Microsoft Power BI vs Oracle Essbase comparison

The compared Microsoft and Oracle solutions aren't in the same category. Microsoft is ranked #1 in BIT , with an average rating of 8.2, and holds a 7.5% mindshare in the category. Oracle is ranked #13 in DDM , with an average rating of 7.4, and holds a 1.4% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Oracle users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Power BI

Read 331 Microsoft Power BI reviews

32,121 Views
21,200 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Oracle Essbase

Read 18 Oracle Essbase reviews

2,649 Views
689 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Power BI

Oracle Essbase

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Microsoft Power BI and Oracle Essbase based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP and others in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools.

To learn more, read our detailed BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Report (Updated: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

June 2026

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Helped 902,588 peers since 2012

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

Microsoft Power BI

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

331

Ranking in other categories

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (1st), Reporting (1st)

Oracle Essbase

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

4.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Database Development and Management (13th)

Mindshare comparison

Microsoft Power BI and Oracle Essbase aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Microsoft Power BI is designed for BI (Business Intelligence) Tools and holds a mindshare of 7.5%, down 21.0% compared to last year.
Oracle Essbase, on the other hand, focuses on Database Development and Management, holds 1.4% mindshare, up 1.0% since last year.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Microsoft Power BI	7.5%
Tableau Enterprise	5.8%
Amazon QuickSight	3.2%
Other	83.5%

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Database Development and Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Oracle Essbase	1.4%
Oracle Enterprise Manager	4.0%
Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials	4.0%
Other	90.6%

Database Development and Management

Featured Reviews

Hemanthreddy Vakiti

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.

Read full review

Bhavya N

Senior System Engineer at Infosys

Ensuring efficient data analysis and reporting while identifying areas for calculation and export improvements

The features of Oracle Essbase are valuable, such as its multi-dimensional database used for dynamic calculations and reporting purposes. These features are valuable because they support multi-dimensional data views, allowing users to analyze relationships across various data categories and establish a comprehensive perspective on business operations. Moreover, dynamic calculations allow real-time data analysis, significantly improving the accuracy and depth of financial insights. I have utilized Essbase's data aggregation capabilities. The Oracle Essbase interface provides a good user experience, allowing users to easily navigate and analyze data with fast query performance, effective data visualization tools such as charts, graphs, and tables, and flexibility for customizable analysis and reporting, including the ability to create ad hoc reports. The benefits of the interface include improving productivity and enhancing decision-making.

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

"The most valuable feature is that it's easy to use. It's very useful for non-engineers and it is the ultimate solution for providing information and insights. Power BI is the best visualization tool I have ever worked with."

"They are a market leader and the best in class, so I would definitely use them over any analytic tool."

"It seems stable. I haven't heard of any difficulties from my clients that utilize Power BI."

"Power BI is much cheaper."

"In the process of using data there is the Extract, Transform and Load (ETL). For extracting we are using another software, for transforming we are using our own coding in C#, and then we use Microsoft BI for loading the information. Microsoft BI displays information very well."

"The dashboards of Microsoft BI are easy to use."

"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."

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

More Microsoft Power BI pros

"Oracle Essbase is a web integration system that integrates with other data systems."

"The solution is quite scalable, which is the most useful aspect for us."

"Its multidimensional analysis is great; unlike relational, where you're linking together multiple tables, with Essbase, you basically define what the dimensions are beforehand, and you define the hierarchy, and then load the data, allowing you to do sophisticated analysis so that you can drill into it and slice and dice the data."

"It is very fast compared to other normal databases, like SQL and MySQL."

"With Oracle Essbase, everything is centralized in a comprehensive financial statement analysis, allowing for complete management of budget, actuals analysis, and forecast."

"Essbase is a kind of backbone, or back end, for systems like Hyperion Planning."

"It is my opinion, it is more comfortable in Oracle rather than a SQL server."

"It's a very powerful analytical engine with Essbase as the back end. We can analyze, transform, or utilize a big chunk of data for our calculations."

More Oracle Essbase pros

Cons

"SSMS & SSRS."

"It is getting better but still, there are opportunity areas in some aspects, especially the Windows OS dependency."

"Solving things in DAX is not a nice approach to a user that has no knowledge of IT nor wants to get it."

"It's quite difficult to learn how to use Power BI."

"Currently, the time it takes to merge two tables in Power BI makes the entire analysis quite complex because it requires common numbering in one table and then creating another common indicator in another table in order to merge the two."

"I found data cleaning in the solution to be quite difficult. If I could add a feature, I'd include Excel's Flash Fill function. This allows you to set a formula for one row and column and automatically apply it to thousands of rows, making data sorting much easier."

"There are some other visuals that are available in the Microsoft marketplace, however, you need to use them via trial and error. There needs to be a write-up about how to use them with a quick guide describing the visual."

