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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 7.8, and holds a 20.4% mindshare in the category. Oracle is ranked #11 in DDM , with an average rating of 8.1, and holds a 0.9% 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 326 Microsoft Power BI reviews
  • 24,290 Views
  • 14,817 Comparison Views
93% willing to recommend
Oracle Essbase
Read 18 Oracle Essbase reviews
  • 1,850 Views
  • 130 Comparison Views
100% willing to recommend
 

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.

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To learn more, read our detailed BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Report (Updated: August 2025).
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BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
August 2025
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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

Microsoft Power BI
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
326
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (1st), Reporting (1st)
Oracle Essbase
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.6
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
Database Development and Management (11th)
 

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 20.4%, down 21.7% compared to last year.
Oracle Essbase, on the other hand, focuses on Database Development and Management, holds 0.9% mindshare, down 1.1% since last year.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
Database Development and Management
 

Featured Reviews

Shoury Priyanshu - PeerSpot reviewer
Facilitates seamless data aggregation with some outdated visual elements hindering user appeal
Real-time data integration is an area for improvement. Although I've worked on several solutions involving real-time integration, it's not very user-friendly and often lags, especially with over a million data rows. This makes Power BI difficult to manage as loading times can reach one or two minutes, which is problematic today. There are challenges with scalability, requiring multiple pages in dashboards to manage these issues. Visualization could be improved as it appears outdated. Users, especially newcomers, find it unappealing and not user-friendly.
Read full review
Bhavya N - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"It has greatly improved our reporting capabilities."
"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."
"It gives you an edge if you are on the Microsoft platform. If you have been using Microsoft products for a long time or if you have the Microsoft infrastructure, this is the right tool for you. It has seamless integration with Microsoft SQL Server and other sources, and you get the best of the three things (SSIS, SSAS, and SSRS) in one suite."
"Other people can access data much more easily than before. Its usability is the main advantage, people in the company are using it."
"We have found the product very stable and reliable."
"The stability is good."
"The most valuable features are the flexibility, how many ways you can interrogate the data, and the the graphical visualization."
"We can see that it's really improved the way end users can do their own graphs and pick their own fields of information and present that in a nice way."
More Microsoft Power BI pros
"Essbase is extremely stable and low-maintenance."
"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. This allows you to do a pretty sophisticated analysis so that you can drill into it and slice and dice the data."
"The solution is scalable."
"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."
"Essbase is a kind of backbone, or back end, for systems like Hyperion Planning."
"It helps us fetch specific data sets per users' requirements."
"I have found the most valuable aspect is the user-friendly environment and current features."
"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."
More Oracle Essbase pros
 

Cons

"I'm not overly technical, and so I can't really speak to any shortcomings from a technical standpoint."
"It is definitely a wonderful analytics tool. However, database ETL, data integration functionality would be absolutely perfect in many cases. Currently, it doesn't get the job done and we need to extract, transform, and load the data from faulty data sets into something more suitable for the deployment of the analytics tool."
"Visualization systems are still relatively young."
"From an improvement perspective, I think if the Power BI developers of that platform would really focus on being more detailed and specific on the error messages, it would help a lot of developers troubleshoot and maintain the report ECT or the dashboard ECT."
"The licensing needs improvement. There needs to be a middle option between Pro and Premium versions."
"Anything they can do to improve enterprise collaboration is going to help people get set up and utilize the solution."
"They asked you to pay if you want to synchronize more than eight times, you would have to go to a Power BI enterprise license, which is much more costly."
"If you need data in real-time, it's not an ideal solution."
More Microsoft Power BI cons
"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."
"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 include the financial consolidation module that is available in EPM."
"The solution could enhance business analytics. I delved into the data using Oracle Essbase to create a new support tool."
"The ability to drive external reporting out for development could be improved."
"The main concern is that Oracle is ending on-premises server support, so it would be better if there was a cloud platform available for Oracle Essbase."
"It's an expensive product to use."
"There is room for improvement in terms of cost-effectiveness."
"The initial setup could be simplified."
More Oracle Essbase cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"No comment on pricing."
"We view it as an expensive product."
"It is a cheap solution for our needs."
"If you purchase a license for a server, for users, or the professional version, you might not have to. The free version I think it can satisfy many customers' needs."
"Downloading Power BI Desktop is free."
"Globally, we evaluated a number of products, including Salesforce's product, Microsoft won on the ground of simple functionally and cost."
"All of the licenses are on an annual basis, but Microsoft will amortize it to an extent. If it's five years, they'll include the possible interest they might have the following year. Ideally, their licensing scheme is an annual license, but they make it easier for some of our clients to take a five-year license but package everything inside for them to buy the license for five years."
"Microsoft Power BI has reasonable pricing."
More Microsoft Power BI pricing and cost advice
"Essbase is competitively priced."
"It is a costly solution."
"The solution is expensive."
"I believe the licensing is on a monthly base."
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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…
Read full review
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
10%
Insurance Company
8%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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?
Improvements for Oracle Essbase could be made, as there are many tools available now, such as FCCS, TRCS, and ERCS. I find managing the database difficult, especially regarding optimization and dat...
See all answers
What is your primary use case for Oracle Essbase?
I have been using Oracle Essbase for the last thirteen years and I am into this space for thirty years. I am working on the sales-based platform where I work with different clients for GE, Thomson ...
See all answers
 

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Compared 7% of the time
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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Microsoft Power BI
August 2025
Microsoft Power BI reportDownload Microsoft Power BI product report
Buyer's Guide
Oracle Essbase
August 2025
Oracle Essbase reportDownload 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 is an OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) Server that provides an environment for deploying pre-packaged applications or developing custom analytic and enterprise performance management applications.

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 MineraÊo 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
August 2025
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