Tableau Competitors | 2024 Top Alternatives to Tableau

Best for Advanced Analytics

Starting Price

$15

Company Size

Small, Medium, Large

Deployment

Cloud, On-Premise

Overview
Benefits
Key Features
Limitations
Researcher’s Summary
Pros & Cons

Tableau is a data visualization and analytics solution for enterprises and individuals. A rich library of connectors helps you pull data from files, cloud sources and servers. A separate data management module, Tableau Prep, ensures your data is ready to transform when it comes into the platform.

Its latest features include AI with Tableau Pulse and the Einstein CoPilot.

Software, healthcare, manufacturing, banking and financial services, and retail companies will find it helpful. Whatever your domain, chart, plot and map data will give you a clear picture of business performance.

Besides, you can track daily operations and support line-of-business decisions with hardcore data. At the higher level, it boosts planning by giving senior management the freedom to dig deeper.

A Tableau Creator license costs $70 per user and includes Tableau Desktop and Tableau Cloud. Alternatively, you can deploy it on-premise and connect to the cloud using a bridge. A free trial of Tableau Desktop is available, and Tableau Public is always free to use.

Though it's a user favorite for data visualization, many users find it expensive and slow when handling large datasets.

Include Location Insights: Tableau scored a perfect 100 in our rankings with full support for geographical searches, geocoding and in-and-out zoom actions in maps. It stores the names of cities, countries, airports and zip codes, converting them to latitudes and longitudes. Already a user favorite for visual analysis, it wins the award for Best Geospatial Visualization and Analysis in our BI product directory.
Handle Data Queries: According to our analysis, Tableau got a top score of 99 and our best-in-class award for data querying. It allows automatic batch updates, while Power BI must rely on the bulk operations feature to update its underlying data, and Oracle Analytics doesn’t support batch updates at all.
Prepare Data: Tableau got a score of 100 in our assessment for its robust Tableau Prep module. It cleans and shapes data, allows forecasting models with R and Python scripts and accepts unstructured content, provided you convert it into a standard format first.
Manage Access: The Tableau Blueprint involves assessing if your organization’s data architecture is ready to adopt the platform. As part of this exercise, you can opt for one of three governance models — centralized, delegated or self-governing — with varied access permissions for different roles. Such a level of detail gets Tableau a top score of 100 in our analysis.
Visualize Your Metrics: Tableau earns the top score of 100 in our rankings and wins our analyst award for dashboarding and data visualization. It surpasses Power BI with dashboard starters, animations and auto-refresh capabilities. Plus, it can switch to use extracts when live connections aren’t necessary.

Connectors: Combine data from various sources by choosing from a wide range of connectors — no need to spend on expensive third-party data integration tools. Tableau Bridge connects private networks to live data sources via Tableau Cloud.
AI: Tableau now offers AI capabilities thanks to Einstein Analytics.
- Tableau Pulse: Explore data independently and ask questions with AI analytics. Tableau Pulse is available with Tableau Cloud and Embedded Analytics.
- Explain Data: Understand the displayed insights with natural language explanations of data points.
- Einstein CoPilot (Beta): Close the gap in understanding data with AI insights. Discover hidden trends by asking follow-up questions without losing context, thanks to generative AI. Einstein CoPilot is available with a Tableau Cloud subscription.
Tableau Pulse: Explore data independently and ask questions with AI analytics. Tableau Pulse is available with Tableau Cloud and Embedded Analytics.
Explain Data: Understand the displayed insights with natural language explanations of data points.
Einstein CoPilot (Beta): Close the gap in understanding data with AI insights. Discover hidden trends by asking follow-up questions without losing context, thanks to generative AI. Einstein CoPilot is available with a Tableau Cloud subscription.

Explain Data doesn’t work with blended or cube data sources.
The free edition doesn't support live source connections.
It can’t automatically predict trends and doesn’t support voice searches.

Tableau Desktop is a BI solution for data visualization, dashboarding and location analysis. In online reviews, users said they found its drag-and-drop charting a boon for creating charts and maps. Regarding customization, many users praised the platform for its various labeling and design options.

I recently tried the Tableau Desktop 2024.1.3 version. The trial is only for 14 days and is enough for a sneak peek into Tableau’s dashboarding and data storytelling capabilities. For more straightforward use cases, Tableau is incredibly user-friendly and fast. Creating a new sheet gives you a canvas to create a visualization. Once you have the required sheets, combining them into a dashboard view is straightforward — select and add.

My dataset included healthcare data, including details of patients, their hospital visits and insurance payer details. One use case was to find the total claim settlement amount. I dragged the Total Claims Cost and Payer fields to the column and row shelves, and Tableau gave me a bar graph. The toolbar had single-click options for sorting data from increasing to decreasing values or the other way around.

To view the number of encounters by payer, I dragged the Payer field to the row shelf and used the SUM(ROW_COUNT()) function on the column shelf. The chart popped up with more visualization and layout options.

I wanted an interactive filter to view the average claim cost by birthdate. I dragged the Birthdate field to the Filters shelf and right-clicked on it to set the end date as October 22, 1961. Selecting Show Filter added a slider conveniently to the right of my visualization. I could see the data for people born before October 22, 1961, and if required, I could change the end date.

Another use case would be viewing the data by the type of hospital visits — how many people were inpatients, outpatients or those who needed emergency care. I dragged and dropped the Total Claims Cost and Payer fields into columns and rows, respectively. Similarly, I dropped Encounterclass into the Filters shelf and clicked on Show Filter to enable a checkbox on the screen. It had all the categories of visits, giving users the option to select the desired views.

One-fourth of the users discussing adoption said there was a steep learning curve. Tableau relies on Python and R scripts for statistics in its visualizations. It's where the named licenses can prove to be a blessing, as you can opt to train upcoming Creators and Explorers. We recommend factoring in training if you want to hit the ground running.

