Limitations of Power BI: You Must Know in 2025

You may be feeling the tremors now if you're a Power BI user. Microsoft added a major pricing update starting April 1, 2025: Power BI Pro went from $10/user/month to $14/user/month, and Power BI Premium went from $20/user/month to $24/user/month. If you're paying month-to-month instead of annually, there's an extra 5% premium added on top.

If you're a startup, an SMB, or even a growing team with multiple users, the impact is real. We're already hearing it from users: rising costs, confusing licensing options, hidden integration charges, and this price bump are becoming challenging. If you're feeling overwhelmed, too, you're not alone. This might be the right time to explore whether there's a better, smarter, and more affordable Business Intelligence tool to fit your needs.

Common issues and drawbacks of Power BI

Even after the Power BI cost hike, these limitations of Power BI haven't been resolved:

1. Microsoft ecosystem dependency: Power BI has a strong integration within the Microsoft ecosystem but not with other sources.
2. Limited flexibility: Power BI lacks deployment flexibility.
3. Features locked behind higher tiers: Features like AI capabilities, larger dataset capacity, or more refreshes are only available if you upgrade to higher tiers.
4. Hidden costs: Storage add-ons, extra refreshes, Azure charges for data flows, and even support have hidden costs. Also, pricing doesn't always work for smaller organizations and individual users.
5. Performance issue: When working with large datasets, performance can slow down.
6. Steep learning curve: Learning advanced features is challenging for beginners.
7. DAX query: The required DAX querying can be tricky to learn and challenging for beginners.
8. Customer support: Users feel that the support should be more personalized and committed to each user's needs.
9. Lacks AI capabilities: Power BI doesn't have a strong front in the AI field.

When comparing Power BI Pro to Premium, it can be hard to find the right fit. Power BI Pro feels too limited, but Premium feels bloated and expensive, which can be too much for smaller teams. 

What’s pushing teams to look for alternatives to Power BI

Power BI does a lot of things right, like being a strong BI tool backed by Microsoft and getting the job done for many teams. But here's what most of the modern BI users are really looking for:

• A tool without a steep learning curve that is easy to access for users from both technical and non-technical background.
• A BI platform that grows as your data grows without doubling the cost or nudging you into higher tier plans.
• A tool that integrates seamlessly with a variety of platforms, not just within a single ecosystem.
• A BI platform that offers straightforward and transparent pricing without any hidden costs.

The best alternative to Power BI in 2025: Zoho Analytics

Zoho Analytics is a modern, self-service business intelligence and analytics platform that helps you connect, prepare, and visualize your data with ease. With features like seamless integration with 500+ native data connectors, easy drag-and-drop report creation, stunning data visualization and dashboards, advanced AI capabilities, predictive and what-if analysis, and much more, Zoho Analytics lets you make data-driven decisions accessible to everyone without requiring any technical expertise. Explore how Zoho Analytics compares with Power BI.

Why businesses are switching to Zoho Analytics from PowerBI?

What you see is what you pay in Zoho Analytics. No complex pricing tiers. No hidden costs that sneak in later. Everything you need—reporting, dashboards, AI capabilities, collaboration, and sharing—is in one straightforward plan. It's a pricing model that makes sense for teams of all sizes. Check out our pricing plans.

AI-powered insights with Zia

Zia, Zoho's built-in AI assistant, lets you take data exploration to the next level. Ask questions in simple English—"Show me the sales by region in Q2"—and Zia instantly generates reports in both textual and visual formats. There's no need to write SQL or wait for an analyst. It's fast, smart, intuitive, and built for decision makers.

Advanced analytics with DSML studio

For teams that want to go beyond dashboards, the DSML studio unlocks serious predictive analysis power. From forecasting trends to identifying high-risk segments, it brings enterprise-grade data science tools into a self-service BI platform.

Built-in data preparation tool

With the built-in data preparation tool, you can clean, model, transform, and enrich your data before analysis. Whether you're combining CRM data with support tickets or filtering out anomalies, there's no need for a separate tool.

Dashboards your team can actually use

It's all drag and drop in Zoho Analytics. Create custom business dashboards with more than 50 stunning data visualization tools, KPIs, filters, and widgets in just a few clicks—and share them across your team or embed them wherever needed.

No lock-in. Full flexibility.

Zoho Analytics lets you connect from cloud apps or multiple data sources without being locked in to a single vendor stack. 

Final thoughts: The smarter, more affordable alternative to Power BI is Zoho Analytics

Power BI's 2025 price hike isn't just a cost issue—it's a wake up call. It's becoming more expensive, more complex, and more tied to the Microsoft ecosystem. For fast-moving businesses, this is a limitation.

Zoho Analytics is a modern BI alternative - flexible, intuitive, and built to scale with your business. You get advanced analytics, built-in AI and ML, and pricing that's fair and transparent. No hidden costs. No vendor lock-in. Just a smarter BI experience that works for real-world teams.

Ready to see what a smart and modern BI future looks like?

Sign up for a free 15-day trial or book a free personalized demo now!

Switch to affordability, simplicity, and flexibility. Switch to Zoho Analytics.