Databricks vs Tableau comparison

The compared Databricks and Salesforce solutions aren't in the same category. Databricks is ranked #1 in Data Science Platforms , with an average rating of 8.2, and holds a 19.2% mindshare in the category. Salesforce is ranked #2 in BIT , with an average rating of 8.7, and holds a 19.8% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Databricks users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of Salesforce users who would recommend it.

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Databricks and Tableau based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Data Science Platforms solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Databricks vs. Tableau Report (Updated: April 2023).

Buyer's Guide

Databricks vs. Tableau

April 2023

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Categories and Ranking

IBM SPSS Statistics

Mindshare comparison

Data Science Platforms

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

Md Masudul Hassan

Agricultural Finance and IT Researcher at Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University

Comprehensive data analysis capabilities with a user-friendly interface, providing an efficient and reliable platform for researchers and analysts

I believe that offering short-term SPSS licenses, perhaps when customer sourcing is available, could make it more affordable. These licenses shouldn't include features tailored for universities or large sales organizations. Instead, they could offer discounts or additional facilities for smaller entities to access the software. In developing countries, it would be beneficial to provide certain features to users at no cost initially, while also customizing pricing options. For example, offering basic features to the first hundred users can help them become familiar with the software and its capabilities. This approach encourages users to upgrade to higher tiers as they become more experienced and require additional functionality.

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Dunstan Matekenya

Data Scientist at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Process large-scale data sets and integrates with Apache Spark with notebook environment

Databricks integrates natively with Apache Spark, which I use as a processing engine for large-scale datasets. This native integration is one of its strengths. Another strength is that the platform makes it very easy to manage resources. For example, setting up a cluster of five or fifteen nodes is straightforward with Databricks. The notebook environment is also excellent, making it easy to perform various tasks.

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ROMIL SHAH

Deputy General Manger - Information Technology at Nayara Energy

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The SPSS interface is very accessible and user-friendly. It's really easy to get information in it. I've shared it with experts and beginners, and everyone can navigate it."

"Since we are using the software as a statistical tool, I would say the best aspects of it are the regression and segmentation capabilities. That said, I've used it for all sorts of things."

"The most valuable features mainly include factor analysis, correlation analysis, and geographic analysis."

"I've found the descriptive statistics and cross-tabs valuable. The very simple correlations and regressions are as well."

"It offers very good visualization."

"The most valuable feature is the user interface because you don't need to write code."

"It has helped our analyst unit deliver work with more transparency and confidence, given that we can always view the dataset in totality, after each step of data transformation."

"It is perfectly adequate if all you need are the results and not the trail of evidence."

More IBM SPSS Statistics pros

"The integration with Python and the notebooks really helps."

"It's great technology."

"Databricks' most valuable features are the workspace and notebooks. Its integration, interface, and documentation are also good."

"The ease of use and its accessibility are valuable."

"It helps integrate data science and machine learning capabilities."

"Databricks gives you the flexibility of using several programming languages independently or in combination to build models."

"The setup was straightforward."

"We can scale the product."

More Databricks pros

"The most valuable feature is the ease of use."

"It is a complete solution allowing a lot of integrations, different graphics, multiple operations and analyzes our date and gives us meaning from it."

"The Web Editing capabilities allow us to grant end users enough capabilities for them to do self-serve discovery without the added cost of needing to get everyone desktop licenses."

"One of the most valuable features is that the solution allows users to build interactive dashboards. This allows the end user to modify the criteria or the filtering if need be. As far as for my personal use as a QA Engineer, I really value how extensive their API document support has been."

"The most valuable feature is the richness of its visualization and from a self-service standpoint, the ease of use."

"It is so easy to do a lot of things. There is a lot of flexibility and creativity in this product. In other products, you don't have this flexibility."

"We found Tableau has the quickest learning time out of the few other BI reporting tools that we have used."

"There is a lot of APIs available, which means that Tableau can be customized to a large extent."

More Tableau pros

Cons

"One of the areas that should be similar to Minitabs is the use of blogs. The Minitabs blog helps users understand the tools and gives lots of practical examples. Following the SPSS manual is cumbersome. It's a good, exhaustive manual, but it's not practical to use. With Minitabs, you can go to the blogs and find specific articles written about various components and it's very helpful. Without blogs, we find SPSS more complicated."