Some reviewers felt discounted packages for business editions should be available, similar to the free student licenses. At $70 per user, the Creator license can seem costly when compared to Power BI ($9.99 per user) and Qlik Sense ($30 per user).

Here's the good news, though. Its built-in user management acts as a permissions layer for your organization - users can only access the relevant content. Plus, an organization will have very few Creators and a greater number of Viewers and Explorers, and the license fee reduces from Creator to Explorer to Viewer.

We recommend opting for a wise license combination to get the most out of the product.

On the upside, the vendor constantly releases new features, the latest one being Einstein CoPilot in beta.

Overall, Tableau is a competitive BI solution, but if the pricing seems inflexible, quite a few other solutions offer live insights and advanced analytics out of the box.

Pros

Data Visualization: Almost 98% of users who reviewed its visual capabilities praised the platform for its dashboards and the freedom to play around with data and modify charts as desired.
User-Friendly: According to 93% of users who mentioned ease of use, it makes data accessible with its easy user actions and handy tooltips.
Data Connectivity: About 92% of users who discussed data sourcing praised its ability to pull data from disparate systems.

Cons

Pricing: Around 90% of the users citing cost found it expensive.
Speed: About 71% of the users who discussed performance found it slow when processing large data volumes.
Onboarding Woes: Approximately 67% of the users who reviewed the platform's adoption said there was a steep learning curve.

Learn more about Tableau

Tableau has a large fan following and with good reason. However, it might stumble in some areas because it doesn’t have a supporting ecosystem like Power BI, which has Microsoft Azure. Rafael Estrada, Owner of Estrada Consulting, had this to say in a 1:1 interaction with me.

As a Tableau Certified Partner since 2015, we’ve seen that Tableau scores over Power BI in organizations with a more disparate architecture – perhaps a mixture of Apple, Linux, and Windows products. Tableau is primarily focused on data visualization and analytics. Its drag-and-drop builder is a bit more modern than Power BI, which is also a plus for organizations not invested in the Azure ecosystem. Tableau supports a large variety of data sources – including Microsoft products – but connectivity isn’t going to be as plug-and-play with Azure as Power BI is. In some cases, data preparation and transformation requires third-party software before Tableau can make the best use of it.

Rafael EstradaPresident and Founder, Estrada Consulting

Tableau dashboard showing average healthcare claim costs by payer with filter

Uncover hidden insights with filtering.

Platform Analysis

Highest Rated Modules		Features Not Fully Supported
Data Visualization	100	Text Mining	Moderately Supported Out of the Box
Reporting	100	Sentiment Analysis	Supported With Additional Modules
Geospatial Visualizations and Analysis	96	Automatic Clustering	Not Supported
Advanced Analytics	95	Voice-Enabled Querying	Not Supported
Mobile Capabilities	95	Data Catalog	Supported With Additional Modules

Let’s look at the challengers.

Tableau Competitors: A Deep Dive

According to our analysis, these are the top Tableau competitors.

Power BI: Best for Mobile Capabilities

Power BI

Best for Embedded Analytics Capabilities, Geospatial Visualizations and Analysis

Starting Price

$10

Company Size

Small, Medium, Large

Deployment

Cloud

Overview
Benefits
Key Features
Limitations
Researcher’s Summary
Pros & Cons

Microsoft Power BI is an analytics and reporting solution for individuals and enterprises. Ranked among the top five products in our BI product directory, it’s a user favorite, with 88% of reviewers giving it the thumbs up.

It’s versatile in connectivity, pulling data from files, databases and cloud sources. Power Query helps users transform data to the desired format for building accurate models. They will serve as the basis for analysis and reporting. With Azure Machine Learning, Power BI incorporates AI into the analysis.

Government agencies find them handy for tracking citizen programs, crime and health data, and utilities. For healthcare companies, it proves helpful in patient data tracking, population health management and operations. Retail is all about sales and revenue, and if this is you, the vendor offers ready-made report templates that can help you hit the ground running. That’s not all; other report samples are available too.

Reusable dataflows in Power BI help you create a process once and run it again. Dataflows are shareable, so your whole team benefits. DAX enables complex calculations, while natural language Q&A speeds up analysis. Team workspaces enable collaboration, and mobile insight is available.

Individual accounts include Power BI Desktop, Power BI Pro and Premium per User (PPU). Pro and PPU licenses use Power BI Service, which lets you share content with other Pro users and is suitable for small businesses.

Power BI Premium is an enterprise license; you can share content with anyone, even external users. Pro and PPU cost $9.99 and $20 per user monthly, while Premium comes at $4,995 per month. User reviews praise it for ease of use, connectivity and modeling, but most users find the pricing confusing, possibly because of the various Microsoft integrations that make Power BI a complete package.

Make Informed Decisions: Make your life easier — change data to visuals by dragging and dropping fields into the visualization pane. Power BI generates suitable charts automatically. You can display important metrics in square boxes called tiles. Power BI maintains a separate cache for each tile, updating it after every data refresh. Custom branding is available. For these and many other graphics capabilities, it wins the top award in our visualization analysis.
Improve Efficiency: Never miss out on insights — ingest data using the import mode or DirectQuery. Connect to over 100 data sources, detecting data types as they come into the system. And then there’s Power Query. No wonder our analysts awarded Power BI the top honors for connectivity and a perfect 100 for data prep.
Leverage AI: Drill deeper into the entire dataset or dig into a specific visual with Quick Insights. Round off your customer insights with data from social media — extract key phrases and tag images for sentiment analysis with Azure. In our analysis, Power BI wins the best-in-class award for augmented analytics.
Stay Competitive: Write complex queries using SQL or use the drag-and-drop feature to speed things up. Analyze data with in-memory storage, which is always faster than pulling data from sources. Query scheduling and batch updates are available. Our analysts rated Power BI the best solution in its category for data querying.
Generate Insights: Produce interactive reports that save time in meetings. Explore data at will and dig deeper by clicking on visuals. Power BI gets the top distinction in our analysis for excellent reporting. With conditional formatting, you can use color gradients to show increasing or decreasing values. Keep track of your investment with a built-in performance analyzer.

