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What Power BI is, in one sentence
Microsoft's business intelligence service: models, dashboards and reports that people open in a browser, in Teams or in the Power BI app.
What it is used for
- Building data models and interactive dashboards
- Self service analysis by people who know the data
- Sharing governed datasets across a company
- Embedding analytics in apps and portals
Who typically runs it: analysts and BI teams in most mid size and large companies; often already licensed through Microsoft 365 E5.
What it costs
Power BI Pro is $14.00 per user a month paid yearly; Power BI Premium Per User is $24.00 per user a month paid yearly. Pro is included in Microsoft 365 E5 and Office 365 E5.
Source: microsoft.com, Power BI pricing, read 20 September 2026. Prices change; check the vendor's page before deciding.
Side by side
| Power BI | INSYNCR | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | Microsoft cloud; desktop authoring tool | On the user's PC, inside Microsoft PowerPoint. Nothing uploaded. |
| Data sources | Hundreds of connectors into the Power BI model | Excel, Excel Online, SharePoint, Google Sheets, Access, JSON, XML, MySQL, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Oracle, Salesforce, Dynamics, ODBC, OData, OPC, text and files, by plan |
| Binds text boxes and tables, not only charts | No: it is not a PowerPoint tool. Export to PowerPoint places report pages as images or live embeds | Yes: text boxes, tables and charts bind to a cell, column or query |
| One deck or file per record | No | Yes: Snapshot, one slide or one file per record (PowerPoint, PDF, MP4) |
| Rules by value (color, hide a slide) | In the dashboard, yes; not in a PowerPoint deck | Yes: conditional formatting and slide inclusion by value |
| Refresh for the next cycle | Dataset refresh on a schedule; the exported deck does not refresh as a document | One click, on demand, by any Viewer |
| Chart drawing and layout | Dashboard visuals | Native PowerPoint charts, your template's formatting |
| Brand templates and libraries | Themes for dashboards | No library to adopt: it works inside the template you already use |
| Price, as published | $14.00 or $24.00 per user a month, yearly | €99.99 to €333.33 a month per Automator, billed annually; Viewer €27 a month. Billed yearly that is €1,199.90 to €3,999.90 and €324. |
| Minimum seats | 1 | 1 |
| Trial | Free tier and trials, per Microsoft | 7 days, full access, no card |
| Does report data leave the building? | Yes, to the Microsoft cloud, under your tenant | No |
What it lacks for a recurring report
- A PowerPoint that people receive, review and archive: the export is a picture or an embed of a screen, not a document with numbers you can point at
- One deck per client, site or student from one template
- Text boxes and tables in a deck bound to the data behind them
- A reviewer's audit trail inside the document that goes to the client
Where Power BI is better than INSYNCR
- Analysis. INSYNCR does not model, explore or visualise interactively; Power BI is where that work belongs
- Governance of shared datasets and refresh schedules
- Reaching hundreds of sources with a mature connector library
- Price per reader
Which to pick
Keep Power BI for the analysis. If the client, the board or the regulator receives a PowerPoint, bind that PowerPoint to the same tables with INSYNCR (SQL Server, ODBC or OData in Professional; the Excel export in Starter). Most INSYNCR customers in finance run both.
We describe Power BI from its own website and public documentation, dated above, and say nothing about it we have not read there. If something is out of date or unfair, write to info@insyncr.com and we will fix it.