Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Birst vs Tableau comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Birst
Ranking in Reporting
32nd
Ranking in Embedded BI
15th
Average Rating
7.4
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Tableau
Ranking in Reporting
2nd
Ranking in Embedded BI
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
295
Ranking in other categories
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools (2nd), Data Visualization (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Reporting category, the mindshare of Birst is 0.2%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau is 22.9%, up from 22.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Reporting
 

Featured Reviews

it_user547323 - PeerSpot reviewer
We deploy dashboards using the integrated data warehousing and visualization abilities. Setup is complex.
From a visualization perspective, this tool claims to make several advances that are indeed interesting to a large proportion of the user base. However, it needs to prioritize several extremely fundamental features associated with charting, formatting and layout control. Some basic features that Birst needs to improve are: * Line graph between two measures (comparing one measure to another without summing them) – Basic scatter plot sums the measure up automatically. * Spark lines need to be made available. * Editing trend lines and gridlines in graphs – An option for customizing label location, label background under formatting chart elements such as gridlines and labels, custom label backgrounds and transparency, etc. * An option to customize the alignment of headings in any table as left, right, center, top, middle and bottom. Also there is need to add label customization in a table that is not associated to any measure but just plain text, instead of having to change it on the dashboard as a text input, which also does not re-size in the same ratio as the other components do when the screen size is modified. * Conditional filter – An additional option to use a filter “where variable-xyz in (a,b,c,d,)” type of statement for filtering attributes. This is helpful when the list of attributes is long and can be used instead of manually select each box. * Conditional display of KPI – For example, if the date range is x, then display KPI A; if the date range is y, then display KPI B. * Conditional indicators – A solution to give conditions to KPI indicators rather than to have a measure to check against a predefined number. * Unnecessary padding spaces around graphs, KPIs, tables – An option to be able to define the space and padding. * An option to customize a measure within a given timeline, embedded in the measure itself. There should be way to define that timeline dependent on a user-selected time in dashboard filters. Currently, there is no ability to display several measures on different time scales in the same table. For example, measure 1, 2 and 3 current, over last quarter and over last year.
ROMIL SHAH - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides fast data access with in-memory extracts, makes it easy to create visualizations, and saves time
When it comes to visualizations, Tableau has a limitation as compared to Power BI. It has a limited set of visualizations. Power BI has the entire marketplace, so you can connect and import many visualizations and use them, whereas Tableau has only 10 or 15 visualizations. There should be more visualizations, and there should also be data integration with more cloud providers. Tableau has recently launched a paid version for the documentation. So, documentation has become a little bit challenging when it comes to Tableau development because we do not have any tool to export the data out of it. It is a license-based feature that you need to purchase to prepare documentation. So, on the documentation front, for preparing clear documentation for any dashboard, it would help if we get an embedded option, rather than buying a license for each user for the documentation. To document anything, if I have to connect to each workbook and see what has been written as a formula and then document in the Word document, it is pretty time-consuming. We have the Microsoft stack, and we are currently evaluating Power BI because Tableau has a limitation of 50 columns for a drill-down report. If we want more than 50 columns, we have found a hack, but there is no ready-made option for doing it. So, we have to use another tool in case we need a drilled report with more than 50 columns. There are many instances where users need 80 or 90 columns for their analysis, and switching between two technologies becomes a challenge. It is not a cost-effective approach for us. Their support should be improved. We are not happy with their support. Whenever we raised queries, we were pointed to a few blogs, and we didn't get a proper solution from them. Their licensing should also be improved. They want us to purchase a Tableau Creator license for business users, whereas Power BI Desktop is free for business users. They should come up with a basic license with one or two connectors that our business users can use for preparing their visualizations. Tableau also charges us per user for users who want the data only through email.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Dashboards and self-service reports. These are widely used by customers in the EPM domain."
"The platform's most important feature is predictive analysis."
"Very user friendly."
"The most valuable feature is the richness of its visualization and from a self-service standpoint, the ease of use."
"While using this solution I have found the valuable features to be ease of use and the visualization. It is a complete solution."
"When compared to Power BI, Tableau has more readily available resources."
"The most valuable features are data discovery and fine visualizations."
"It's intuitive and highly mature"
"From my perspective, it enables clients to better understand our data and make better decisions based on that information."
 