Dataflows: Save time with reusable workflows that lock the logic in. While shared datasets are open to interpretation, dataflows will take your users in one direction only, ensuring consistent results. It’s like a written recipe, just follow the steps to get the taste right.
Analyze in Excel: Focus on the end game. Give your teams the freedom to analyze their data in Excel and move the results back to Power BI.
DAX: Empower your people to go beyond raw data. Derive calculated columns and measures with Data Analysis Expressions. Watch them update as you apply filters and slicers and interact with data in other ways.
Data Alerts: Act in time to keep things running smoothly. Stay informed of changes with alerts. Subscribe to receive notifications via email or the Power BI notification center (available only with Power BI Service). Among visualizations, KPI cards, cards and gauges have the alert option.
Data Refreshes: Stay ahead of trends with the latest insight. Update data on demand in Power BI or schedule refreshes with Power Automate. Power BI Pro and Premium allow up to eight and 48 refreshes daily, respectively.

Works only with Windows, except Power BI Mobile, which is available on iOS and Android also.
Dashboards aren’t available in Power BI Desktop.
Can’t export reports of more than 30 pages.

Our researchers ranked products on a whole bunch of features. They include data management, querying and visualization, advanced and embedded analytics, mobile BI, and IoT and location analytics.

In our rankings, Power BI scores 87 for connectivity, leaving behind Tableau, Oracle Analytics and Dundas BI. Robust Microsoft technology is one reason, for sure. Besides, intelligent techniques like DirectQuery and easy data modeling make it popular among users.

In product reviews, some users mentioned a lag when sharing reports from the desktop to the cloud. For me, the platform was a tad slow to start, but otherwise, it stayed performant for my average-sized dataset.

When dealing with sales data, total sales, the top-performing products, seasonality and period trends are common queries. Creating a sales KPI report in Power BI was an excellent way for me to answer them. My CSV files included sales, calendar, products and store data.

Connecting to sources is straightforward with Get Data on the home screen and toolbar. Once I had pulled in the data, I clicked on Transform Data and opened the Power Query editor. It automatically detects the data type for strings and numbers but can get confused with dates and currency, which it marks as text. It involved some manual wrangling, but I had it sorted in no time. Read my article on KPI Reports to learn how I did it.

But I wouldn’t call it a deal-breaker as it’s not a tedious task. I had the same experience with Qlik Sense, but Tableau was way better as it recognizes seven data types — string, number, date, date and time, boolean, geographic and cluster values.

Tracking sales over periods required a greater level of detail, so I added new columns to the calendar data — start of month and start of week. Column statistics were immensely helpful in identifying unique, distinct and null values and correcting incomplete records. Clicking on the number of products selling at a particular price allowed me to see which toys sold at that price.

Creating a relational data model by defining primary keys is a manual process and seems dated once you’ve used Qlik Sense. Adding calculated measures is where DAX shows its magic. For data workers well-versed with SQL, DAX is a ready-to-go tool they’ll be glad to have in their corner.

Creating visualizations wasn’t as intuitive as Tableau as it involved drag-and-drop onto the canvas, and frankly, I felt like I was flying blind. I didn’t feel that way with Tableau, and it’s slicker.

Power BI offers a paintbrush tool that lets you define the layout, the card arrangement and the maximum number of cards. You can define the canvas settings, background and headers and determine the filter pane settings. It took me longer to create a dashboard from scratch than it took in Tableau.

Some users found the pricing structure too complex. While using Azure data in Power BI for basic queries is free, costs can add up when you go for text and sentiment analysis. With Microsoft Fabric, the pricing complexity is set to rise. Though Power BI is available separately too, you’ll need to rely on Fabric to manage users, licenses and other administrative tasks.

About 31% of the users mentioning cost complained about onboarding difficulties, possibly because DAX introduces the complexity of learning syntax. It can daunt non-technical users initially, but guided formulas can make the task easier. That said, I agree with the majority of user reviews that training will speed up onboarding and help your team maximize the investment.

Overall, Power BI has many powerful features and will give you value for your money. If you’re not a Microsoft user yet, it’s worth checking out for the baked-in vendor technologies like Azure and SSAS. If you are an MS user, Power BI might be a no-brainer, though be prepared to shell out a little extra for advanced functionality and additional modules.

Pros

Integrations: Around 95% of users who mentioned data sources said they were satisfied with its flexibility in connecting to sources.
Data Visualization: About 93% of the users who discussed visual analysis said they relied on it for daily reporting.
Functionality: Over 75% of the users reviewing features said they were impressed with its live queries, DAX calculations and data modeling.
Ease of Use: Approximately 72% of the users who mentioned its UI said it was straightforward to use.

Cons

Speed: About 95% of recent reviews citing performance said the platform lagged when dealing with large data volumes.
Adoption: Around 81.5% of the reviewers mentioning adoption said the learning curve was steep.
Cost: Approximately 71% of users discussing pricing complained about the platform being expensive.

Learn more about Power BI

The more robust a tool, the easier it is for your team to scale. We reached out to Tim White, founder of milepro, a travel website, for a Power BI user perspective. Here’s what he said.

Power BI is great for my team of traveler-creatives. Because they tend to be visual learners, but also non-technical, it’s helpful to have drag and drop user features. This way, each user can manipulate the data, without having to understand how to create formulas. The ramp up time just takes a month or two to develop basic capacity, as opposed to years for spreadsheets.

