Leave Microsoft's Power BI Behind
Power BI's per-seat licensing, DAX learning curve, and Fabric capacity costs add friction as your data needs grow. Preset runs in any browser. It starts at $20 a user and never ties your dashboards to one vendor's cloud roadmap.
Why Data Teams Are Choosing Preset
Predictable pricing, no capacity surprises
Power BI splits cost across Pro seats ($14/user/month), Premium Per User ($24/user/month), and Microsoft Fabric capacity SKUs that start north of $5,000/month, reserved before a single per-user license is added on top. Most teams don't hit that conversation until renewal, when Direct Lake or Copilot adoption suddenly needs a capacity SKU nobody budgeted for. Preset's Professional plan is a flat $20/user/month billed annually, with no capacity fees to negotiate.
Fully browser-based data analysis
Preset runs entirely in the browser on any operating system, so analysts on Mac, Linux, or Windows build, edit, and publish from the same interface with nothing to install. Power BI Desktop, where most real modeling still happens, only runs on Windows.
Native connections to your data warehouse
Preset connects directly to Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, Databricks, and more than forty other databases, with no gateway required for cloud warehouses. Power BI typically needs an on-premises data gateway to reach anything outside the Microsoft stack. For databases behind a private network, Preset Enterprise supports SSH tunneling instead of standing up a dedicated gateway server.
No dataset ceiling on the plan you're already paying for
Preset queries your warehouse directly, so dataset size is bounded by your warehouse, not your license. Power BI Pro caps a semantic model at 1GB regardless of how big that warehouse is; going bigger means upgrading to Premium Per User or a Fabric capacity SKU, where the ceiling then scales with however much capacity you're renting.
Open-source core, no lock-in
Preset is built on Apache Superset, the most widely adopted open-source business intelligence project. Dashboards, datasets, and data models stay portable. If your strategy changes, your work isn't stranded inside a proprietary platform the way it is with Power BI's .pbix format.
SQL-first, code-friendly analytics
SQL Lab gives engineers and analysts a first-class environment for exploration, virtual datasets, and Jinja-templated dynamic queries. Power Query and DAX offer transformation inside Power BI, but not the same SQL control or the ability to version and deploy analytics assets through code-based workflows.
One AI license, not a second SKU
Preset Chatbot ships inside Preset Enterprise as part of the plan, not billed as a separate line item, and Preset MCP exposes the same analytics platform to Claude, Cursor, and any other MCP-compatible AI client. Power BI Copilot is a different transaction entirely: Premium Per User or Fabric capacity, stacked on top of whatever Pro seats a team already owns, before Copilot does anything. See Preset AI.
Full theming and style customization
Preset supports full CSS control, so teams can theme dashboards to match their own product instead of picking from a fixed template list. Power BI's theming options are limited to report templates. For embedding dashboards in your own product, see Embedded Dashboards.
Preset vs Power BI at a Glance
Cost
Power BI's price climbs in steps: Pro seats, then Premium Per User, then Fabric capacity. Preset's Professional plan doesn't have those steps. Full pricing is on our pricing page.
Deployment
Power BI Desktop requires Windows, and Power BI Service is Microsoft's cloud. Preset runs the same browser interface everywhere, on any cloud.
Control
Power BI's roadmap belongs to Microsoft, and its dashboards live as proprietary .pbix files. Preset's roadmap is Apache Superset's public GitHub project, and your work stays exportable if you ever want to move it. See Preset vs. the Competition for a broader view of the BI market.
Results from teams who switched
Flywire freed up engineering time and budget
Flywire supports more than 4,500 clients across education, healthcare, travel, and B2B. Moving to Preset freed up roughly a tenth of a site reliability engineer's time that used to go into keeping the previous BI tool running, on top of thousands of dollars in annual savings. See the Flywire case study.
Rocket Travel by Agoda scaled partner self-service
At Rocket Travel by Agoda, more than 80 third-party partners now use row-level security in Preset to view their own commissions, redemptions, and account balances directly, instead of waiting on a manual monthly report. Between 50 and 60 percent of the company now works in Preset in some role. Read the Rocket Travel by Agoda story.
MetaMap cut its BI spend by more than half
MetaMap cut its BI spend by more than half after switching to Preset. “Because we do a lot of data modeling outside the BI tool, the fact that all the logic we're building in a repo can easily sync with Preset … prevents us from having to go and replicate the definitions in two places,” says Paxon Fischer, MetaMap's Data Engineering & Tooling Manager. More in the MetaMap case study.
More customer stories
A full migration off Looker and more teams are on our customers page.
How Preset Deploys
Most data teams start on Preset Cloud, which is fully managed, multi-tenant, and available in minutes. Regulated or security-sensitive teams run on Preset Managed Private Cloud, which gives you an isolated environment in your own cloud account, or move to Preset On-Prem when a fully self-hosted footprint is required. All three paths run the same certified Apache Superset build, so you can change deployment models without rebuilding your dashboards.
