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Power BI Alternatives in 2025 You Should Consider for Reporting

  • Denys Arkharov

    • There’s no doubt that Microsoft Power BI is an excellent product, as 1 out of 3 business intelligence specialists use this software on a daily basis. Other 2 out of 3 specialists, however, use Power BI alternatives. And there must be strong reasons for that.

    The general complexity of the tool (and user interface, in particular), difficulty in dealing with big data, and incompatibility of the desktop app with macOS are among the strongest arguments for switching to an alternative to Power BI. But what service for BI operations to choose? How would you know whether it’s better or worse than Power BI?

    Don’t worry! We are here to cover all these questions and provide decent alternatives to Power BI to streamline your business operations.

    Top 10 Power BI alternatives

    Even though Power BI provides data visualization, analysis, and business analytics functionality, it may not be suitable for each and every business because of the limitations listed above. So, let’s have a look at Power BI alternative services with a brief overview of their principal features and pricing models.

    AlternativeKey featuresBig Data supportmacOS supportPricing
    Looker Studio– Library of templates
    – Report sharing
    – Connectivity    		YesYesFree version.
    The Pro version starts from $9 per month
    Tableau– Integration
    – Security
    – Mobile version    		YesYesFree trial.
    Starting from $15 per month
    Zoho Analytics– Data preparation
    – Automatic analysis
    – User management    		NoYesFree 15-day trial.
    Starting from $24 per month
    Domo– Drill-down functionality
    – AI-powered insights
    – Alerts    		YesYesFree under 300 credits/month. Pay-as-you-go model applies.
    Sisense– Real-time analytics
    – AI-driven insights
    – Developer-friendly    		YesYesNo free trial.
    Pricing is available on request
    Holistics– Data exploration
    – Report sharing
    – Embedded analytics    		NoYesFree trial.
    Starts from $150 per month.
    Qlik Sense– Automated reports
    – AI-based recommendations
    – Predictive analytics    		YesYesFree trial.
    Starting from $20 per month.
    Metabase– Query builder
    – Auto-refreshing dashboards
    – Alerts    		NoYesFree trial.
    Starts from $85 per month.
    IBM Cognos– Data modeling
    – Data exploration
    – Data prediction    		YesYesFree trial.
    Starts from $10 per month.
    Mode– Python & R notebooks
    – SQL Editor 
    – Custom HTML dashboards    		YesYesFree version
    Pricing is available on request

    Being the most popular BI solution must have its grounds. So, let’s first explore the most powerful features of Power BI and then dive deeper into its limitations to understand what incites people to explore the Power BI alternatives.

    Power BI features:

    Power BI limitations:

    Alternatives to Power BI in 2025

    Now, it’s time to explore in detail each of the Power BI alternatives with a detailed overview of features. Note that such standard features as reporting, dashboards, and data visualization aren’t specified unless there are particular options associated with them.

    1: Looker Studio (Google Data Studio)

    Looker Studio, also known as Google Data Studio, is a web-based BI tool that builds informative dashboards and reports on the basis of data stored within other Google platforms (Search Console, Google Analytics, BigQuery, etc.) and third-party apps. Users can create those dashboards from scratch or rely on the templates provided directly within the tool. In fact, Looker Studio is one of the most powerful Microsoft Power BI alternatives due to the number of features it offers and the tasks involving big data it handles for making data-driven decisions.

    Key features:

    As you see, Looker Studio surpasses the drawbacks of Power BI because it has an easy-to-understand interface and tutorials to refer to. Also, it allows users to share dashboards and reports with external agents, which isn’t possible in Power BI.

    Pricing:

    The cost of Looker Studio depends on the selected service:

    Best for:

    Given that Looker Studio offers various pricing models, it suits different kinds of companies, including but not limited to:

    2: Tableau

    Tableau is the best alternative to Power BI and one of the key Looker Studio alternatives in terms of data visualization capabilities. The core idea behind the tool was to keep marketing, sales, and customer service specialists in mind and make BI functionality available for them. Nowadays, the platform has grown into a large enterprise solution used both by professional analysts as well as non-technical users.

    Tableau is available in multiple variations, where Desktop and Cloud versions are the most popular. Thanks to its powerful data visualization capabilities, it’s often used for KPI reporting and department performance metrics, and it’s often combined with other analytical tools for building complex data models. 