Tim WhiteFounder, MilePro

Power BI dashboard showing discount analysis with charts and editing menu

A procurement analysis dashboard in Power BI. Source

Platform Analysis

Highest Rated Modules		Features Not Fully Supported
Data Management	100	IoT Analytics	Supported With Additional Modules
Embedded Analytics	100	Streaming Analytics	Supported With Additional Modules
Mobile BI	100	Automated Forecasts	Not Supported
Reporting	100	Automated Anomaly Alerting	Not Supported
Geospatial Visualizations and Analysis	100	Annotations	Moderately Supported Out of the Box

Read our Tableau vs Power BI article to learn more.

Spotfire

Best for Geospatial Visualizations and Analysis, Reporting

Starting Price

$0.99

Company Size

Small, Medium, Large

Deployment

Cloud, On-Premise

Overview
Benefits
Key Features
Limitations
Researcher’s Summary
Pros & Cons

Spotfire is a software solution for business reporting and analytics. Ranked third on our product directory, it shines for data science and streaming analytics. Dashboards are customizable and interactive. Automation services help create and deliver reports on schedule. You can download it on Windows and access it through other operating systems via workarounds.

Organizations across the board find Spotfire helpful, be it pharma companies or oil and gas suppliers. Manufacturing and supply chain businesses also opt for it on account of its functions and formulas. Techniques like regression and what-if analysis support predictions. Reporting on inventory levels can help you anticipate and plan when to place the next order.

With a data tool, you expect to have data management built in, and Spotfire does an excellent job. It enables cleaning data from the user interface — inline data cleansing — and flags anomalies.

Geomapping is sometimes an afterthought in BI tools. Spotfire scores with excellent location analytics and companies with field machinery find it helpful. Plan maintenance by keeping tabs on machine performance and aging trends using Spotfire dashboards.

Spotfire has data management with anomaly detection and inline data cleansing. Geomapping is sometimes an afterthought in BI tools. Spotfire scores with excellent location analytics, which is why many companies with field machinery find it helpful.

Spotfire's robust calculations are due to TIBCO's runtime engine. Report templates are available, and you can create your own. Its Automation Services help manage routine reporting.

Users praise Spotfire for its connections with an active community that contributes additional connectors. They appreciate its visualizations and the freedom to customize data displays. The vendor provides exceptional support for mobile insights.

The latest edition, Spotfire X, has NLQ-powered searches, AI recommendations and model-based processing. A 30-day trial with 250 GB of storage is available. At $1,250 per year, a Spotfire Analyst license costs more than Tableau and Power BI, and users agree that pricing is steep.

Make Informed Decisions: Ensure you don't miss any data when performing analysis. Spotfire connects to over 50 sources out of the box and provides many more, thanks to its active community. When a connector isn't available, you can rely on TIBCO’s data virtualization capabilities. Users appreciate its expertise in capturing streaming data, which many data tools have yet to catch up with. Our analysts awarded it top honors for source connectivity.
Gain Accurate Insight: Make decisions with confidence, knowing you have quality data in your corner. Organize data using metadata management and build workflows in a dedicated wizard. Or use freeform SQL query building with autocomplete. Spotfire scores a perfect 100 in our analyst rankings for seamless data preparation and management. It’s mainly due to inline data correction, which not many platforms support.
Visualize Insight: Achieve your weekly, monthly and yearly goals. Put your data to work with interactive dashboards and visualizations that come alive thanks to animations. Get suggestions on how datasets relate and visualizations that fit your analysis. And don't worry about it going stale — you can set it up to refresh on cue. Our analysts give Spotfire the top award for dashboarding and visualization.
Stay Mobile: Spotfire wins our analyst recommendation for responsive mobile insights on iOS and Android. You can favorite views and search for them later and swipe left and right between pages on your phone. Share your findings via email, SMS or other communication channels. Map visualizations are available on mobile — Spotfire will show you relevant data based on your location. QR code scanning is available. Spotfire gets a 100 score in our assessment.
Add Location Data: If your data includes location coordinates, Spotfire can directly plot these points on a map. If it contains city, state, or country names, Spotfire can convert them into locations on the map. Geographic searches, functions and calculations are available. Our analysts give Spotfire a 100 for its mapping features.

Spotfire Actions: Decide what to do with and act instantly — no need to switch to your procurement application to pause new orders. This powerful feature allows you to run scripts within analytics workflows. You can also trigger actions in your external system through visualization. Spotfire can set up over 200 commercial connections and has 1800 community connectors.
Mods: Build reusable workflows and visualization components, much like apps in Power BI and Qlik Sense. They allow your users to tailor their analytical processes so they don’t have to start from scratch every time. Based on code, they run in a sandbox with limited access to system resources for security. Users can share them through the Spotfire library. Mods improve efficiency and collaboration.
Batch Edits: Make similar changes to multiple files in one go. Write custom scripts to call the Spotfire API that’ll make changes to the files. Update the IronPython version to the latest one or embed the Spotfire JQueryUI library instead of its references.
Recurring Jobs: Simplify event scheduling to better manage your time and tasks. Improve efficiency and deliver reports at the same time on the same day of the week or month. The latest Spotfire version allows you to set recurring automation jobs to occur every X hours, days, weeks or months.
Web Player REST API: Share insight with clients and partners without them needing to sign up for a paid Spotfire account. Engage them via data visualizations on the web browser, thanks to Spotfire Web Player. Update analyses on the web with real-time data in the latest Spotfire version.

You cannot encrypt configuration files for Automation Services and Web Player Services on Linux.
Current automation jobs during a Spotfire Server restart show the status as IN_PROGRESS when they aren't running.
It lacks a Kafka connector, forcing users to rely on workarounds.

In online reviews, Spotfire emerges as a user-friendly big data platform. Most users found data exploration easy with a drag-and-drop interface. Some users said the UI was dated, though, and said it could use a revamp. Most users praised its interactive visualizations and dashboards, saying they helped them interpret data better. But, a few said they would love to have more visuals to choose from.

