarily use Dremio to create a data framework and a data queue."
"Dremio gives you the ability to create services which do not require additional resources and sterilization."
"Everyone uses Dremio in my company; some use it only for the analytics function."
"Overall, you can rate it as eight out of ten."
"The most valuable feature of Dremio is it can sit on top of any other data storage, such as Amazon S3, Azure Data Factory, SGFS, or Hive. The memory competition is good. If you are running any kind of materialized view, you'd be running in memory."
"It's almost similar, yet it's better than Starburst in spinning up or connecting to the new source since it's on SaaS."
"The most useful features are the ability to connect different databases to Microsoft BI and explore them. Once the database information has been extracted, you have the ability to construct indicators and dashboards from the information."
"Power BI's integration with other tools is very good."
"The solution overall is very useful. The reports that are generated and the reporting functionality management are beneficial."
"The various different ETL tools within it and the ability to have different data refreshes and scheduled refreshes [real-time data refresh capabilities] have most significantly improved the data analysis processes."
"The solution is stable."
"The product is user-friendly."
"There is also a chart store where we can download charts, which is extremely useful."
"The solution has a good toggling feature."
 

Cons

"We've faced a challenge with integrating Dremio and Databricks, specifically regarding authentication. It is not shaking hands very easily."
"They need to have multiple connectors. Starburst is rich in connectors, however, they are lacking Salesforce connectivity as of today."
"I cannot use the recursive common table expression (CTE) in Dremio because the support page says it's currently unsupported."
"They have an automated tool for building SQL queries, so you don't need to know SQL. That interface works, but it could be more efficient in terms of the SQL generated from those things. It's going through some growing pains. There is so much value in tools like these for people with no SQL experience. Over time, Dermio will make these capabilities more accessible to users who aren't database people."
"There are performance issues at times due to our limited experience with Dremio, and the fact that we are running it on single nodes using a community version."
"They need to have multiple connectors."
"It shows errors sometimes."
"Dremio takes a long time to execute large queries or the executing of correlated queries or nested queries. Additionally, the solution could improve if we could read data from the streaming pipelines or if it allowed us to create the ETL pipeline directly on top of it, similar to Snowflake."
"Anything they can do to improve enterprise collaboration is going to help people get set up and utilize the solution."
"The only concern I have faced with Microsoft BI is the time it takes to find out an issue and rectify it."
"Microsoft is behind IBM when it comes to security features."
"Better mapping capabilities and easier administration access would be beneficial, especially for understanding who has viewed reports."
"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."
"They are improving it all the time. What would be nice is if they could respond to feature requests more quickly. They can provide faster support for new features."
"I would like to see a feature that connects with a Machine Learning platform like a RapidMiner or Azure Machine Learning Studio. It would be great to have a Machine Learning application link to connect."
"Most of the dashboarding tools have prebuilt graphs. So, you have to stick with them, unless you are going to use a third-party tool to create them, and then you are going to upload them to the BI tool. In Power BI, they started supporting this functionality and created a tool for that, but it isn't yet complete and mature. It is still exceeding the expectations and is better than most of the BI tools when it comes to creating custom graphs, but it needs more enhancement and simplification. It would be good to have a design tool provided by Power BI to design the graphs that we want and set the figures that we want on them."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Right now the cluster costs approximately $200,000 per month and is based on the volume of data we have."
"Dremio is less costly competitively to Snowflake or any other tool."
"We have a professional license for Microsoft BI and the price is fair."
"Paid for itself in the first month."
"Its cost seems to be unreasonable if you have many users, but for a lesser number of users, it is reasonable. It is $10 per month. Clients easily accept this option, so they must think it is reasonable. It is quite cheap as compared to other tools, such as Tableau. One of the best things about this solution is that it has a trial version."
"Microsoft BI for desktop is free to use, and you can download and use it."
"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."
"The costs are small and the benefits are high."
"It's straightforward licensing."
"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 Data Science Platforms 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
Financial Services Firm
31%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
4%
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 Dremio?
Dremio allows querying the files I have on my block storage or object storage.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dremio?
The licensing is very expensive. We need a license to scale as we are currently using the community version.
What needs improvement with Dremio?
They need to have multiple connectors. Starburst is rich in connectors, however, they are lacking Salesforce connectivity as of today. They don't have Salesforce connectivity. However, Starburst do...
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 ...
 

Comparisons

 

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

UBS, TransUnion, Quantium, Daimler, OVH
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 Databricks, Knime, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and others in Data Science Platforms. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.