Microsoft Power BI is a visualization and data discovery tool from Microsoft. It allows users to convert data into visuals and graphics, visually explore and analyze data, collaborate on interactive dashboards and reports, and scale across their organization with built-in governance and security.
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SAS Visual Analytics
Score 7.6 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
SAS Visual Analytics provides a complete platform for analytics visualization, enabling users to identify patterns and relationships in data that weren't initially evident. Interactive, self-service BI and reporting capabilities are combined with out-of-the-box advanced analytics so everyone can discover insights from any size and type of data, including text.
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Pricing
Microsoft Power BI
SAS Visual Analytics
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
SAS Visual Analytics for SAS Cloud
$0
Annual By Users: 5, 10, 20
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Microsoft Power BI
SAS Visual Analytics
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
—
SAS Visual Statistics and SAS Office Analytics are also available as add-ons.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Microsoft Power BI
SAS Visual Analytics
TrustRadius Insights
Microsoft Power BI
SAS Visual Analytics
Highlights
Research Team Insight
Published
Microsoft Power BI and SAS Visual Analytics are both data visualization and business intelligence (BI) tools aimed at helping businesses gain insights from business data. Microsoft Power BI has a strong community presence, with an open-source repository of user-created visualizations. SAS Visual Analytics, as part of the SAS suite of products, is an industry standard with strong predictive analytics and data preparation features.
SAS Visual Analytics is most popular by far with enterprise-level companies, who likely get more value out of the overall SAS suite of business intelligence tools than smaller businesses would. Microsoft Power BI, on the other hand, is almost equally popular with mid-size businesses as well as enterprise-level corporations, likely due to its cheaper per-user licensing and integration with the Microsoft Office 365 suite.
Features
Although both SAS Visual Analytics and Microsoft Power BI offer self-service data visualization and individualized dashboards, they each stand out in their own ways.
Microsoft Power BI offers an extensive degree of variety and customization for their visualizations through their open-source repository. The charts offered are professional and granular, making it easy to drill down on specific data points or categories. The software is designed with sharing in mind, making it easy to share visualizations with other users.
SAS Visual Analytics is commonly praised for its solid performance, especially at scale. It can effectively support many simultaneous users without slowing down. Its data preparation capabilities help users ensure that the data they’re visualizing is meaningful and properly formatted.
Limitations
Microsoft Power BI and SAS Visual Analytics are each powerful tools in their own right, but they also have key limitations that you should consider before choosing one or the other.
SAS Visual Analytics has a more limited set of visualizations than Microsoft Power BI, since there’s no open-source database to pull from or contribute to. Some users may find its visual customization options too limiting.Others found that its tools for generating PDF reports left much to be desired. SAS Visual Analytics also has a much higher price point than Microsoft Power BI, which can be exclusionary for smaller businesses.
Microsoft Power BI’s open-source visualization repository can also be a drawback. Tracking down documentation for visualizations can be difficult, if the documentation exists at all. Beginner users often report that they have a hard time getting started with the software, and there’s a steep learning curve before they’re able to use its more advanced features. It can also take a lot of computer resources, and might run slowly for some users.
Pricing
Microsoft Power BI offers two options for pricing. The Power BI Pro tier is $9.99 monthly per user and includes all of its self-service visualization and BI features on the cloud, with 10 GB of storage per user and a limitation of 1 GB for each individual dataset. The Power BI Premium tier is $4,995 monthly with no additional per-user fee and adds features aimed at enterprise-level BI, including big data analytics and on-premises deployment. It also expands the storage to 100 TB total, with a 10 GB maximum size per dataset.
Pricing for SAS Visual Analytics is available via quote from the vendor.