A user mentioned they did the calculations in Excel and imported them into Spotfire for visualization. It's a common scenario when a steep learning curve slows down adoption, and teams fall back on Excel. Most users said Spotfire takes time to learn. You might have to opt for a balance of multiple platforms to balance your departmental and enterprise needs.

Spotfire surpasses Excel in data management, especially data prep. Customizable visualizations and custom Mods give you enough freedom to work within the platform.

Though 72% of reviewers were happy with the integrations, Spotfire lacks some standard connectors, such as for Apache Kafka, forcing users to rely on workarounds.

A majority of users found its pricing structure complex, especially as users increased. In such cases, organizations often tend to opt for a cheaper alternative for less advanced use cases while using the pricier platform for the critical ones. We advise doing a deep dive into the vendor's pricing plans to avoid making your tech stack top-heavy.

Ultimately, Spotfire's appeal lies in its balance. It's visually captivating and user-friendly for casual users while offering enough depth for seasoned analysts. However, its pricing and learning curve might deter organizations on a tight budget.

Pros

Data Visualization: About 86% of reviewers were satisfied with the available options when designing dashboards.
Support: Around 74% of users praised vendor support for their timely response and helpful attitude.
Integration: Almost 72% of users were satisfied that it integrates with their preferred systems.
Friendly Interface: Around 68% of reviewers said the platform was easy to use.
Functionality: About 64% of users said it had a rich feature set.

Cons

Cost: Around 96% of the user reviews said it the price was high and licensing complex.
Adoption: 90% of reviewers said there was a significant learning curve and users would need specialized knowledge of data science and statistics.

Learn more about Spotfire

Spotfire helped Keysight Technologies, a leading provider of electronic test and measurement equipment, improve reporting and get at the root cause of issues with clear insight into their metrics.

According to Paul Jones, a senior data scientist at Keysight,

Spotfire software allowed us to set the customer up with the right solution and to understand what was causing their original problems.

TIBCO Spotfire dashboard showing marketing responses by state and channel

Spotfire is among Tableau competitors with advanced analytics.

Platform Analysis

Highest Rated Modules		Features Not Fully Supported
Data Management	100	Streaming Analytics	Supported With Additional Modules
Geospatial Visualizations and Analysis	100	Sentiment Analysis	Supported With Custom Development
Reporting	100	Automatic Clustering	Not Supported
Data Pre-Processing	90	Automatic Forecasts	Not Supported
Data Visualization	90	Financial Functions	Not Supported

Interested to know more? Read our Tableau vs Spotfire article for an apples-to-apples comparison.

Oracle Analytics Cloud: Best for Augmented Analytic

Oracle Analytics Cloud

Best for Data Pre-processing, Geospatial Visualizations and Analysis

Starting Price

$16

Company Size

Small, Medium, Large

Deployment

Cloud

Overview
Benefits
Key Features
Limitations
Researcher’s Summary
Pros & Cons

Oracle Analytics Cloud is a public cloud service on which you can build and run reporting and analytics solutions. It can also manage data from Oracle Database and Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse. Pairing it with Oracle Data Integration can help you move and transform data at scale. But that’s not all. You can build and deploy analytics applications even with non-Oracle systems. However, the level of integration and capabilities may differ.

You’ll need an Oracle Cloud account, and a free trial is available. Oracle customizes the view for you, whether you’re a web app developer, account admin or cloud architect. Workbooks and dashboards enable data exploration. You can set it up so the system sends reports to selected users on schedule. Governed analytics is available; your data stays secure. Annotations, export options and integration with social platforms are other capabilities.

Two pricing tiers are available. The Professional edition has self-serve analytics, direct source connections and dataflows for preparing content. It costs $16 per user monthly.

The Enterprise edition lets you enrich data, connect to private sources and build semantic models. You can track usage and set encryption keys, all at a cost of $80 per user monthly. Opt for a user or consumption model based on OCPUs (Oracle CPUs).

The user reviews were an interesting read. I haven’t seen many products with such strongly divided opinions. In all positive reviews, over 70% of the users voted for a specific feature, indicating a high level of user satisfaction and perceived value. On the flip side, over 87% of users said price and a steep learning curve were blockers to successful adoption.

Leverage ML: According to our research, Oracle Analytics Cloud gets the top score of 76 for augmented analytics. The Explain and AutoML functionalities and one-click predictions give it an edge over other competitors like Qlik Sense and
Generate Reports: Oracle Analytics Cloud scores 93 in our analyst rankings with instant and planned reports that are interactive and accept conditional formatting. Plus, it supports text and voice searches even on the mobile app.
Monitor Usage: Track expenses with the Billing tab on the Oracle Cloud Console. Keep tabs on usage with a dedicated tool, Oracle Cost Analysis, included with your Oracle Cloud subscription.
Try for Free: Sign up for a free Oracle Cloud trial and get access to the Autonomous Database and Object Storage. You’ll need to sign in with your credit card details. The vendor deducts a token account verification amount from your card, which they return promptly. For me, it was annoying as they deducted it again three days later. Get $300 credits for 30 days to use the Analytics Cloud, Data Integration and the Container Engine for Kubernetes.

Deployment: Install and run anywhere, including as a hybrid solution. Scale the instance depending on your workload — deploy OCPUs in multiples of two, extending up to 52. Or pause it when idle. Though identity management is available, there is the option to use one’s own SSO provider. Admins can set user, group and role-based permissions.
Connectivity: Make decisions based on data; connect to social media feeds, data lakes and IoT sources. Store and process data at scale, irrespective of its volume, velocity and variety. Get started as soon as you log in with over 40 readymade connectors.
Direct Query: Oracle Analytics Cloud uses live queries and data caching to fetch responses. Each has its downside. Live connections are heavier on the system, and you might have to compromise on data freshness with data caching. A combination of both might be best. Consider live queries for critical KPIs and data caching for less frequent queries.
Data Preparation: Enrich data from the interface — get data quality insights as you work. Remove the grunt work — create reusable flows for transforming data you can test, share and schedule. Add custom calculations or write regular expressions in the dataset editor.
Semantic Data Modeling: Engage business, dev and data teams in meaningful discussions. Give them data views with a presentation layer that simplifies metrics. Hide the physical data structure with a logical one that speaks the business language. Give stakeholders the power to explore data independently.

