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Microsoft Power BI vs icCube 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

icCube
Ranking in Reporting
41st
Average Rating
10.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Embedded BI (18th)
Microsoft Power BI
Ranking in Reporting
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
331
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of icCube is 0.7%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 14.1%, down from 26.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Power BI14.1%
icCube0.7%
Other85.2%
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

it_user7056 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
Economically priced, runs on all platforms, excellent cube building and query performance.
Economically priced, runs on all platforms, excellent cube building and query performance, and the development time to first report is very short even for an MDX novice.  The MDX IDE is fabulous. They respond quickly and responsibly to support requests.  New features in the reporting module…
Hemanthreddy Vakiti - PeerSpot reviewer
Data engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Interactive dashboards have transformed restaurant data into faster daily business decisions
Microsoft Power BI has many features and there is not a lot to improve. However, the licensing can be confusing. When deciding between Pro and Premium, I find it difficult to distinguish what features are offered by Pro and what features are offered by Premium, including the particular differences to choose between both licensing models. Additionally, some features such as DAX, which I mentioned previously, involve DAX calculations and complex data modeling, which are somewhat advanced and not easily understandable. Prior knowledge is required or you need to go through the documentation. If the documentation is made comprehensive so that anyone with no knowledge on DAX can easily use it by going through the documentation, it would be really helpful. Additionally, if the integration with non-Microsoft tools is improved and performance is optimized, then Microsoft Power BI can become a top-ranked visualization tool. The user experience with Microsoft Power BI is quite good. The intuitive user interface makes it easy for both technical and non-technical users to create reports. However, only the advanced features are somewhat complex, and if the documentation is improved, it can be easily accessible.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Economically priced, runs on all platforms, excellent cube building and query performance, and the development time to first report is very short even for an MDX novice."
"Connectivity, installation, and configuration are pretty fast and seamless compared to Cognos."
"The product is stable."
"If you are looking for a good BI solution for a small business that is very easy to deploy and not costly and that can use the cloud in terms of security, Power BI is probably the best solution in the market."
"SSRS and the Tabular server/Vertipaq engine/DAX are probably the two most valuable components."
"The demand estimation and forecasting profitability are the most effective features of Microsoft Power BI, along with vendor and supply chain risk analysis, inventory and stock forecasting, real-time production monitoring, and quality control through defect tracking and root cause analysis."
"The capability to add custom visuals and create Power BI apps. You can package datasets, synchronization details, and dashboards into a single app."
"What's most valuable in this tool is that it gives its users detailed error messages. It's a very stable data analytics tool, and it offers good scalability."
"You should get it and implement it."
 

Cons

"As with many products, the documentation is light in some areas."
"When you use the Power BI as an enterprise solution, as a consultant, you find out that the product is not fully ready for enterprise."
"The smart phone application could be improved, along with better graphics and faster updating."
"There were scalability issues. It does half the work like any other product in the market."
"In my opinion, it would be better for the price to be degressive by the user, and we should have a lower, or better unit price if we have more users."
"The solution could benefit by allowing deeper data analytics."
"I think that the solution is harder to use for people who are not experts in data."
"I would suggest improvements in visualization standards, particularly in customization and appearance."
"It has limited performance capabilities in terms of connecting to large transactional databases, but it is fine for simple and quick queries from Excel spreadsheets or one table."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Paid for itself in the first month."
"As far as I am aware you do not need a license for the solution."
"Power BI is subscription-based, and you have three options. The Pro edition, which is the standard one, is about $9 per user. The Premium edition, which provides AI and cloud capabilities but at a limited size, is for small to medium enterprises. It is about $20 per user. For large enterprises, such as manufacturing facilities, there is an option for the capacity. The capacity subscription is about $4,000 per capacity level. They also have an option for the on-premises version, but it is not common to see someone going for the on-premises version. The on-premises version requires a specific license that is attached to SQL Server. I believe it is about $17,000, but I'm not sure about it."
"We have a professional license for Microsoft BI and the price is fair."
"MS BI comes with all the tools and it is, to the best of my knowledge, the most affordable solution."
"All in all, for the price, this is an excellent tool for helping your organization turn mounds of data into useful insights."
"We view it as an expensive product."
"This product offers good value for the money."
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893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business135
Midsize Enterprise59
Large Enterprise169
 

Questions from the Community

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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

Binary, TU/e, Kantar Worldpanel, Rivo
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 Microsoft, Salesforce, Domo and others in Reporting. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.