Preset Cloud
Fully managed, multi-tenant, and available in minutes. The fastest path to production analytics.
Managed Private Cloud
An isolated environment in your own cloud account. Ideal for regulated or security-sensitive teams.
Preset On-Prem
A fully self-hosted footprint for teams that require complete infrastructure control.
Preset vs Power BI Feature Comparison
| Feature | Preset | Power BI |
|---|---|---|
| 100% browser-based (no desktop app) | ✓ | ✗Requires Power BI Desktop |
| Open-source foundation | ✓Apache Superset | ✗Proprietary |
| Standard SQL (no proprietary formula language) | ✓ | ✗DAX learning curve |
| 40+ native database connections | ✓ | ✓Gateway often required for non-Microsoft sources |
| No on-premises gateway for cloud warehouses | ✓ | ✗ |
| Cloud agnostic (AWS, GCP, Azure) | ✓ | ✗Azure-optimized |
| No dataset size limits | ✓Queries warehouse directly | ✗1GB hard cap on Pro |
| Real-time OLAP database support | ✓Druid, ClickHouse, Pinot | ✗Limited streaming support |
| Jinja templating for dynamic SQL | ✓ | ✗ |
| Full CSS and theming customization | ✓ | ✗Limited theming |
| REST API & CLI access | ✓ | Partial |
| Scheduled alerts to Slack/email | ✓SQL query-based | ✓ |
| Semantic layer support | ✓Native (dbt, Cube) | ✓Power Query / DAX model |
| Private cloud in your own cloud account | ✓Managed Private Cloud | ✗Self-managed on-prem only |
| AI on one license (no second AI-specific SKU) | ✓Chatbot ships with Enterprise | ✗PPU or Fabric required on top of Pro |
| MCP server for AI clients | ✓Preset MCP | ✗ |
| Public roadmap you can influence | ✓GitHub | ✗ |
Enterprise-grade security, out of the box
Preset is SOC 2 Type II certified and supports SSO/SAML, SCIM, role-based access control, row-level security, and audit logging. Your data stays protected across all deployment models. For details on controls, certifications, and data handling, see our trust and security page.
- SOC 2 Type II
- SSO / SAML
- SCIM
- RBAC
- Row-level Security
- Audit Logging
- Private Cloud
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. Preset customers run data analysis against billions of rows in enterprise data warehouses like Snowflake, BigQuery, and Databricks. Performance at scale is driven by the warehouse, with Preset's caching layer optimizing repeated queries.
Preset is SOC 2 Type II certified with SSO/SAML, SCIM, role-based access control, row-level security, audit logging, and private-cloud deployment for teams with stricter security isolation requirements. The same governance applies to AI: Preset Chatbot and Preset MCP inherit row-level security, column masking, and RBAC on every request.
Yes. Preset offers a drag-and-drop chart builder with curated datasets so business users can explore data without writing SQL. Power users also get SQL Lab, virtual datasets, and Jinja templating for dynamic queries.
Power BI Copilot is a genuinely separate licensing track on top of Power BI Pro: you need either Power BI Premium Per User ($24/user/mo) or Microsoft Fabric capacity (F64 minimum, starting around $5,259/month). Two SKUs, two budget lines. Preset Chatbot is included with Preset Enterprise — one SKU. Enterprise is a premium tier, but it bundles AI alongside the rest of the enterprise feature set (governance, dbt, MPC, SSO/SAML, dedicated support) rather than charging for AI as its own line. Preset MCP also exposes Preset's data to any MCP-compatible AI client (Claude, Cursor, Gemini CLI), with BYOK available on Enterprise.
Dashboards are rebuilt rather than directly converted, and there's no automatic import for .pbix files. Most data teams prioritize their highest-usage workloads first and run both tools side by side during the transition. Our team provides migration guidance and reference patterns. For a broader look at migrating between BI platforms, see our post on assessing BI migration reasons and risks.
Preset sits on top of your data warehouse with native connectivity to Snowflake, BigQuery, Databricks, Redshift, and more, and integrates with dbt for semantic models. For embedded analytics use cases, see Embedded Dashboards and our API.
Our blog covers the architecture, pricing, and governance differences between Apache Superset and Power BI in depth, including when each tool is the better fit.
Get in Touch
See why data teams are choosing open-source business intelligence over Microsoft Power BI. Start on the free tier and upgrade when you're ready, or talk to our team for a scoped evaluation against your current analytics footprint.
Power BI, Microsoft Fabric, and Copilot are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Apache Superset is a trademark of The Apache Software Foundation. Preset is not affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft or The Apache Software Foundation. Feature and pricing comparisons reflect Microsoft's publicly listed rates as of this refresh and may not capture the most recent changes.