Isn't flexible when designing visualizations.
Has a steep learning curve, unlike Power BI and Tableau, which I found to be more intuitive.
Doesn’t perform as well with heavy data loads.

Oracle Analytics Cloud is among the vendor’s many data services, including a business intelligence suite and a data intelligence platform. Besides, Oracle offers bespoke solutions for HCM, supply chain and customer experience. What differentiates Oracle Analytics is that extra dash of augmented capabilities.

Embedded BI is where it truly shines, giving you natural language insights with a single click. This feature extends to its mobile app, and it outperforms many leading platforms with natural language queries and podcasts on mobile.

According to our researchers, Oracle Analytics Cloud has fewer out-of-the-box features than its competitors, such as Power BI and Qlik Sense. Plus, licensing becomes complex when combining the database, middleware and analytics applications.

It’s common for large vendors to offer specialized platforms, but the downside is that they can be out of reach of small organizations. But there’s a silver lining. Many vendors offer customized solutions, so we advise reaching out to the vendor for quotes.

Users appreciate its regular updates, but some report initial bugs due to its relative newness. Despite a positive user experience, the learning curve can be steep. Some users found technical support slow and inadequate, as did I. They took two business days to get back to me when I needed assistance with my account.

Oracle Analytics, though a robust platform, is suitable for mid- and large organizations. If you seek a powerful, scalable platform, consider opting for a trial, but be prepared for sticker shock, especially if you’re new to the Oracle ecosystem.

Pros

User-Friendly: Citing its interface, about 91% of users agreed that a drag-and-drop UI makes it easy to use.
Machine Learning: Around 86% of users who discussed augmented analytics were impressed with its ML capabilities.
Integrations: Approximately 84% of users who mentioned connectivity said the platform worked well with other systems, especially Oracle products.
Functionality: According to 83% of users who reviewed capabilities, it has all the required features to support data tasks.
Data Visualization: Around 73% of users who mentioned visualization praised the platform for its storytelling features.

Cons

Price: About 88% of reviews citing pricing said that it’s too expensive.
Adoption: Approximately 87% of users who discussed onboarding said there’s a significant learning curve.

Learn more about Oracle Analytics Cloud

Oracle Analytics gives teams the confidence to act on predictions and transform how they work by trusting data science to address their needs.

According to Juliana Walter, Group Product Manager, Unimed Grande Florianópolis, a Brazilian healthcare cooperative,

With Oracle Analytics Cloud, our data science and artificial intelligence teams can restructure our company’s culture with data-driven digital transformation. We can now perform predictive analytics while our management team has more confidence in our results. Moreover, Oracle Analytics helped detect fraud, leading to savings of over 1 million reais.

Oracle Analytics dashboard showing DC Metro passenger volume on a map and charts

Oracle gives Tableau competition with compelling visualizations.

Platform Analysis

Highest Rated Modules		Features Not Fully Supported
Data Management	100	PMML	Supported With Additional Modules
Data Pre-Processing	100	Streaming Analytics	Supported With Additional Modules
Data Transformation	100	Report Versioning	Moderately Supported Out of the Box
Data Visualization	100	Offline Mobile Mode	Not Supported
Geospatial Visualizations and Analysis	100	IoT Analytics	Supported With Additional Modules

Our Tableau vs Oracle Analytics article has more details.

Qlik Sense: Best for Data Transformation

Qlik Sense

Starting Price

$30

Company Size

Small, Medium, Large

Deployment

Cloud, On-Premise

Overview
Benefits
Key Features
Limitations
Researcher’s Summary
Pros & Cons

Qlik Sense is a self-service analytics solution that supports enterprise decisions and strategy. Its value lies in interactive dashboards and reports for exploring data independently. Embedded analytics lets your users work freely with data within their applications and websites.

Like QlikView, Qlik Sense has an associative engine. It links data tables in memory, keeping the information ready for when your users build models. Plus, its cognitive engine uses natural language for data tasks.

The Enterprise subscription includes Talend Data Integration and Qlik Advanced Analytics in Qlik Cloud. You can also choose Qlik Data Integration. Qlik Sense Enterprise SaaS includes 5000 automations and 100 reports. It might be a good fit if your data loads are predictable and don't change much. The vendor charges for the data you move or the volumes you analyze; you can choose between the two.

Qlik Sense deploys on Windows, Mac, Linux and any phone device. By contrast, Tableau runs on Windows, Mac and mobile, while Power BI is available only on Windows and Android devices.

Individual users can choose the desktop edition, though they’ll need a Qlik Cloud account to download it. A 30-day trial period is available, after which it'll cost $30 per user monthly.

Gain AI Insights: Qlik Sense wins our award for augmented analytics with the Insight Advisor that enables automation and text searches with an AI chatbot. You can query unstructured data with Qlik Answers using an LLM and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).
Combine Data: Qlik Sense earns our top honors for wide source connectivity. It ranks at par with Oracle Analytics and Tableau with a score of 80 on a scale of zero to 100. While ingesting data is half the battle won, combining related information gives you the complete picture. Qlik Sense passes with flying colors for intelligent data linking and retaining even unmatched data, such as records of customers who haven’t made a purchase recently.
Ensure Data Security: Our analysts awarded Qlik Sense for its ability to keep data secure with regular testing. Plus, it maintains records of CPU, RAM and file usage. You can set up gated entry by having users authenticate their identities and include Qlik Sense into SSO.
Perform Advanced Analytics: Qlik Sense scored a 91 in our rankings for supporting cluster, regression and what-if analysis. Plus, it can analyze text data for buyer sentiment with server-side processing. Offloading data to the R server enables analyzing much larger volumes.
IoT Analytics: Our analysts gave Qlik Sense a score of 82, the highest among its competitors for analyzing edge and streaming data. Qlik has a robust API set for computing data in edge devices. Plus, it can capture streaming data changes as they happen.