"In some cases, the product takes time to load a large dataset. They could improve this particular area."

"The solution needs to improve forecasting using time series analysis."

"The reports could be better."

"It would be helpful if there was better documentation on how to properly use the solution. A beginner's guide on how to use the various programming functions within the product would be so useful to a lot of people. I found that everything was very confusing at first. Having clear documentation would help alleviate that."

"Needs more statistical modelling functions."

"It could provide even more in the way of automation as there are many opportunities."

"SPSS is a tool that's been around since the late 60s, and it's the universal worldwide standard for quantitative social science data analysis. That said, it does seem a bit strange to me that the graphical output functions are so clunky after all these years. The output of charts and graphs that SPSS produces is hideous."

More IBM SPSS Statistics cons

"There is room for improvement in visualization."

"Databricks has added some alerts and query functionality into their SQL persona, but the whole SQL persona, which is like a role, needs a lot of development. The alerts are not very flexible, and the query interface itself is not as polished as the notebook interface that is used through the data science and machine learning persona. It is clunky at present."

"I think setting up the whole account for one person and giving access are areas that can be difficult to manage and should be made a little easier."

"Databricks has a lack of debuggers, and it would be good to see more components."

"When I used the support, I had communication problems because of the language barrier with the agent. The accent was difficult to understand."

"CI/CD needs additional leverage and support."

"I would like to see more documentation in terms of how an end-user could use it, and users like me can easily try it and implement use cases."

"Some of the error messages that we receive are too vague, saying things like "unknown exception", and these should be improved to make it easier for developers to debug problems."

More Databricks cons

"The architecture should be improved to better handle the data."

"From the developer perspective, the data connection handling the target data set is what most needs to be improved."

"The Hyper Extract functionality is not as strong as that provided by Microsoft SQL."

"When it comes to large datasets, the data should be extracted faster."

"From a downside perspective, some of the more advanced modeling techniques are actually fairly difficult to do. In addition, I just fundamentally disagree with the way you have to implement them because you can get incorrect answers in some cases."

"If you mainly need a tool for BI reporting, it's not the best option. Tableau needs better abilities to generate simple reports, integrate, create databases, and work with data lakes."

"The cost of owning the solutions from Tableau is much higher compared to any other analytical solutions."

"It's already using 32 gigabytes of memory, but the performance is not so good. It's very heavy."

More Tableau cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our licence is on a yearly renewal basis. While pricing is not the primary concern in our evaluation, as products are assessed by whether they can meet our user needs and expertise, the cost can be a limiting factor in the number of licences we procure."

"More affordable training for new staff members."

"We think that IBM SPSS is expensive for this function."

"If it requires lot of data processing, maybe switching to IBM SPSS Clementine would be better for the buyer."

"The pricing of the modeler is high and can reduce the utility of the product for those who can not afford to adopt it."

"The price of IBM SPSS Statistics could improve."

"It's quite expensive, but they do a special deal for universities."

"The price of this solution is a little bit high, which was a problem for my company."

More IBM SPSS Statistics pricing and cost advice

"The cost for Databricks depends on the use case. I work on it as a consultant, so I'm using the client's Databricks, so it depends on how big the client is."

"My smallest project is around a hundred euros, and my most expensive is just under a thousand euros a week. That is based on terabytes of data processed each month."

"We pay as we go, so there isn't a fixed price. It's charged by the unit. I don't have any details detail about how they measure this, but it should be a mix between processing and quantity of data handled. We run a simulation based on our use cases, which gives us an estimate. We've been monitoring this, and the costs have met our expectations."

"We only pay for the Azure compute behind the solution."

"Databricks is a very expensive solution. Pricing is an area that could definitely be improved. They could provide a lower end compute and probably reduce the price."

"I'm not involved in the financing, but I can say that the solution seemed reasonably priced compared to the competitors. Similar products are usually in the same price range. With five being affordable and one being expensive, I would rate Databricks a four out of five."

"The solution requires a subscription."

"The solution is a good value for batch processing and huge workloads."

More Databricks pricing and cost advice

"It is a bit difficult for some people when they hear $70.00 per month, as some solutions are available for less than $10.00 or for free."

"The cost of the solution should be improved."

"It is a bit overpriced."

