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Microsoft Power BI vs RStudio Connect 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

Microsoft Power BI
Ranking in Reporting
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
321
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (1st)
RStudio Connect
Ranking in Reporting
21st
Average Rating
6.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (21st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Microsoft Power BI is 26.7%, up from 25.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of RStudio Connect is 0.5%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting
 

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Facilitates seamless data aggregation with some outdated visual elements hindering user appeal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 Visualization could be improved as it appears outdated.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.
LM
Graphical learning experience needs improvement but handles large datasets effectively
RStudio Connect ( /products/rstudio-connect-reviews ) is very powerful statistically and can handle large datasets, even on a free version on a laptop. It offers excellent customer service and educational resources. KNIME ( /products/knime-reviews ) allows for visual data manipulation, with nodes representing operations, making it user-friendly and effective for statistical analysis and predictions. I appreciate its ability to integrate R or Python scripts, combining ease of use with powerful procedures.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Its visualizations and dashboards are most valuable. Power BI is great in terms of visualizations and dashboards. The reports that we previously had were not very nice in terms of visualization. It also provides the ability to play with the data."
"MS SQL & SQL Server Analysis Services."
"One of the key benefits of Power BI is how easy it is to develop reports."
"Ability to extract data from a variety of sources and systems."
"I liked that Microsoft Power BI handles a large amount of data. I can handle hundreds of rows from Postgres in a few minutes. I also like how it detects the relationship between the tables without explicitly saying that. It just detects the relationship automatically. That made it easier to work with the data."
"My understanding is that the initial setup is pretty easy."
"The one feature most of our customers like is data visualization. When we were doing BI directly from SQL, most users found it challenging to create their own reports. Power BI has self-serve analytics that the end-users can do themselves. On most projects, people are primarily using data visualization and self-serve analytics."
"The solution is easy to use and charts can be built quickly with the tools."
"RStudio Connect is very powerful statistically and can handle large datasets, even on a free version on a laptop."
 

Cons

"Licensing could be improved."
"The solution could benefit by allowing deeper data analytics."
"It is not leading the charge on scalability, but it meets expectations."
"Microsoft needs to provide more drivers to connect other data sources in a native way."
"Spatial data support should be enhanced."
"We haven't used it that long and I haven't come across anything that's stood out as needing to be fixed."
"here are some limitations with the data models needed to build the report."
"Microsoft Power BI was born native on the cloud, however, it's quite difficult when it has to connect to on-premise data sources."
"I rate my experience with RStudio Connect as average because I am not yet comfortable enough to provide a definitive assessment."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a professional license for Microsoft BI and the price is fair."
"Power BI is cheaper than Tableau and Cognos."
"I would rate them 4 out of 5 for their current pricing. There are no additional costs to the standard licensing fees."
"It is part of our Office 365 license."
"I very much recommend the free trial mode."
"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."
"Microsoft BI is very cost-effective and this is why we use it."
"Our license is paid yearly and we have found that we have to be careful not to over-extend our usage in order to avoid upgrading our capacity plan."
Information not available
report
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852,098 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
Educational Organization
37%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
5%
Government
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
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 experience regarding pricing and costs for RStudio Connect?
Both KNIME and RStudio Connect are free to use on a laptop. However, if I want to use a big server version, it is subsidized.
What needs improvement with RStudio Connect?
It could work on visibility or improve that. In RStudio Connect ( /products/rstudio-connect-reviews ), the learning process is not as graphical as KNIME ( /products/knime-reviews ). Although I can ...
What is your primary use case for RStudio Connect?
I use the software primarily for statistics. I have used it on census data from the UK, which covers millions of individuals. Additionally, I have utilized it for surveys and educational purposes, ...
 

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
ENERGETIC INSURANCE, PRECISION ANALYTICS, REDFIN, TWO SIX CAPITALSTACK OVERFLOW, LIBERTY MUTUAL, EDUCATION SUPERHIGHWAY, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Power BI vs. RStudio Connect and other solutions. Updated: May 2025.
852,098 professionals have used our research since 2012.