AI Integration: Ask and answer questions in natural language and automate processes using OpenAI and H2O.ai. Feed massive datasets to the LLM and watch as it summarizes the insight for you. Move beyond traditional analysis by working with the IBM Watson API for natural language.
Qlik Sense Management Console: Develop apps, manage tasks and connections, and track performance. With QMC, create content and consume data insights.
Reporting Service: Keep partners and clients on the same page by sending reports to everyone involved, even non-Qlik users. Download reports, subscribe to charts and sheets, or automate report delivery with its Reporting Service, available with Qlik Sense Enterprise SaaS.
Apps: Create interactive dashboards and visualizations for separate tasks within Qlik Sense. An organization can use hundreds of Qlik Sense apps in its tech stack.
Associative Recommendations: Save time defining how data tables relate with its intelligent suggestions, something Tableau and Power BI lack. Bubbles represent data tables and color-coded rings — green, orange and red — inside them indicate the possibility of links between the tables.

Qlik Sense focuses on independent data analysis for enterprises with advanced tools that include AI, natural language processing and automation. User reviews praise it for its associative engine, interactive visualizations and sophisticated analytics.

Its dataset-linking functionality gets my vote as the most significant differentiator since it makes data modeling seamless and saves time. In comparison, manually linking tables in Tableau and Power BI feels like a huge task.

It supports fewer features out of the box (69%) compared to Tableau (72%) and Power BI (74%), but this could be intentional. Qlik has ready-to-go modules for analytics, automation and printing, so keeping it lean is a smart vendor move. Users should be aware that additional modules will cost extra, though.

Qlik Sense SaaS is multi-cloud, so unless the admin assigns separate workspaces, your users won’t be able to create personal dashboards — everything is shared otherwise. Some users said the platform slowed when processing large workloads, which is a common issue with many other platforms. Assess your need for speed before committing to a purchase.

If upgrading from QlikView, you’ll need to create new objects initially, as both platforms have different architectures. However, the vendor assists in seamless migration with the Qlik Analytics Modernization program.

Overall, Qlik Sense is an efficient platform that offers many analysis capabilities worth considering. We recommend checking it out if you’re looking for an alternative to Power BI, entrenched in Microsoft technology, or Tableau, with its emphasis on visualization.

Pros

Integrations: Approximately 86% of users reviewing data sources were satisfied with its wide connectivity.
Ease of Use: About 84% of users who cited usability praised the platform for self-service BI.
Functionality: Around 80% of the reviews that mentioned features praised it for ETL and data visualization.
Data Visualization: About 66% of the users discussing dashboards were satisfied with its interactive displays that allowed them to dig deep.

Cons

Cost: About 87% of users who mentioned pricing found the tool expensive.
Performance: Around 86% of users citing speed said it lagged when processing large and complex datasets.
Training: Approximately 69% of users who discussed adoption said there was a significant learning curve.
Customization: Around 65% of users who mentioned the freedom to design dashboards said the tool offered limited options.

Learn more about Qlik Sense

Organizations across the board rely on Qlik Sense automation to redirect resources where they can have the maximum impact.

According to Alvin Gillis, Director of WW PCSD Reporting and Data Execution at Lenovo,

We started an automation process with Qlik and now we have only half the people managing reports. The other half is doing activities allowing us to leapfrog the competition by providing even more proactive analytics vs. reactive.

Qlik Sense dashboard showing total sales with product categories

Qlik Sense has an interface similar to Tableau.

Platform Analysis

Highest Rated Modules		Features Not Supported
Dashboarding and Data Visualization	100	Key Driver Analysis	Moderately Supported Out of the Box
Data Management	100	Triggering Actions from Visualizations	Supported with Custom Development
Mobile BI	93	Secure Write-Backs	Supported with Partner Integrations
Data Querying	92	Geocoding	Supported With Additional Modules
Advanced Analytics	91	Streaming Analytics	Supported With Additional Modules

Read our Tableau vs Qlik Sense article for a deep dive.

Domo: Best for Integrations and Extensibility

Domo

Best for Platform Capabilities

Starting Price

$15

Company Size

Small, Medium, Large

Deployment

Cloud, On-Premise

Overview
Benefits
Key Features
Limitations
Researcher’s Summary
Pros & Cons

Domo is a cloud-based analytics platform that integrates end-to-end data management into one solution. Being SaaS, it’s available from anywhere with an internet connection. The vendor offers the best of both worlds — self-serve ease of use and data science.

Domo has a friendly interface aimed at senior management who are hard-pressed to make tough decisions daily. A breadcrumb trail at the top of the workspace will help you navigate between folders. A performant, scalable warehouse supports fast queries with in-memory data.

Domo Buzz is an instant messaging option like Slack with file sharing and is available on the mobile app also. Annotation options allowed me to add comments to my chart and mark data points of interest. If you want something more than what it offers, you can build your own apps within Domo. It’s our analysts’ pick and a user favorite in its category for these and more features.

Domo Everywhere is the embedded version, though it doesn’t offer as many options to design views as some other platforms, such as Dundas BI.

You can use Domo dashboards and reports for several critical tasks. Decide where to reduce spending and identify the factors that affect your business. Forecast demand for your services and products. Predict how unexpected events can impact the economy and your business and do much more.

There’s a 30-day free trial after which you can upgrade to the Standard or Enterprise pricing model. Or opt for the Business Critical edition to get a private AWS link that promises watertight security and reduces latency.

