Power BI and Excel have many similarities in functionality and data presentation. However, there are still many differences between Power BI and Excel .
Power BI is Microsoft's information analysis tool that helps you build dashboards and reports to quickly process millions of rows of data at once. On the contrary, Excel is also a software from Microsoft, integrating many tools and functions that you can use to calculate, repeat, predict and create charts and graphs.
Key differences between Power BI and Excel
Data size
- Power BI can process millions of rows at once at high speed.
- Excel has difficulty handling large data.
Cloud-based features
- In Power BI, when you complete a dashboard, you can export reports to end users via Microsoft cloud computing services.
- With Excel, you need to share large data with the dashboard via email or any online sharing tool.
illustration
- In Power BI, you have a variety of illustrations to design dashboards, including custom built-in ones.
- With Excel, this feature is quite limited and cannot be customized.
Table comparing the differences between Power BI and Microsoft Excel
|
Power BI |
Microsoft Excel |
Availability |
New product, not yet available to all users. |
Popular for a long time, available to every user. |
Learn how to use it |
Using Power BI is not easy, requiring you to have knowledge of formulas as well as how to use Power Query and Power Pivot DAX. |
Easy to understand usage. |
Price |
Free to download and for personal use, but it will cost you 10USD/month to share reports with others. |
You need to pay to use all Excel features. |
flexible |
Not flexible, especially when transferring data from Excel to Power BI. |
Flexible, create overview reports in a few steps with simple formulas.
|
Image |
Rich, allows importing files from outside and supports built-in image editing. |
Only some charts are available |
Customize charts |
Possible but not complete. |
Create other charts from existing charts. |
Dashboard interaction |
Slicer or rich filter: Cross-filter, by image level, report... |
There are slicers that make the dashboard interactive for users. |
Data scale |
Large volumes of data can be processed using the Power Pivot tool template. Importantly, it does not restrict any version of Excel or Office 365. |
Often unresponsive when dealing with large volumes of data. |
Accessible ability |
Not accessible everywhere unless you have a license. |
Access everywhere. |
Formula language |
Use DAX for formulas and functions. |
Use MDX. |
Data security |
Set data viewing restrictions. |
Data security is not guaranteed when shared. |
Data sources |
Power Query gets data from everywhere. |
Get data using Power Query. |
Above is the difference between Power BI and Microsoft Excel . Hopefully this article helps you make the most suitable choice for yourself.