    Key features:

    Pricing:

    The cost of Tableau depends on the number of users and their typology:

    The Creator user has the most powerful set of permissions with all the available features and functions included. The Explore type is similar but with the difference in administrative and data preparation tasks. Explorers can connect to existing data sources and create new dashboards and reports. The Viewer user can only interact with already existing reports by observing them.

    Best for:

    3: Zoho Analytics

    Zoho Analytics is one of the applications developed in 2009 by Zoho Corporation. This is a powerful solution specializing in data analytics, data visualization, and business intelligence for marketing.

    Zoho Analytics perfectly integrates into the Zoho ecosystem as well as with some third-party tools. You can also upload spreadsheets and files with data for building informative dashboards and reports.

    The boost of popularity of Zoho Analytics owes not only to its BI features but support of 50+ different languages and cross-platform availability. It’s possible to install a desktop version of the app on Mac, Windows, and Linux. Zoho Analytics is also accessible via cloud or mobile devices on Android and iOS.

    Key features:

    Pricing:

    Zoho Analytics offers 4 principal plans, the prices for which depend on the number of users and data volume.

    Best for:

    4: Domo

    Domo is a completely cloud-based platform for business intelligence, analytics, and data visualization. This Power BI alternative helps companies gather raw data from cloud apps as well as on-premises legacy systems to drive actionable insights out of it.

    In contrast to other BI and data visualization platforms, Domo provides a high degree of customization for creating visual graphs and charts. It also allows users to incorporate artificial intelligence and machine learning functionality to make predictions using available data.

    Key features:

    Pricing:

    The service is free to use under 300 credits/month; the Standard package cost starts at $300/month. There are also custom solutions and pricing for organizations with high volume utilization and a large number of users. As Domo is a cloud-based solution, the pricing is based on the pay-as-you-go model. 

    Best for:

    5: Sisense

    Sisense is another alternative to Microsoft Power BI for building AI-powered analytics. Gartner Magic Quadrant for BI and analytics named Sisense the best business intelligence tool for the completeness of vision.

    This solution is particularly dedicated to working with big data sets and streams of data. It can process large amounts of data, visualize the key idea, and provide hints on the way to smart business decisions.

    Key features:

    Pricing:

    Sisense offers totally customized plans for each particular organization. You need to fill in the form to get the quote and further discuss the details of your deal.

    Best for:

    6: Holistics

    Holistics self-service BI platform is among Power BI alternatives that keep non-technical users in mind. It allows them to explore data and create refined reports with a drag-and-drop interface and no code at all. 

    Even being a friendly solution for non-techs, Holistics offers a set of other tools dedicated to developers and professional analysts. They allow such users to define custom data logic with Python code and embed analytics reports into other applications.

    Key features:

    Pricing:

    Sisense has the following plans:

    Best for:

    7: Qlik Sense

    Qlik Sense is a cloud-based business intelligence platform designed to transform your business. Unlike other Power BI alternatives, Qlik Sense doesn’t use a standard query-based system but relies on its own associative analytics language. Its power is augmented with embedded artificial intelligence algorithms, which help to find the best chart types and discover the meaning of your data. Qlik Sense is also adapted to work with large amounts of data by summarizing it and pinpointing outliers on powerful visual graphs.

    Key features:

    Pricing:

    Qlik Sense offers three main pricing models:

    Suits best:

    8: Metabase

    Metabase is an open-source Power BI alternative that provides powerful data querying and visualization functionality. This tool is commonly used by developers and BI specialists with advanced experience to explore data, create meaningful reports, and analyze key metrics for business.

    Key features:

    Pricing:

    Metabase provides three types of pricing plans:

    Suits best:

    9: IBM Cognos

    IBM Cognos is an all-in-one BI tool that helps you manage the entire analytics cycle, providing predictive, descriptive, and prognostic analytics in one place. This service relies on artificial intelligence to clean and aggregate your data in the same environment. So you’ll have more time to explore your data rather than spending time preparing it.

    Key features:

    Pricing:

    Suits best:

    10: Mode BI

    Mode is an SQL-based BI tool with a focus on data querying, visualization, and sharing. It’s claimed that data analysts have created this tool for analysts ? As a Power BI alternative, Mode can boast some peculiar features such as SQL editor, Python and R notebooks, collaborative report editing, and so on. 