Some users mention performance limitations, which could be caused by shared cloud resources. The vendor offers a consumption model — pay for what you use and add unlimited users at a flat fee of $750.

Gather Data: Use data from your preferred systems and sources with over 1,000 connectors. Set up integration tasks with automation. Make cloud warehouses work for you with the Domo Cloud Amplifier. Our analysts give the platform 96 for source connectivity.
Perform Complex Calculations: Blend and transform data, and create calculated columns with Domo Analyzer and Magic ETL. Target specific buyer segments with behavioral, store and sales data. Domo gets 91 for advanced analytics in our assessment, putting it ahead of Power BI and Qlik Sense.
Manage Data: Combine, aggregate, pivot and filter datasets with Magic ETL. A handy checklist on the screen guides you through the steps. Domo is intelligent — it shows green dots if two datasets have common fields while blending. We give it a 100 for data management.
Acquire IoT Insights: Domo differentiates itself with full support for IoT technologies, scoring a 100 in our analysis. It integrates with AWS IoT systems for edge analytics. Writebacks are super helpful for updating remote systems.
Gain ML Insights: Check if you’re spending wisely — create accurate cash flow models with machine learning. Boost your chances of closing customers by calculating the lifetime value for each buyer. Domo scores 100 in our analysis for built-in data science capabilities and its constant emphasis on AI/ML.

Domo App Studio: Design custom apps for needs Domo might not address out of the box. Build your own functionality without coding knowledge. Create branded visualizations with your trademark colors, logos and fonts. ESPN enhances the fan experience by capturing and analyzing customer data using a Domo Studio app.
Analyzer: Save time spent cleaning data manually. Use a special editor to set up checks for data inputs. Keep tabs on which charts and dataflows use a specific dataset with the lineage option. You can choose the best chart to present your data and annotate it. Use the Beast Mode for complex math.
DomoGPT: Get answers to data queries using AI Chat (currently in beta). Convert text to SQL or calculations and understand your data using text summaries. Use Domo.AI in a safe, governed space.
Personalized Data Permissions: Create custom data views for your users and hide sensitive data. Your regional managers get exclusive views specific to their roles, while senior management can switch between full and filtered views.
Domo Mobile: View cards and text summaries on the mobile app. Cards fit within the small screen, giving a great user experience. Domo Buzz allows sharing files to WhatsApp, Gmail, QuickShare and Google Drive. You can even save a screenshot to your phone gallery.

Can’t function without internet connectivity.
Lags behind competitors in geospatial analysis.
Lacks support for automated model generation and key driver analysis.

Domo has everything data teams could wish for — self-service ETL, advanced analytics and data science. Its rich set of connectors makes users happy as they praise its robust integration APIs. Its scripting language is similar to Power BI, and knowing SQL will shorten your team's learning curve. The vendor offers daily refreshes, currently capping them at 48.

On the flip side, the interface seemed a bit clunky to me. Dashboards don’t display in the edit mode by default, which was a tad annoying. The Getting Started documentation is dated and doesn’t match the new interface. I could find my way around with help from user forums.

While the vendor earns praise for releasing frequent updates, quite a few users say some much-needed features lack depth. According to our research, Domo offers only 64% of the required functionality out of the box, which is much less than what Power BI and Tableau provide. It also underperforms in data querying, scoring only 53 in our analysis.

Some reviews mention bugs and that performance can lag when handling anything complex than simple visualizations. The slowness could be due to the multitenant SaaS model that provides shared computing. As for the mobile app, it didn’t work in the offline mode for me. I should mention here that I had opted for the trial version. A proof-of-concept will help you check if the issue persists in the paid edition.

Domo’s pay-as-you-go model is great for estimating usage but be prepared to pay more for workload spikes. According to our research, about 89% of users who reviewed the price found Domo’s consumption model expensive. Small organizations working with a lean team might find it challenging to handle billing.

Here’s what’s great about subscribing to Domo. You can create as many reports and dashboards as required — there’s no limit or additional cost. Plus, Domo allows adding an unlimited number of users. Domo accepts external data models from OpenAI, Amazon Bedrock, Hugging Face, Databricks and Jupyter Workspaces.

Despite a competitive market, Domo is an excellent product for organizations seeking data visualization and strong integration. Its flexible pricing model and recent AI updates make it a strong challenger to leading data platforms.

Pros

Source Connectivity: About 86% of users citing data integration said they could connect to their preferred sources easily.
Ease of Use: Around 82% of users discussing the interface said options and tabs were straightforward and intuitive.
Data Visualization: About 74% of people who reviewed Domo for graphics appreciated the ease of creating and sharing data stories.
Functionality: Around 73% of users who mentioned features said Domo performed as expected.
Support Services: About 71% of reviews discussing assistance praised the support team for being helpful and responsive.

Cons

Speed: About 78% of users discussing speed said the platform lagged sometimes.
Cost: Around 89% of users discussing price termed the platform as expensive.

Learn more about Domo

World map displaying revenue by country, color-coded by amount generated in Domo

Dig deep with detailed maps using Domo.

The DHL logo breathes speed — its yellow background and italic font project fastness and timely delivery. But the stakes are even higher at the backend. Moving pharma products requires temperature control and DHL needs this data in a heartbeat. Domo helps them gather critical insights from millions of data points. A task that took them a week earlier is now accomplished in no time.

According to Dina Bunn, Global Head of Central Operations & IT, DHL

It’s almost inconceivable how much more we can do with Domo than what we could do before.

Platform Analysis

Highest Rated Modules		Features Not Supported
Data Visualization	100	Cluster Analysis	Supported With Additional Modules
Data Transformation	100	Regression Analysis	Supported With Additional Modules
Reporting	100	Text Analytics	Supported With Additional Modules
Data Management	98	Time-Series Analysis and Forecasting	Supported With Additional Modules
Data Pre-processing	94	Geographic Searches	Not Supported