If you’re working with data in Microsoft’s ecosystem, you’ve likely heard of both Power Query and Power BI. These tools sound similar and work together, but they serve different purposes. Let’s clear up the confusion between the two.
Quick note: Power Query lives inside both Excel and Power BI Desktop to clean, connect to, and shape your data. It’s not really an “either/or” in practice, but a pipeline where you first use Power Query (either in Excel or in Power BI Desktop) to get and shape data, then use that prepared data either in Excel for analysis or in Power BI for further modeling and visualisation.
What Power Query does
Power Query is a data connectivity and preparation tool in the Microsoft ecosystem that lets you connect to many data sources to filter, clean, and reshape data. It provides an intuitive query editor interface with ribbons, menus, and buttons where each action (like removing a column, changing a data type, merging queries, etc.) is recorded as a step.
Under the hood, these steps are coded in the Power Query M language, but the user can rely entirely on the visual interface for most tasks. This makes Power Query a very user-friendly interface for performing what would traditionally be complex extract-transform-load processes.
Originally introduced as an add-in for Excel, Power Query is now built into Excel (under the “Get Data” tab) and is also a core part of Power BI Desktop. The technology is essentially the same in both. In fact, Power Query is available in many products and services, and the data destination depends on where you use it. For example, in Excel, it loads query results into an Excel table or into Power Pivot (Excel’s data modeling engine), while in Power BI, it loads into the BI model.
Power Query supports hundreds of data sources (databases, files, cloud services, etc.) and over 350 types of transformations, from simple tasks like removing columns and filtering rows to advanced operations like pivoting/unpivoting, merging queries, and grouping data.
What is Power BI?
Power BI is Microsoft’s modern business intelligence and data visualisation platform. It enables users to connect to data, create interactive dashboards and reports, and share those insights via the cloud. In simpler terms, Power BI is the tool you use when you want to build rich graphs, charts, and dashboards on top of your data and make them easily accessible to others.
In day-to-day use, when people say “Power BI”, they often mean the combination of using Power BI Desktop to build reports and then using the Power BI Service to publish and share those reports.
Power BI is well-known for its ability to create interactive reports where users can slice and filter data, click on charts to see details, and so on. You can design interactive dashboards that allow non-technical users to explore data and key metrics easily. These capabilities make it suitable for scenarios where a static Excel report isn’t enough and you want a more dynamic, shareable insight.
It’s important to note that Power Query is part of Power BI. Whenever you import or connect to data in Power BI Desktop, you’re actually using the Power Query engine under the hood to transform data and load it into Power BI’s data model.
How they work together in Microsoft’s Ecosystem
It’s helpful to see Power Query and Power BI not as competitors but as parts of the same ecosystem of tools.
Microsoft designed them to interoperate. In fact, Power BI was created by leveraging Power Query and Power Pivot from Excel. This means your knowledge in one directly transfers to the other. Many users start in Excel’s world (using Power Query and maybe Power Pivot) and then transition to Power BI for broader capabilities. The learning curve is eased by the fact that the Power Query Editor in Power BI Desktop is the same tool you used in Excel.
Likewise, the DAX formulas used in Power BI’s data modeling are the same as those in Excel Power Pivot. Microsoft even provides an export/import path where you take an Excel workbook with Power Query queries and a Power Pivot model and import it into Power BI Desktop, converting it into a PBIX report file.
In the broader ecosystem, Power Query also appears in tools like Power BI Dataflows (which are online Power Query processes in the Power BI Service) and in other Microsoft Power Platform products.
What is the difference between Power Query and Power BI
Given the above, the relationship between Power Query and Power BI can be summarised as Power Query being a component and Power BI being an encompassing tool. Power Query by itself doesn’t create visuals or reports; it’s focused on getting your data ready for analysis. Power BI, on the other hand, includes data preparation, data modeling, and data visualisation all together (with Power Query handling that first step of data prep inside it).
When to use Excel’s Power Query vs when to use Power BI
If your focus is purely on shaping data and handing it off (for example, preparing a clean CSV for someone), Power Query alone works well. You could use it in Excel or the new Power Query Online dataflows without needing to build a Power BI report. Use Power BI when your end goal is to analyse data through interactive visuals or to share insights widely. Keep in mind that if you are using Power BI Desktop, you will inevitably use Power Query. It’s the way to get data into Power BI.