Microsoft Power BI vs ThoughtSpot comparison

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34,187 views|29,049 comparisons
92% willing to recommend
ThoughtSpot Logo
2,000 views|1,530 comparisons
87% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Microsoft Power BI and ThoughtSpot based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two BI (Business Intelligence) Tools solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Power BI vs. ThoughtSpot Report (Updated: March 2024).
768,857 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"There was a lot of manual work involved with Excel, whereas once we moved on to Microsoft Power BI, it was a cleaner dashboard and it was faster too.""The product is easy to use and simple to navigate.""The most valuable feature is shareability, where we can publish work to the cloud and share it with team members.""Premium features that used to cost $5,000 per company per month recently became a lot more accessible. Microsoft recently implemented a per user feature in Power BI Premium; it's $20 per month.""When we are introducing Microsoft BI to our clients, if they're familiar with Excel, the transition phase will be much easier for them. They can easily switch from Microsoft Excel to Microsoft BI. The core foundation or the base technology is the same in both tools. There are a few limitations in Microsoft Excel, and this is where Microsoft BI comes in.""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.""We like the drag and drop interactability visualization. We really like that. It's user-friendly.""The solution is very intuitive, you do not need to have too much programming knowledge to use it. Advanced Excel users can use it very easily."

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"The ability to do ad hoc explorations of data has been most valuable.""It is easy to set up the solution.""It's easy to drill down or expand data to get more details right out of the box.""The scalability is good.""The initial setup was very straightforward.""ThoughtSpot takes the modifying of existing reports out of our hands.""I would say the return on investment is good. Whatever we invested, we got results. We have been finding it easy to use and onboard new use cases.""I like ThoughtSpot's search capabilities. You can also create custom analytics even if you aren't an experienced data analyst. We have users with no data analytics experience making some of the dashboards we've created, copying components, and customizing them to their specific use cases."

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Cons
"Power BI's drillthrough feature could be improved. I didn't like drillthrough and those options much, but I did like it in MicroStrategy.""I cannot comment on the stability as we haven't yet used it for a big project.""I would like it to be a little bit more secure when I'm using the design feature on my desktop. For example, to have the ability to set up security passwords for opening the file. Currently, they don't have that. Tableau, for example, has a visual way of doing data processing steps, whereas the Power BI system still has some code, although it is very low code. It would be great to have the kind of view that Tableau has.""We haven't used it that long and I haven't come across anything that's stood out as needing to be fixed.""Microsoft BI lacks integration capabilities, so it needs to consider increasing its integration capabilities.""If I compare it to Tableau, I'd say the visualizations can be better. We should have multiple options. By that I mean, while there are multiple options for the visualization, the look and feel of the dashboard when you compare to Tableau is on the lower side. Tableau has a much better visualization.""The UI is the main improvement that could be made. Specifically, there is something called DAX, in Power BI, which is complicated compared to calculated fields used in Tableau.""I would like to be able to use SQL properly within the reports and allow multiple people to work on the same report at the same time. If one person is working on it, then it causes issues for anyone else wanting to make reports."