"I would like it to be a little bit more secure when I'm using the design feature on my desktop. For example, to have the ability to set up security passwords for opening the file. Currently, they don't have that. Tableau, for example, has a visual way of doing data processing steps, whereas the Power BI system still has some code, although it is very low code. It would be great to have the kind of view that Tableau has."

More Microsoft Power BI cons

"I would like to improve calculations by optimizing performance and reducing processing time."

"The initial setup is pretty complex."

"They should improve the solution's performance."

"The consolidation engine, which is HFM or FCCS, needs some room for improvement."

"The reporting tool of Essbase needs improvement."

"The ability to drive external reporting out for development could be improved."

"Essbase has a programming language, and it has a couple of functions to do forecasting, however, their feature set for that is not that good."

"The solution could be cheaper. It is costly, and the initial setup could be simplified."

More Oracle Essbase cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I very much recommend the free trial mode."

"If it has to be applied on the cloud, then it costs around $10 per month per user. For a pro license and for a premium license it's around $20 per month per user. If it has to be applied on-premises then, depending on the course of your server, you have to buy a software assurance version of the database."

"Once the trial period for the BI service is over, the cost is approximately $10 USD per user, per month, so it's quite reasonable."

"This product offers good value for the money."

"Licensing is on a monthly basis, but I am not sure."

"Microsoft BI is free for the personal edition, but there is also a paid-for professional version."

"Microsoft BI is not expensive. Compared to the price of other BI products, the price is very fair."

"The license is on a yearly basis."

More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice

"It is a costly solution."

"The solution is expensive."

"I believe the licensing is on a monthly base."

"Essbase is competitively priced."

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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

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Construction Company

Financial Services Firm

18%

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	136
Midsize Enterprise	59
Large Enterprise	171

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	14

Questions from the Community

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

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Essbase?

It's not that expensive, but also not cheap. I'm not sure because it's a private license.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Oracle Essbase?

A significant area for improvement in Oracle Essbase is that financial statement analysis, CAPEX and OPEX analysis, and financial consolidation must be done manually, as Oracle Essbase doesn't incl...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Oracle Essbase?

The initial setup of Oracle Essbase is dependent on whether you select BSO or ASO cubes. First, you need to set up the type of information and once the type of cubes is defined, you need to define ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Amazon QuickSight vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 16% of the time

Tableau Enterprise vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 12% of the time

Domo vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 7% of the time

QlikView vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 2% of the time

IBM Cognos vs Microsoft Power BI

Compared 2% of the time

More Microsoft Power BI Competitors

Tableau Enterprise vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 9% of the time

Oracle OBIEE vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 8% of the time

SAP Business Data Cloud vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 6% of the time

Redgate SQL Toolbelt Essentials vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 5% of the time

Toad for Oracle vs Oracle Essbase

Compared 4% of the time

More Oracle Essbase Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Power BI

June 2026

Download Microsoft Power BI product report

Buyer's Guide

Oracle Essbase

June 2026

Download Oracle Essbase product report

Also Known As

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

Essbase

Overview

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

Oracle Essbase provides robust multi-dimensional analysis with a strong calculation engine and aggregate storage, enabling fast calculations and swift response times for large data volumes.

Essbase offers scalable, stable multi-dimensional analysis capabilities, important for enterprises managing large datasets. Its flexibility and efficiency support detailed reporting, strategic decision-making, and advanced modeling. An intuitive interface allows fast data visualization and dynamic analysis, aiding strategic business operations. Continuous upgrades enhance performance and productivity.

What are the key features of Oracle Essbase?

Multi-dimensional Analysis: Enables complex data insights through powerful analysis capabilities.
Calculation Engine: Provides swift calculations essential for timely decision-making in business environments.
Aggregate Storage: Ensures efficient data handling, supporting fast response times and large data volumes.
Intuitive Interface: Facilitates fast visualization and enhances productivity through easy data management.

What benefits or ROI should users focus on in reviews?

Scalability: Supports growing data needs efficiently, maintaining stability.
Performance Upgrades: Continuously improves data processing speeds and system functionality.
Flexibility: Adapts to diverse reporting and analysis needs effectively.
Enhanced Productivity: Increases organizational efficiency with dynamic data analysis capabilities.

In industries like telecommunications, banking, and healthcare, Essbase is used extensively for financial management, including planning, budgeting, and reporting. It facilitates decision-making in multinational firms by supporting enterprise performance management and generating comprehensive financial statements. Users leverage it for complex data processing and intensive queries, improving operational efficiency.

Oracle

Sample Customers

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

CHU de Rennes, Bellco Credit Union, Akindo Sushiro Co. Ltd, Deutsche Telekom AG, Samarco MineraÊo S.A., PCCW Ltd., QDQ media S.A.U., Boiron Italia, Specialized Bicycle Components Inc., Akindo Sushiro Co. Ltd., Air Canada, Daelim Industrial Co. Ltd.

Buyer's Guide

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

June 2026

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