Power BI
What it is: Microsoft's business intelligence platform. Tight integration with Excel, Office 365, Azure.
What It Does Best
Excel user-friendly. If you know pivot tables, you'll understand Power BI. Natural transition from spreadsheets.
Power Query for ETL. Same data transformation engine as Excel. Clean and prep data before visualizing.
DAX formulas. Excel-like calculated columns and measures. Learning curve but powerful once mastered.
Pricing
Power BI Desktop: Free (full authoring, local only)
Power BI Pro: $10/user/month (sharing, collaboration)
Power BI Premium: $20/user/month or $4,995/month capacity
When to Use It
✅ You're already in Microsoft ecosystem
✅ Budget-conscious (much cheaper than Tableau)
✅ Excel power users on your team
✅ Need Azure data source integration
When NOT to Use It
❌ Non-Microsoft shop (Google, AWS focused)
❌ Need pixel-perfect custom designs (Tableau better)
❌ Very large datasets (performance issues above 1-2M rows without Premium)
Bottom line: Best value for money if you're in Microsoft's world. $10/month vs $75/month for Tableau. Does 80% of what Tableau does at 13% of the cost.