Tableau

What is Tableau?

Tableau is the leading data visualization and analytics platform (part of Salesforce), renowned for powerful, beautiful, interactive visual analytics, the standard for visual data exploration and dashboards. It lets analysts and users connect to data and create rich, interactive visualisations and dashboards by dragging and dropping, exploring data visually, drilling down, and building sophisticated analyses, with powerful visual capabilities, strong data connectivity, and sharing via Tableau Cloud or Server, plus AI (Einstein and Tableau Pulse). Long the benchmark for visual analytics and loved by analysts, Tableau excels at turning data into compelling, explorable visuals. For data visualization, Tableau is the benchmark.

Tableau's distinction is the best, most powerful and beautiful visual analytics and exploration. Its drag and drop visual analysis, rich visualisation capabilities and interactivity let analysts explore and present data more powerfully and beautifully than most rivals, which made it the standard for visual analytics, loved by data analysts. That visual power, beauty and exploration set it apart.

Who Tableau is best for

Tableau is best for analysts, data teams and organisations that want the most powerful, beautiful, interactive visual analytics and data exploration, and value visualisation quality and depth. It suits data visualization. It is a weaker fit for those wanting the cheapest all round BI, where Power BI fits, a modeled governed single source of truth, where Looker fits, search and AI analytics for everyone, where ThoughtSpot fits, or easy open source BI, where Metabase fits.

Key features

The core strengths are powerful, beautiful interactive visualisation, drag and drop visual analysis and exploration, strong data connectivity, dashboards, sharing via Tableau Cloud or Server, a large community and resources, and AI (Einstein, Tableau Pulse). Tableau offers the best visual analytics. Its visualisation power, beauty and exploration are its defining advantages.

Tableau pricing

Tableau is priced by role: Creator from around 75 US dollars per user a month (to build), Explorer (to explore) cheaper, and Viewer (to consume) cheaper still, billed annually, plus Tableau Cloud or Server. There is Tableau Public (free) for public visualisations. So cost depends on your mix of creators, explorers and viewers. Costs scale with roles and users. Confirm details on the Tableau pricing page.

Integrations and ecosystem

Tableau connects to a wide range of data sources (databases, warehouses, files, cloud apps), integrates with Salesforce, and has a large community, marketplace and resources. Its broad data connectivity and Salesforce integration, plus its community, which support powerful visual analytics across data, are a signature strength.

Tableau and visual analytics

The best, most powerful and beautiful visual analytics and exploration is the signature strength: Tableau's drag and drop visual analysis, rich visualisation and interactivity let analysts explore and present data more powerfully and beautifully than most rivals, which made it the visual analytics standard, loved by analysts. For data visualization, this is the main reason to choose Tableau.

Ease of use and support

Tableau is highly rated for visualisation power, exploration, interactivity and its community, the visual analytics standard, with strong support and resources, though reviewers note higher pricing than Power BI and performance with very large datasets. Its G2 reviews praise visualisation and exploration, with pricing and large data performance the main considerations.

Is Tableau worth it?

For analysts, data teams and organisations that want the most powerful, beautiful, interactive visual analytics and exploration, Tableau is the benchmark choice. The main caution is higher pricing than Power BI, so all round value suits Power BI, governed modeling Looker, search and AI ThoughtSpot, and easy open source Metabase, but for data visualization Tableau leads.