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MicroStrategy vs Yellowfin comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 2, 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

MicroStrategy
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
11th
Ranking in Embedded BI
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
162
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Yellowfin
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
35th
Ranking in Embedded BI
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (23rd), Data Visualization (24th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of MicroStrategy is 1.3%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Yellowfin is 0.9%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
MicroStrategy1.3%
Yellowfin0.9%
Other97.8%
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

AS
Lead Software Engineer at Momentus
Provides strong data visualization and security while easing deployment across multiple sectors
The most effective features of MicroStrategy for data analysis in my experience are the security, the metadata management, and the administration, along with the options of different workarounds available to accommodate different types of requirements. MicroStrategy's data visualization capabilities are great, and I would rate them nine out of 10.
AC
‎IS Executive at SAINS
It is a central source of up-to-date data and information, but needs more charting capabilities
Management information Reporting Statistics Data analysis It reduces sending copies of different report/spreadsheet versions over email, which makes it difficult to access the right report. It is also able to create information dashboards for various users' throughout.  All management…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ability to integrate with PPT is another plus. The platform's ability to write back data directly to the database is also good."
"It is always nice to have one solution in a single platform. You can do pretty much everything, instead of having to get a little bit here or a little bit there."
"The technical support is quite good."
"The implementation was fairly straightforward."
"It's a stand-alone mobile development app that you don't even have to do business intelligence on. You can just use it to build apps."
"I usually recommend MicroStrategy to my customers."
"The usability for users to be able to drag and drop, then create their own reports."
"Technical support has sent us to rapid response before, when we really needed them."
"It is able to create information dashboards for various users' throughout."
"It reduces time to reproduce reports, provides easy access to organisational data, and has the ability to generate a wide range of reports and analysis."
"It is a central source of up-to-date data and information."
 

Cons

"Areas of MicroStrategy that have room for improvement include pricing because it is costly."
"They need to improve on having more professional, well-equipped premium support.​"
"There is room for improvement in data visualization."
"If there are some advanced visualization features - maybe I'm not aware of them - but if there were a Vitara which could work on top of MicroStrategy, it would make sense for MicroStrategy to have that within their own library. So they should add more visualizations to the library."
"It is performing well, but sometimes we have complex requirements and the performance decreases, and then we have to find another way to make it perform again. That is what you encounter when use the project, but that's inevitable because if we would have used another product, we would've had the same thing."
"MicroStrategy needs to do some more development to make the platform easier to use. It's a complicated platform that requires a lot of skill to effectively utilize. So they could work on reducing the complexity to make it more accessible for a broader community of people."
"Sometimes you can do something in reports, but you cannot do the same thing in documents."
"We had some problems with customer service and support."
"It needs more presentation/charting capabilities and integration with GIS."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"While initial cost of MicroStrategy is still on the higher side, the long-term benefits brings down overall cost of ownership significantly as compared to other tools like Tableau/Cognos."
"We have a license with packages, and there are additional costs for extra components."
"The pricing for MicroStrategy is always on the higher side. They should seriously start thinking about their pricing and licensing strategy."
"It would be nice if there was a sticker price that says, "This software costs this amount of money." But I think that's just indicative of all software vendors. A lot of people are in it to make money, commissions, so it's just the nature of the business. But I would like to see more transparency, more equality, on pricing. Some people get better deals than others, I think."
"All BI software vendors' list prices are high. It's about a price that fits the customer's needs. And I think MicroStrategy has some flexibility in its pricing model where we can easily demonstrate a total cost of ownership comparison against any of the other players."
"They can improve its licensing. It is a bit expensive as compared to Microsoft and other tools."
"There have been actual direct bottomline impacts in terms of extra revenue created from the reporting solutions."
"They need to work on their license structure. They are not competitive against somebody like SAP BusinessObjects. We had a quote that was almost a third the price, coming from SAP BusinessObjects, and it's not a better platform. It's not cheaper. They do concurrent user licensing, while MicroStrategy does named user licensing, and that was literally the only difference. But it made a $500,000 difference. They've got to do something to make themselves more competitive. Maybe it's assessing your business users and what you really expect them to use, and maybe giving a reduced price on that. But they are already giving us a 60% discount and they were still a million or so above, over a three-year time period. That doesn't account for synergies as we get from on-site resources that are already available, but I thought that that was a big, big deficit for them."
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Comparison Review

it_user6330 - PeerSpot reviewer
Product Manager at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
May 2, 2013
MicroStrategy vs. Tableau
After a recent presentation, several attendees asked me about the applications of Visual Insights and Tableau. Many companies are investing in both tools and are trying to figure out the right tool for specific applications Tableau has found its sweet-spot as an agile discovery tool that analysts…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Retailer
7%
Computer Software Company
7%
Educational Organization
16%
Healthcare Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Energy/Utilities Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business37
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise100
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about MicroStrategy?
The stability of the product is good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MicroStrategy?
My company has many licenses for MicroStrategy because we can build reports in this tool. I don't know what the cost is for these licenses.
What needs improvement with MicroStrategy?
I don't have any issues with MicroStrategy and would not suggest how it can be improved. I would not change anything because it's a great tool to build reports. I would appreciate improvements in M...
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Allstate Insurance, Barneys New York, Boston Children's Hospital, Buenos Aires Department of the Treasury, Campbell Soup Company, DHL, eBay, eHarmony, Facebook, Four Seasons Hotels Inc., Godiva, Hard Rock International, LinkedIn, Netflix, Pfizer, SECO (Swiss Government Unemployment Agency), Starbucks, Texas A&M University, Thomson Reuters Markets, US House of Representatives, and the US Postal Service.
NCS, Universitat Konstanz, AT&T, PG&E, SingTel, InternetStores
Find out what your peers are saying about MicroStrategy vs. Yellowfin and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,707 professionals have used our research since 2012.