Explanation, not description
Copilot summarises a report and drafts the query. Cerium decomposes the movement, ranks the drivers, shows the working and cites the rows.
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Cerium vs Power BI.
Power BI is the most widely deployed analytics platform in enterprise, and if your firm runs Microsoft it is very hard to beat on price. Cerium is not competing for that seat. The question is what happens after the report is built — when someone asks why the number moved and the answer still takes a week.
At a glance.
| Attribute | Power BI | Cerium |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Enterprise BI and reporting | Decision platform, downstream or upstream of BI |
| Where AI sits | Copilot over reports and semantic models | Reasoning over your governed model |
| Deployment | Cloud; Report Server for on-premise reporting | SaaS or full on-premise, same product |
| Data layer | Semantic models over Fabric or your sources | Reconciles sources, flags contradictions, full lineage |
| Governance | Workspace and tenant model, Purview for the estate | One governed model, row-level security at the layer |
| Pricing model | Per user, plus capacity | Platform and estate, quoted |
| Write-back to operations | Write-back to the warehouse via Power Apps integration | Read-and-write API to ERP, CRM and WMS |
| Best fit | Microsoft-standardised firms wanting broad, cheap reporting | Firms whose reporting works but whose answers still take days |
Accurate as of August 2026. Reviewed quarterly.
Where Cerium is stronger.
The data arriving, not the data stored
Power BI models what your warehouse holds. Cerium reconciles what arrives from custodians, administrators and vendors, and flags contradictions rather than filling them.
On-premise as a first-class product
Report Server is a subset of Power BI. Cerium on-premise is the same product as Cerium SaaS, which matters when residency is a committee decision.
Write-back to operational systems
Power BI can write back through a Power Apps integration, with the build and maintenance that implies. Cerium ships a read-and-write API to the ERP, CRM and WMS as a platform capability — no second product in the path, and the same governance applied on the way out as on the way in.
Conversational AI on your own model
Copilot drafts the query. Cerium's conversational AI answers the question — decomposing the movement into its causes using your firm's own model and definitions.
Visualisations that build themselves
A Power BI report requires someone to build it in the report editor. Vibe Studio generates the visualisation from a conversation — no layout work, no DAX written before the answer is visible.
Run both on the same question.
Bring a question your current stack takes days to answer. That is the fairest test there is.