Features
Microsoft Power BI
SAS Visual Analytics
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Power BI
8.8
Ratings
8% above category average
SAS Visual Analytics
8.3
Ratings
2% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports
8.50 Ratings
8.00 Ratings
Customizable dashboards
10.00 Ratings
8.00 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates
8.00 Ratings
9.00 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Power BI
8.2
Ratings
2% above category average
SAS Visual Analytics
8.8
Ratings
9% above category average
Drill-down analysis
7.00 Ratings
9.00 Ratings
Formatting capabilities
9.00 Ratings
8.00 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages
8.00 Ratings
8.00 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration
9.00 Ratings
10.00 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Power BI
8.6
Ratings
3% above category average
SAS Visual Analytics
9.2
Ratings
10% above category average
Publish to Web
8.00 Ratings
9.00 Ratings
Publish to PDF
9.00 Ratings
9.00 Ratings
Report Versioning
9.00 Ratings
9.00 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling
8.00 Ratings
10.00 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers
9.00 Ratings
9.00 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Microsoft Power BI is great for sales tracking, financial reporting, and real-time operations monitoring. It integrates data from multiple sources, creating interactive dashboards for better decision-making. However, it's less ideal for real-time big data processing, offline access, or when deep customization is needed. It works best for structured reporting but struggles with highly complex data models.
SAS Business Intelligence is more suited to organizations which are already using SAS as the primary software for their analytics needs. Learning curve is relatively shorter for teams already skilled in BASE SAS. For organizations already working with open source software like Julia and Python, it doesn't make much sense to use SAS BI.
SAS BI makes it very easy to create interactive dashboards even for someone who is not from an IT background. For some specific requirements, basic knowledge of SQL is good enough.
A lot of functions have been predefined which makes it very convenient to create dashboards and reports. One doesn't need to be from an IT or a programming background to understand and create dashboards.
It supports other programming languages like R and also has a seamless API integration with various data management platforms.
Microsoft Power BI is an excellent and scalable tool. It has a learning curve, but once you get past that, the sky is the limit and you can build from the most simple to the most complex dashboards. I have built everything from simple reports with only a few data points to complex reports with many pages and advanced filtering.
There is no other product that can match SAS. There are some products that can compare to ETL but lack the analytics that SAS has. Others can perform a limited set of analytical procedures but lack the data processing that comes with SAS. Using thin client allows users to access data whenever they have an internet connection.
Takes a little bit to get used to it. Not natively intuitive but fairly straight forward to pick up. Also docking it a few points because you can create a really clean, simple UI in Claude very quickly that's faster than building all of this yourself in Microsoft Power BI.
SAS BI is good for creating reports and dashboards and then sharing it with the users. It also has ability to manage access to the reports and dashboards but somehow with most of the world moving to open source languages R, Python and Julia, SAS BI feels to be archaic in terms of feature set and integrations it allow[s]. Also, comparing it with other Business Intelligence tools like Tableau and Microsoft BI, the functionality of SAS BI is very limited and doesn't justify the pricing.
It is a fantastic tool, you can do almost everything related with data and reports, it is a perfect substitutive of Power Point and Excel with a high evolution and flexibility, and also it is very friendly and easy to share. I think all companies should have Power BI (or other BI tool) in their software package and if they are in the MS Suite, for sure Power BI should be the one due to all the benefits of the MS ecosystem.
When you call tech support, you are immediately routed to a person who can answer your question. Often they can answer on the spot. However, if they cannot, you are given a track number and then followed up with. There have been times when I have had multiple track numbers open and they will actually TRACK YOU DOWN to ensure that your problem has been resolved. Issues do not fall into black holes with SAS. They are also willing to do a WebEx with you to diagnose the problem by seeing your environment, which is always helpful.
All others apps are enablers and Microsoft Power BI is the visual that end user sees which often adds more value to the end user to make strategic decisions from this. All are equally great but Microsoft Power BI is the end result
I have chosen SAS Visual Analytics because one of my colleagues suggests using the software for the same for our work. As earlier, we use to take a lot of time in analyzing the data but after using the SAS Visual Analytics software our work has improved and time has decreased. It's very helpful for us.
We're still early in the adoption process at this company, but we've illustrated how bad data keeps us from being more productive. ~25% of a team's work week was dedicated to effectively cleaning up entries, but it was always seen as a normal to them.
