Insights vs Power BI: What are the differences?

Introduction

Insights and Power BI are both powerful data visualization tools used for analyzing and presenting data. However, there are key differences between the two.

1. Data Sources: Insights primarily connects with a wide range of databases, including popular ones like MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, and more. On the other hand, Power BI supports connectivity to various data sources, including cloud services like Azure, SharePoint, and on-premises data sources like SQL Server, Excel, and CSV files.

2. Data Preparation: Insights provides a streamlined and simplified approach to data preparation, allowing users to transform and clean data with an intuitive interface. In Power BI, users can perform data preparation tasks using Power Query, a powerful data transformation tool that offers a more robust and flexible approach to data preparation.

3. Visualization Capabilities: Power BI offers a vast array of visualization options, including various charts, graphs, maps, and custom visualizations created by the Power BI community. Insights, on the other hand, provides a more limited set of visualization options, focusing more on automatic insights and narrative storytelling.

4. Collaboration and Sharing: Power BI offers extensive collaboration and sharing capabilities, allowing users to collaborate on reports and dashboards, share them with others, and publish them to the Power BI service for broader access. Insights, on the other hand, primarily focuses on generating insights and reports for individual users, with limited collaboration and sharing capabilities.

5. Natural Language Query: Power BI integrates natural language capabilities, allowing users to ask questions in plain English and the tool will generate relevant visualizations based on the query. Insights, on the other hand, does not have robust natural language query capabilities.

6. Advanced Analytics: Power BI offers advanced analytics features like predictive analytics, clustering, and anomaly detection through integration with Azure Machine Learning. Insights does not have built-in advanced analytics capabilities.

In Summary, Insights and Power BI differ in terms of supported data sources, data preparation options, visualization capabilities, collaboration features, natural language query capabilities, and advanced analytics integration.