Cons

"Customer support takes lot of time to get a solution."
"The data processing in Tableau is pathetic compared to Qlik."
"Its integration with Microsoft products such as Teams should be improved."
"Bursting email is needed to deliver the reports to many people in their inboxes and this functionality is not provided by Tableau."
"Many things have to be improved in Tableau. Right now, we make the calculation, and then we get that information. It would be better if business users could do that. I would ask the people at Tableau to provide that option to business users to get that information in one click. It would be better if they automated some calculations. There should be more automation in Tableau. However, there are many things in automation mode, but it is very limited at the moment. We need automation for people who do not know much about Tableau. It would also be better if there were good community support like in Alteryx."
"I would like Tableau to handle geospatial data better in terms of multiple layers and shapefiles."
"Its documentation can be improved so that a user can get a good hands-on experience. Tableau is well documented, and on their website, there are a lot of tutorials that are available for free. I started my learning process through those tutorials, but there are certain loopholes in those tutorials, which only got filled through a couple of good YouTube channels that talk about Tableau. YouTube helped me a lot. So, the documentation could be better, I understand that it is evolving day by day, and with more usage, there would be more such documentation."
"Navigating through activities like cleansing, reshaping, and wrangling extensive or complicated datasets could prove challenging within the Tableau environment."
"Its price is a concern. It is more expensive than Power BI. The other thing that I never liked about Tableau is its ability to handle large sets of data. To present the data in the dashboards, we have to stage it up exactly like it is going to come into the dashboard. We use another tool called Alteryx that does that for us. So, we manipulate the data, get it staged, and then push it into Tableau. Tableau is terrible at handling large data sets, and we knew right away that we couldn't use Tableau to do data manipulation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Please negotiate on the price and purchase the latest version."
"It is more expensive than other solutions."
"The pricing is $70 per month. You have to pay about $800 or something in that ballpark annually for one license."
"We pay for the enterprise license for Tableau. The licensing could be cheaper and more flexible."
"I'm using Tableau Public, which is free."
"Be careful with the Tableau Viewer's licenses, and stay with the right number of users."
"Tableau has reasonable pricing."
"Tableau is not as cost-effective as Microsoft BI."
"Pricing could be better. I believe they should offer better pricing for deployment in small to mid-sized companies."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Reporting solutions are best for your needs.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user6330 - PeerSpot reviewer
May 2, 2013
MicroStrategy vs. Tableau
After a recent presentation, several attendees asked me about the applications of Visual Insights and Tableau. Many companies are investing in both tools and are trying to figure out the right tool for specific applications Tableau has found its sweet-spot as an agile discovery tool that analysts…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Educational Organization
44%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
Seeking lightweight open source BI software
It depends on the Data architecture and the complexity of your requirement. Some great tools in the market are Qlik Sense, Power BI, OBIEE, Tableau, etc. I have recently started using Cognos Enter...
Tableau vs. Business Objects - Which is a better solution for visualization and analysis?
Both tools have their positives and negatives. First, I should mention that I am relatively new to Tableau. I have been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it consta...
Which would you choose - Tableau or SAP Analytics Cloud?
Tableau is easy to set up and maintain. In about a day it is possible for the entire platform to be deployed for use. This relatively short amount of time can make all the difference for companies ...
 

Comparisons

No data available
 

Also Known As

No data available
Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Citrix Systems, Jive Software, SunnyD, Toshiba Medical Systems, Cisco OpenDNS, RB, Sunny D, Vertafore
Accenture, Adobe, Amazon.com, Bank of America, Charles Schwab Corp, Citigroup, Coca-Cola Company, Cornell University, Dell, Deloitte, Duke University, eBay, Exxon Mobil, Fannie Mae, Ferrari, French Red Cross, Goldman Sachs, Google, Government of Canada, HP, Intel, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Macy's, Merck, The New York Times, PayPal, Pfizer, US Army, US Air Force, Skype, and Walmart.
Find out what your peers are saying about Birst vs. Tableau and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.