    In terms of data visualization, Mode has some built-in charting options. At the same time, you can integrate it with JS libraries or use HTML to create custom interactive dashboards like this one. 

    Key features:

    Pricing:

    Suits best:

    The main rival – Tableau

    Most businesses, after a lot of exploring and eliminating, usually find themselves debating between two major players: Power BI vs Tableau. Both are robust BI tools that serve most businesses exceptionally well, making the choice even more challenging.

    Power BITableau
    OwnershipMicrosoft CorporationSalesforce
    CollaborationGood with Office 365 integration. The setup can be complex for Mac usersCollaborate easily with Tableau Server and Tableau Online. It can be used on any OS
    Functions and their typesDAX and M languageCalculated fields using built-in functions
    Data VisualizationRobust and easy for beginners. It comes with 41 default visualsRobust and more flexible to experiment. It comes with 21 default visuals
    Data modelingSimplified data modelsComplex data models
    Advanced VisualsExtensive variety of advanced visuals (~521)Limited compared to Power BI (~50+)
    Number of data sourcesSupports a wide range of data sources (~185)Supports a good number (~80+) of data sources
    Data cleaningUses Power QueryUses Tableau Prep and third-party tools like Alteryx
    AIInteractive AI feature – Power BI Q&A generates insights from reportsThe Ask Data AI feature allows you to ask a question about the existing database and will answer with a visualization
    Mobile user interfaceGood mobile interfaceStrong mobile capabilities – uses different layouts for different phone screens
    Data sizeLimited by the capacity of Power BI service (max: 100 TB)Handles large datasets better
    PerformanceFaster with smaller datasetsIt can be slower but better for large datasets
    CustomizationLimited customizationHighly customizable
    Software updatesMonthly updatesQuarterly updates
    TutorialsFree PowerBI video training modules are availableFree Tableau video training modules are available
    PricingStarts from $10 per monthStarts from $70 per month

    Tableau vs Power BI: pros and cons in a detailed overview

    Understanding the pros and cons of both tools can help you assess them better. So, let’s get into the details by comparing the pros and cons of Tableau vs Power BI individually. 

    Tableau overview

    Tableau is a visual analytics platform owned by Salesforce. It manages the data flow and turns data into actionable information. It comes with a limited number of dashboard templates but a wide range of visualization elements encouraging the users to experiment. Tableau is more dynamic and flexible when compared to Power BI.

    Tableau Pros:
    Tableau Cons:

    In short, Tableau can handle large datasets with ease, is mobile-friendly, and supports both Windows and MacOS. But it is expensive, with limited software updates and a steep learning curve for beginners.

    Power BI overview

    Power BI is a business analytics service. It has a robust front end that allows you to visualize data more easily. You can also analyze, visualize, and extract insights to share them across various departments of your organization. As Power BI is built and owned by Microsoft, it can be an excellent choice for someone already using other Microsoft products like Teams, Outlook, Sharepoint, and more.

    Power BI Pros:
    Power BI Cons:

    To conclude, Power BI is a good choice for beginner data analysts. It will help you get on your feet quickly with its easy-to-use interface, pre-built dashboards, and affordable plans. The major drawback is it cannot handle large datasets, resulting in slow performance.

    Tableau vs Power BI: Products

    Both Tableau and Power BI have a range of products, specializing in visual analytics and business intelligence for marketing.

    Tableau Products

    Power BI Products

    After getting a fair idea of Tableau and Power BI products, let’s jump in to compare Tableau vs Power BI in other aspects like visualization, pricing, ease of use and more.

    Tableau vs Power BI: Visualization

    Tableau visualization

    Tableau is more customizable, with fewer pre-built templates. But it comes with various visualization formats like heat maps, waterfall charts, bar charts, and network graphs. 

    In most scenarios, you need to build reports and dashboards from scratch on Tableau. This might take more time, but will help you explore different functionalities of the business analytics software.

    For example, assume you are building a sales dashboard with Excel spreadsheets. First, you must import the data from Excel to Tableau and transform it using Tableau Prep or a third-party tool.

    After that, you create individual visualizations like bar graphs, trends, and more. It is now time to place all these visualizations appealingly and intuitively. 

    The process can eat up a lot of your time – checking for font style, size, and colors and going through multiple iterations to place these visualizations on a dashboard.

