Based on 53 verified reviews published in the last 18 months
TrustRadius Community Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when relevant, HG Insights data.
Overview
Synthesised from 53 reviews | Last Published April 23, 2026
This product assessment is based on a synthesis of 53 recent reviews analyzing Microsoft Power BI across multiple dimensions. Microsoft Power BI is a business intelligence platform primarily used for data visualization and analysis. A significant portion of users, 34% of reviewers, praise its data visualization capabilities, specifically the ability to create dynamic dashboards and reports. The platform's data integration features are also highly valued, with 23% of reviewers appreciating its capacity to consolidate data from multiple sources, including databases and cloud services. Furthermore, its ease of use is also a frequently cited advantage, with 21% noting its accessibility for non-developers. While Power BI is well-regarded, alternatives such as Tableau Desktop (11% of reviewers) and Looker (9% of reviewers) are also considered by users.
Pros
Robust data visualization capabilities for creating insightful dashboards and reports (34% of reviewers).
Strong data integration features, allowing consolidation from multiple sources (23% of reviewers).
User-friendly interface, making it accessible for non-developers (21% of reviewers).
Effective dashboard and reporting functionalities (17% of reviewers).
Seamless integration with other Microsoft products like SQL Server and Excel (13% of reviewers).
Microsoft Power BI is used in 2 ways in my org. First one is to connect to backend data in some database and then to create insights using in built visuals. And another way is to convert raw data in excel or csv files into Power Query and that doing some data transformations and then build visuals on top of it.
Pros
In Built Visuals
Powerfull Power Query engine
Powerful DAX engine which can be used to write complex measures
Cons
More visuals are always welcome
UX could be more intuitive
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft Power BI is well suited for dashboarding. Also it is well suited where you have data in csv or excel format and then you want to do some transformations first before building dashboards.
However it is not that suitable if you have a very big data size.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)
We use Microsoft Power BI to prepare reports from our ITSM tool. We track ticket SLA, user feedback, MTTR etc. We use the report to identify top problems or top cause of high-ticket count and get the issue resolved. Meanwhile, we also ensure that user who raise tickets are satisfied with our service.
Pros
Importing Data
Preparing reports
DAX formulas
Cons
Report colors are outdated, and they need to be revamped.
Formatting charts is very confusing.
DAX queries are very technical. They can be simplified.
Likelihood to Recommend
It is well suited if - You want to the report to refresh automatically according to connected report. - You are ready for a higher learning curve like creating calculated column.
It is less suited if - You are looking for better themes for creating report. - You are seeing Microsoft Power BI as an ETL tool.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (10,001+ employees)
We use Microsoft Power BI to create dashboards and visualizations across the organisation. These are used across the business by various stakeholders. We pull data from various data tables from Microsoft SQL server and then create visualizations straight into Microsoft Power BI. This can correspond to subscriber engagement, user engagement, business KPIs, historical trends etc.
Pros
Great for integration with broader Microsoft Ecosystem (SQL server, excel, etc).
Visualization options are straightforward and easy to use.
Quite affordable in comparison to competitors.
Power Query built in.
Cons
Limits when exporting data into an excel file.
No version control
Visualizations could be prettier.
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft Power BI is an intuitive tool. It is great to start with especially if a company is already familiar with the overall Microsoft ecosystem. Intuitive interface with drag and drop which allow users to quickly build dashboards and visualizations on their own. Microsoft Power BI is less advanced/customable than other competitors such as Tableau or Looker but is cheaper.
We use Microsoft Power BI to create dashboards, visualize and analyze data, and share it with colleagues. Its most important uses are in business intelligence, making data-driven decisions more straightforward, and getting insights within organized data. Microsoft Power BI has a vast scope since it has integrity with AI power tools. AI makes it more efficient and less time-consuming, making it one of the industry's most popular data-driven decision-making tools.
Pros
Microsoft Power BI easily integrates with various data source platforms like Oracle database, SQL server, cloud services like sales force, and Google data analytics.
One of the best features is the power query to remove duplicate values, to standardize date formats, and to fill in missing values.
It seamlessly integrates with Microsoft products like Excel, SharePoint, and Microsoft Team.
Power BI has many AI-powered tools to predict anomalies and integrate with machine learning tools.
Cons
Sometimes it is quite difficult to figure out the dax.
If the data set is large the power bi performance is decrease.
Cost of advance feature is high.
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft Power BI is best when it is used in financial data analytics, customer analytics, sales team performance, medical and health care data analytics, and monitoring the campaign of marketing teams using platforms like Google Data Analytics, Facebook Ads, etc. However, it is less suitable for high-volume machine learning data integration and big data-related projects.
Complex calculations and pulling data from multiple sources or objects. We use it when Salesforce reporting becomes insufficient to show the number of data points we want in a single view. It is also helpful when we need to use more than one source of data such as spreadsheets alongside Salesforce for example.
