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Microsoft Power BI vs Posit comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

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
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
327
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (1st)
Posit
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
27th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 9.4%, down from 21.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Posit is 0.7%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Power BI9.4%
Posit0.7%
Other89.9%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

James Balbach - PeerSpot reviewer
Executive Director, Decision Support at Community Health Network
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.
SUBRATADEY - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Data Enigeneer at Oracle
Addressing installation challenges to utilize interactive dashboards effectively
Posit is valuable because many geo-scientists I work with are more comfortable writing R scripts and using R Shiny, making it a suited choice for them. On top of that, it integrates with the application and database, creating interactive dashboards. While there's a need to manage a significant portion manually, the performance overall is stable.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is quite easy to use and it helps me to achieve the projects that I've been assigned."
"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."
"The most valuable feature would be the abundance of connectors. It is also easy to use."
"You can integrate Microsoft Power BI with various other solutions like Intune."
"The solution is easy to use and charts can be built quickly with the tools."
"The good part of it is that you can do whatever you want with it when it comes to building BI. In terms of languages, it supports Python, and it also natively supports R."
"I like data modeling. You can connect with your database, which is quite useful for me. It is a good tool if you have a large amount of data and you want to gather different data and interconnect it. The Power Query functionality is quite an interesting feature. If you have a query in Excel, you can also copy your query and run it in Power BI. Its dashboard is also very nice and not complicated. You don't need to be a developer to be able to use it. I am not an IT guy, and it is quite easy to use for somebody who is not an IT person."
"Power BI, once made available, can connect to various data sources, irrespective of the application, whether it be HR or business applications. The bank has many applications, but all eventually need to generate reports for tracking, distribution, or problem-finding based on analysis. Power BI was made available as part of the productivity suite to all businesses, which can connect to their applications and provide the reports and analysis they require."
"Overall, I think Posit is a stable product."
"I have found Posit’s integration with R, such as the autocomplete feature and the help panel, to be invaluable."
"The most valuable feature of Posit is that it allows users to host different models in one place, making it easy to share with colleagues and teammates."
 

Cons

"It's quite difficult to learn how to use Power BI."
"The reporting could be a bit better."
"I have been doing trial and error to figuring out how to do the data analyzing and modeling. There could be some improvement to simplify it."
"It needs an AI which can choose the appropriate connection strings and provide options for connections."
"Microsoft has made a lot of progress with Power BI in the past couple of years, but there is still some room for improvement. For example, Integration is one area they could work on. They are adding more integration with other Microsoft tools, but I would like it if they sped up the process."
"There are some limitations in Power BI; you have to work in the Power BI base. However, if you want something not out-of-the-box and you want something custom, you have to do a lot of work."
"People without private emails cannot publish and, frankly, this doesn't allow for easy training."
"It is kept very current, and there is an update literally every month. However, the interface changes quite randomly with no documentation, which is difficult at the domain and architectural level where you're planning things and engaging the business. Things change frequently, and you wonder where has the button for the new report gone. They should provide better documentation on interface changes. It should be better optimized. It is supposed to be a data integration tool, but it is doing relatively simple queries. It has its limitations. For example, you can only pull a number of columns. So, there is room for optimization on its ability to integrate multiple data sources. The desktop tool is very memory-intensive, and again, this is not documented clearly. It requires a heavy CPU and memory use, and it causes your operating systems to become unstable. I would like to see the ability to create datasets within Power BI. Microsoft is promoting Azure as a cloud solution, but it is dependent upon a desktop component, which seems a little bit deceptive. Data set is the basic element that you report from, but it has to be created on the desktop and then published to the cloud. So, you're in the cloud, and you create a data structure or the data flow, but you can't report from that. You have to leave the cloud, go to your desktop, create the data set on your desktop, and publish it to the cloud. You go back to the cloud and create your report by using that published data set, which is very non-intuitive. If you go to the Microsoft Power BI community, this is a common complaint across the entire community."
"I would like to see improvements in SSH capabilities."
"Posit lacks a smooth solution for the build and release pipeline, requiring duplicate effort for production transitions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Power BI is cheaper for smaller groups when comparing to competitors. It requires a monthly per-user subscription."
"I think it's a good price, from what I've heard. I know it's competitive with other Power BI tools."
"Microsoft BI is free for the personal edition, but there is also a paid-for professional version."
"The premium capacity is very costly in respect of the market in Egypt, amounting to $5,000 monthly."
"They have a free Power BI Desktop version, but it has limitations."
"Costs less than most competing solutions."
"The pricing is very reasonable compared to any other tool."
"I would advise that Microsoft BI products are rightly priced and the licensing is easy to follow and to fulfill."
Information not available
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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
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
12%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business135
Midsize Enterprise57
Large Enterprise165
No data available
 

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...
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 ...
What is your primary use case for Posit?
I use Posit for both Posit Connect and Posit Workbench. The Workbench is used for development, as there are many packages not supported by RStudio because I didn't have RStudio Pro. Posit Connect i...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Posit?
RStudio Pro and Workbench are quite expensive. Workbench is especially costly because it supports multiple sessions, so there's a strategy to use it only during full-phase development, then switch ...
What needs improvement with Posit?
Posit lacks a smooth solution for the build and release pipeline. Its documentation is weak, which can make installation cumbersome for someone without terminal experience. Additionally, there are ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

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
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Power BI vs. Posit and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.