    On the brighter side, Tableau has advanced mapping capabilities to visualize geographical data. They offer custom visualizations like creating geographical layers, highlighting visual clusters, and showing a path over time.

    Tableau also has a hierarchical drill-down feature where you dig deep into data within a single chart or map without switching tabs. For example, looking at sales reports, you can dig deep into total revenue ? revenue from categories ? revenue from subcategories.

    Power BI visualization

    Power BI has pre-built visualization templates that can be used to create reports and dashboards quickly. 

    Let’s consider creating a sales report again. Once you load your data into Power BI, click anywhere on the blank canvas to see a Q&A pop-up. 

    Type in the report you are looking for in the Q&A. 

    For example, top geo states by sum of revenue.

    Another visualization example is the sum of revenue for VanArsdel as a column chart.

    Now, arrange all the Q&A visualizations on the canvas.

    You can also format and customize the complete canvas at once or individual visuals using the settings on the right side of the canvas.

    Power BI also has mapping and hierarchical drill-down capabilities but with limited customization. If you are looking to create interactive and intuitive reports quickly and easily, then Power BI is your go-to choice.

    But if your priority is to have more flexibility to customize your reports and dashboards, then you can consider Tableau for your data visualization needs. Check out some useful Tableau dashboard examples.

    Tableau vs Power BI: Pricing

    Tableau pricing

    Tableau hasn’t mentioned its pricing on the website now. Earlier, the subscription plans started from $70 per month. There are three plans:

    To subscribe to any of the above plans, contact sales. Tableau does not offer a free version but provides a 14-day free trial.

    Power BI pricing

    Power BI pricing plans are less expensive and affordable to small businesses as well. There are five plans:

    Overall, Power BI is more affordable to get started with, whereas Tableau is expensive.

    Tableau vs Power BI: Market share

    Tableau Market Share

    Tableau was launched in early 2003 in California. It currently holds 15.69% of the market share in the data visualization industry, with 70,474 current customers. Geographically, most of Tableau’s customers are from the United States.

    Power BI Market Share

    Power BI is relatively new in the market. It was launched in 2015 and holds 15.63% of the market share in the data visualization industry, with 70,221 current customers. Similar to Tableau, most Power BI customers are from the United States.

    Tableau vs Power BI: Ease of use

    Tableau

    The workspace layout has ‘shelves’ and ‘cards’, which can be confusing. Unlike Power BI’s ribbon, Tableau has a single-line toolbar. It gives you more space on the canvas, but may take some time to learn the icons and functions.

    Once you get past the initial learning curve, Tableau has various customization options like parameter control, data blending, conditional formatting, themes, and more.

    Power BI

    It has a structured environment and is easy to use for beginners. The ribbon interface is similar to Excel and Outlook, making it easy to find options. The tabs and icons are also easy to identify without complexity.

    The drag-and-drop functionality is also quite convenient with ‘Fields,’ ‘Visualizations’, and ‘Format’ in the side panes. Additionally, Power BI has templates for reports, which you can edit and customize accordingly.

    Finally, when it comes to user-friendly interfaces, the Tableau vs Power BI comparison leans in favor of Tableau.

    Which Power BI alternative to choose?

    From startups to large enterprises, almost every organization implements a BI tool as it helps to see how the business performs at present and derive data-driven insights for the future. Power BI is no doubt one of the top BI tools on the market, but it doesn’t suit every corporation or firm. So, in this article, we have provided a detailed overview of 10 powerful Power BI alternatives.

    Even though all the presented solutions are very similar in terms of providing powerful visualization and reporting capabilities, each of them has distinctive features. For instance, Tableau has a very democratic pricing model and offers the macOS desktop app, so might be very convenient for Mac business users. Zoho Analytics might be extremely convenient for those who rely on Zoho products in their daily workflows. Meanwhile, Looker Studio and Sisense show outstanding results when working with big data sets and real-time analytics.

    While most BI tools have their own integration mechanisms to ingest data from databases, cloud apps, etc., may not be enough to bring all the necessary data for analysis. Thus, here comes the Coupler.io automation and analytics platform that easily connects to multiple sources and automatically transfers data from them to most of the BI tools presented in this article.

    Overall, it’s up to you to decide which of the Power BI alternatives works best for you. Everything depends on your business objectives, workflows, and budget!

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