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"In terms of features, I'd like to be able to pivot data - for example, going from rows to columns. It's not easy to do.""ThoughtSpot is a fairly new product, so some usability aspects aren't as mature as we'd like them to be. One example is their organizational methodology, like how objects are organized in their dashboards inside the product. They're all on a flat list, which works if you've got five or 10 dashboards. However, it's insufficient when you're a large enterprise with multiple groups looking at the same dashboards. It isn't organized well.""I would like to see more flexibility in adding the pins. Currently, we have four different sizes in which I can add pins, but I would like to be able to resize my pins.""The dashboards could give you more ability to fine tune the appearance. You get a great deal more control over how something looks in Power BI than you do in ThoughtSpot.""If I want to order columns, this feature is not there.""The one area of the solution that I do hear needs improvement is on the visualization front.""The most difficult thing I found is that it only deals with the files and does not have direct connectivity to databases.""A customized visualization is lacking in this product."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "There is room for at least 45% discount as compared to the initial price."
  • "MS BI comes with all the tools and it is, to the best of my knowledge, the most affordable solution."
  • "All in all, for the price, this is an excellent tool for helping your organization turn mounds of data into useful insights."
  • "I would advise that Microsoft BI products are rightly priced and the licensing is easy to follow and to fulfill."
  • "Remove the cost of a licence to show a dashboard within SharePoint. Why should readers of a dashboard have to pay to view? ​"
  • "Make it low in cost. It is a no-brainer!"
  • "Globally, we evaluated a number of products, including Salesforce's product, Microsoft won on the ground of simple functionally and cost."
  • "Paid for itself in the first month."
  • More Microsoft Power BI Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "I give the pricing a six out of ten."
  • More ThoughtSpot Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Comparison Review
    Anonymous User
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer:It's easy to drill down or expand data to get more details right out of the box.
    Top Answer:I like the pricing structure. I get billed by how much data I put in, not how many people are looking at the data. It's better for me as I can control pricing a bit more easily.
    Top Answer:We'd like more flexibility with the calendar as our fiscal year does not align with the calendar year. We have to load or create our own custom calendar to actually need our fiscal year-end. With… more »
    Ranking
    Views
    34,187
    Comparisons
    29,049
    Reviews
    23
    Average Words per Review
    553
    Rating
    7.9
    Views
    2,000
    Comparisons
    1,530
    Reviews
    8
    Average Words per Review
    783
    Rating
    7.5
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    SSRS, SSAS, MSBI, MS Reporting Services, Microsoft BI Tools, Microsoft Big Data, Power BI Pro, MS BI
    Learn More
    Overview

    Microsoft Power BI is a powerful tool for data analysis and visualization. This tool stands out for its ability to merge and analyze data from various sources. Widely adopted across different industries and departments, Power BI is instrumental in creating visually appealing dashboards and generating insightful business intelligence reports. Its intuitive interface, robust visualization capabilities, and seamless integration with other Microsoft applications empower users to easily create interactive reports and gain valuable insights.

    ThoughtSpot is a powerful business intelligence tool that allows easy searching and drilling into data. Its ad hoc exploration and query-based search features are highly valued, and it is easy to set up, stable, and scalable. 

    The solution is used for reporting purposes, self-service BI, and embedding into other applications for customers to do self-service analytics. It helps businesses with metrics, KPIs, and important insights by sourcing data from various sources into one golden source and visualizing it in an easy way for the business to consume. The pricing model is ideal, charging for data rather than the number of users.

    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
    Primary Capital Mortgage, Sterling Backcheck, RichRelevance, Rambus, Batteries Plus Bulbs
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm15%
    Manufacturing Company13%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Energy/Utilities Company9%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Educational Organization35%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Computer Software Company8%
    Government5%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm24%
    Computer Software Company11%
    Manufacturing Company11%
    Healthcare Company7%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business39%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise45%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business14%
    Midsize Enterprise41%
    Large Enterprise45%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business13%
    Large Enterprise88%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business13%
    Midsize Enterprise9%
    Large Enterprise78%
    Buyer's Guide
    Microsoft Power BI vs. ThoughtSpot
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Power BI vs. ThoughtSpot and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    768,857 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Microsoft Power BI is ranked 1st in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 297 reviews while ThoughtSpot is ranked 15th in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools with 8 reviews. Microsoft Power BI is rated 8.0, while ThoughtSpot is rated 7.6. The top reviewer of Microsoft Power BI writes "A complete ecosystem with an builtin ETL tool, good integrations with python and R, and support of DAX and Power Query (M languages)". On the other hand, the top reviewer of ThoughtSpot writes "You can drill down into any data right out of the box, with a straightforward deployment, and great support". Microsoft Power BI is most compared with Tableau, Amazon QuickSight, KNIME, Domo and Oracle OBIEE, whereas ThoughtSpot is most compared with Tableau, Looker, Amazon QuickSight, Mode Analytics and Apache Superset. See our Microsoft Power BI vs. ThoughtSpot report.

    See our list of best BI (Business Intelligence) Tools vendors.

    We monitor all BI (Business Intelligence) Tools reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.