Pros
Visualizations
Calculated Measurements
On-demand Data Filtering
Cons
Low Approachability
Lack of No-code solutions (DAX is still code)
Overly complex subscription system
Likelihood to Recommend
Any time you need to have a complex dashboard with numerous cuts of data that needs to be aggregated, Powerbi is absolutely a go-to. I do not recommend it for simple reports that can be done directly in your CRM but if a large amount of data needs to be crunched and manipulated, PBI is the way to go.
Microsoft Power BI is great tool for analysis and visualization, it helps to turn data into visualization. It helps to visualize their data using dashboard creation and biggest advantage is that its handle's the same data as Excel.
Pros
It provides advanced customization features which allow analysis of big data easily and efficiently.
It helps users to create live graphs and report and present them to stockholders.
It comes with a mobile application which helps the visualization remotely and effectively
Cons
The integration with R and phyton is extremely clunky and often couldn't display the plot if there were too many data points in it.
Updates seem to occur without notice or warning and break the dashboard
Likelihood to Recommend
That you do not need coding experience to create meaningful insights with your data. 2) That it integrates well with our data warehouse in MSFT Azure 3) If you have the highest license, you can share your dashboards with people who do not have a license so that they can use them.
First and foremost is the visual presentation of Sales Data for current month, last month, last year and YoY growth. Apart from that providing access ro data is not feasible earlier due to limited capacity of MS-Excel. The scalability and transition of data into visuals were not that smooth and accessible in MS-Excel.
Pros
Data Sync
Visualization
Scalability
Row level security
Cons
Updates in UI
Free Visualization
More Background Themes
Likelihood to Recommend
For microsoft user who works on ms office for so many years are well versed with microsoft so any basic technical term is easy to understand. This helps a lot to a beginner. I migrated most of my past data from csv or xlsx files into Microsoft Power BI which was east though making relationships was quite a tough task. But as time progress we can do it in Microsoft Power BI more eaaily. Some updates are very useful for a user.
We use Power BI across our organization to track many aspects of our product, performance, and sales. It is a great tool for accessing, combining and visualizing data from many different sources.
Pros
Data connects many other products
Easy to manipulate data to suit different uses
Very robust, yet still easy to navigate
Cons
Sometimes the web app version moves slowly or doesn't seem to update effectively
There is some functionality only available in desktop version
Likelihood to Recommend
It is a great tool where metrics and data are crucial to your organization. Everything is accessible in one interface and allows you to get a better grasp on many different data sets. You are able to build reports, with many different filters, and customize them completely to suit your organization's needs.
I have used [Microsoft] Power BI Desktop with the Power BI Service on the cloud as a component of IT solutions for businesses and organizations[.] The main use of [Microsoft] Power BI is to create reports and share them on the web for embedding in websites and applications. The more advanced uses of [Microsoft] Power BI, like analytics for example, are less required by companies.
Pros
Nice graphic reports
Sharing reports on the web to be embedded with iFrames
Friendly interface and simple steps to make a report and publish it on Power BI Service on the cloud
Easy and simple integration with Microsoft Ecosystem
Cons
Shared web reports (to external users via iFrame) are not really responsive, they can just resize automatically
The integration with Azure is tricky to achieve some configurations (for example, security settings)
Power Query is a waste of time and can be replaced by database queries and procedures
Likelihood to Recommend
[Microsoft] Power BI is very useful to make cool reports from the scratch with just a little of knowledge, gathering data from a lot of sources.
Power Query is not the most efficient tool to prepare data neither to analyze it. Power Query language is very complex an the final result can easily be achieved using standard SQL [when] working on a database source, or using other tools like [Python] with Elastic Search.
[Microsoft] Power BI was used at Conga mainly as a data visualization tool, while also using it as a repository for data from multiple systems. We used Snowflake to combine data from different systems and then housed everything in [Microsoft] Power BI. We could use data pulls to put together our weekly board deck, as well as to simply provide simple charts for all different teams throughout the entire sales process.
Pros
It's ability to store massive amounts of data allowed it to be a useful resource for multiple teams
Multiple different charts and graphs were available, making it far more visually stimulating than Salesforce native functionality
Data pulls are seamless and show up in easy formatting
Cons
A slightly clunky user interface, makes most end users fear building anything themselves
3rd party api syncs seem to be a pretty heavy lift to set up
The overall set up when building a report is intimidating, and some buttons aren't clear, so hovering over all of them to see their labels can be time consuming and annoying
Likelihood to Recommend
[Microsoft] Power BI seems to sit slightly in the middle of the road as a data aggregation and visualization tool. It has the look and feel of an old tool that should be mastered by now, but it's output does not seem to match that. Our team had to constantly fix errors and bugs, which is not what you are looking for from a tool coming from Microsoft. On the other side, it isn't as user friendly or pretty as a tool like Domo. It somewhat lies in the middle on both functionality and user experience.
