Power BI vs. Excel: Which is Better for Data Visualization?

Are you leaving money on the table? In today’s data-driven world, you will fall behind if you don’t leverage advanced data analytics.

You might miss crucial insights and make decisions based on your gut feelings instead of the facts.  These decisions taken based on guts might drop your productivity gains.

Feel like you’re not getting the most out of your data? Trust me, I get you. 

As a Data Analyst, I’ve been in trenches, fighting with the same question: “Which are the best data visualization tools?”

However, Power BI and Excel are two of the best tools available.

The decision to work with one of these two can feel overwhelming. This decision can either make or break your ability to turn raw data into actionable insights.

In this blog, I’ll do the necessary groundwork to help you choose the best by comparing Power BI vs Excel.

• Overview of Power BI
• Overview of Excel
• Differences Between Excel vs Power BI
• Benefits of Power BI Over Excel: How it Holds the Upper Hand?
• Benefits of Excel vs Power BI: How it Holds the Upper Hand?
• Why use Power BI: 3 Deciding Points to Know
• Why use Excel: 3 Deciding Points to Know
• Power BI vs Excel: Who Wins the Race?
• Frequently Asked Questions

Microsoft Power BI is one of the popular business intelligence and big data visualization techniques and tools that transform raw data into interactive dashboards.

It helps you get enterprise-level insights for informed decision-making.

Core Functionalities of Power BI

1. Visualization

You can create intuitive reports using the drag-and-drop option offered by Power BI. Moreover Power BI also allows you to build visuals using a variety of customizable visuals.

2. Data Integration

Power BI allows you to connect with diverse sources like databases, cloud services and Excel files.

3. Collaboration and Sharing

Using Power BI, you can share insights across organizations using web and mobile apps to enable data exploration.

4. Intelligent Analytics

For efficient data analysis, you should use embedded AI features like Natural Language query, anomaly detection, and automated insights.

Microsoft Excel is a widely used spreadsheet application in the Microsoft Office suite. It helps you organize, analyze and store data.

It helps you present the data in a tabular format and is suitable for various tasks, from basic data entry to complex statistical analysis.

Core Functionalities of Excel

1. Data Management

One of Excel's best features is “Data Management,” which allows you to organize and store data within spreadsheets using rows and columns.

2. Calculations

You can also use the built-in formulas to perform various calculations, derive insights, and automate repetitive tasks.

3. Visualizations

Using Excel, you can create charts and graphs to visually represent data and communicate the findings effectively.

4. Customization

Lastly, Excel’s pre-built templates can be used for common tasks and VBAs to develop custom solutions.

Next, let us understand the difference between Excel and Power BI.

Let's talk about the benefits of Power BI over Excel.

Power BI offers many benefits, but the below benefits hold the upper hand against Excel.

1. Handles Large Datasets

You can manage and analyze massive amounts of data, even with millions of rows. Power BI uses a compression algorithm to import cache data to help you analyze large datasets.

2. Real-Time Data Insights

Power BI can connect with vast data sources to provide up-to-the-minute analytics and dashboards. Moreover, it can automatically refresh reports and visualizations when new data comes in to serve you with the latest insights.

3. Interactive Visualizations

One of the vivid features of Power BI is its dynamic, interactive and linked visualizations. You can filter, sort and navigate between visuals to identify data from different angles to gain deeper understanding.

4. Collaboration

Lastly, Power BI provides superior collaboration features compared to Excel, thus allowing you to share dashboards and reports. Its cloud-based services enable collaborative data analysis across organizations.

This was about the benefits of Power BI over Excel, but do you know how conventional data visualization tools like Excel ace over Power BI?

In the below section, I’ll talk about the benefits of Excel over Power BI.

Excel offers many benefits, but the below benefits of Power BI hold the upper hand against Power BI.

1. Flexibility and Customization

Excel offers great flexibility and customization. You can completely control formatting, styling and data arrangement, allowing you to design Excel spreadsheets for specific needs and use cases.

2. Familiarity

Excel is a more common and familiar tool for many users thus making it a handy tool. Its simplicity and familiarity make it easy to work with data in spreadsheets.

3. Ease of Use for Smaller Datasets

Out of all data visualization tools, Excel is more intuitive for simple tasks and is well-suited for ad-hoc analysis. Moreover, Excel can enable data manipulation and analysis on a smaller scale.

4. More Operations with Data

Lastly, Excel offers more operations with data than Power BI. Simply put, it has more diverse functionality and is the go-to choice for expert data analysis.

While discussing the difference between Excel and Power BI, I would also like to highlight why you should use Power BI instead of Excel.

Microsoft Power BI is a data analytics and reporting tool that helps you visualize raw data and present actionable information.

Below are the five reasons to use Power BI over Excel:

1. High-Level Analytics

Power BI excels at offering comprehensive business analytics, making it easier to identify trends and insights in data.

It is more feasible for enterprise-level data to offer responsive visualization and modeling.

2. Real-Time Data Analytics

Being a modern-day data visualization tool, Power BI can connect live data sources to offer up-to-the-minute information and insights.

3. AI Integration

Power BI brings together AI and Business intelligence through its Quick Insights Tools. With this powerful blend analysis, you can gain better insights into your data.

Now that we’ve discussed why you should use Power BI instead of Excel let me explain why you should use Excel instead of Power BI.

1. Cost and Accessibility

Excel is part of the MS Office Suite, which makes it more readily accessible and cost-effective for users.

2. Ad-hoc Analysis and Calculations

Excel is beneficial for ad hoc analysis and calculations. It can also organize data, transform it and perform mathematical operations.

3. Smaller Datasets

As a data visualization tool, Excel is more effective for manipulating and formatting smaller datasets. Its workbook can load up to 1 million rows and 16,000 columns per worksheet.

When we talk about Data visualization, both these data visualization tools are useful in different areas.

Power BI is the best choice for large companies working with large amounts of data and creating interactive charts.

I recommend Excel if you’re dealing with a small amount of data and need to make frequent changes.

Choosing the best between Power BI and Excel depends on your needs. Knowing what each one does best can help you use the data effectively.

1. What’s the main difference between Power BI and Excel for handling data?

Power BI is better at handling large amounts of data (up to 1 million rows). However, if you have limited data, I recommend using Excel.

2. Which is better for making charts: Power BI or Excel?

Power BI is great if you want to experiment with different types of charts for your data and visualize it in real-time. However, Excel is a good option if you want simple but visually appealing charts.

3. When should I use Excel instead of Power BI?

Excel is a good choice when you need to make changes easily, work with smaller amounts of data, or perform quick calculations. It is also cost-effective, especially if you already use Microsoft Office.