"The licensing model of Tableau has changed since we initially purchased it three years ago and it is more complicated, and I have found it to be more expensive. They have lost market shares to Microsoft BI. My company will probably change solutions this year because of the increased pricing model."

"Tableau is free."

"The price is definitely a point because smaller firms don't use Tableau as it's an expensive tool."

"There is a license for this solution and we pay on an annual basis."

"We are on an annual license which costs us $1,400 which is very expensive. Microsft BI is less expensive."

More Tableau pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user6330

Product Manager at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

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…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

University

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Educational Organization

42%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM SPSS Statistics?

The software offers consistency across multiple research projects helping us with predictive analytics capabilities.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM SPSS Statistics?

The cost of IBM SPSS Statistics is managed by organizations, not individual researchers. It is a very expensive produ...

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What needs improvement with IBM SPSS Statistics?

IBM SPSS Statistics does not keep you close to your data like KNIME. In KNIME, at every stage, you can see the result...

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Which do you prefer - Databricks or Azure Machine Learning Studio?

Databricks gives you the option of working with several different languages, such as SQL, R, Scala, Apache Spark, or ...

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How would you compare Databricks vs Amazon SageMaker?

We researched AWS SageMaker, but in the end, we chose Databricks. Databricks is a Unified Analytics Platform designe...

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Which would you choose - Databricks or Azure Stream Analytics?

Databricks is an easy-to-set-up and versatile tool for data management, analysis, and business analytics. For analyti...

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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 ...

See all answers

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 be...

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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....

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Comparisons

IBM SPSS Modeler vs IBM SPSS Statistics

Compared 16% of the time

Alteryx vs IBM SPSS Statistics

Compared 13% of the time

TIBCO Statistica vs IBM SPSS Statistics

Compared 13% of the time

Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Studio vs IBM SPSS Statistics

Compared 11% of the time

Amazon SageMaker vs IBM SPSS Statistics

Compared 6% of the time

More IBM SPSS Statistics Competitors

Dataiku vs Databricks

Compared 11% of the time

Informatica PowerCenter vs Databricks

Compared 8% of the time

Amazon SageMaker vs Databricks

Compared 8% of the time

Dremio vs Databricks

Compared 8% of the time

Google Cloud Dataflow vs Databricks

Compared 5% of the time

More Databricks Competitors

Microsoft Power BI vs Tableau

Compared 19% of the time

Domo vs Tableau

Compared 12% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Tableau

Compared 8% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs Tableau

Compared 4% of the time

SAS Visual Analytics vs Tableau

Compared 4% of the time

More Tableau Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IBM SPSS Statistics

December 2024

Download IBM SPSS Statistics product report

Buyer's Guide

Databricks

December 2024

Download Databricks product report

Buyer's Guide

Tableau

November 2024

Download Tableau product report

Also Known As

SPSS Statistics

Databricks Unified Analytics, Databricks Unified Analytics Platform, Redash

Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online

Learn More

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IBM

Databricks

Salesforce

Overview

IBM SPSS Statistics is a powerful data mining solution that is designed to aid business leaders in making important business decisions. It is designed so that it can be effectively utilized by organizations across a wide range of fields. SPSS Statistics allows users to leverage machine learning algorithms so that they can mine and analyze data in the most effective way possible.

IBM SPSS Statistics Benefits

Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by choosing to deploy IBM SPSS Statistics include:

Ease of use. SPSS Statistics enables users to simply and intuitively take control of their statistical needs. The solution is designed so that analysts who do not know how to code can easily make full use of the various tools and capabilities that SPSS Statistics has to offer. Its command language is so straightforward that it does not require users to undergo special training before they use it.

Comprehensive and flexible build. SPSS Statistics is designed to be both a comprehensive and highly flexible analytics solution. It enables users to utilize a variety of integrations that make it easy for users to add features that they might feel they are missing.

Automation. SPSS Statistics makes it simple for users to automate basic tasks that they might otherwise devote too much time worrying about. Tasks like calculation or data gathering can be delegated to the system while more conceptual tasks like data analysis are given to an organization’s analysts to handle.

IBM SPSS Statistics Features

Intuitive user interface. SPSS Statistics enables users to deploy an intuitive interface that makes the process of system management simple. Among the other components of this interface is a drag-and-drop feature that makes analysis and management possible for anyone who wants to use it.

Advanced data visualizations. Analysts that employ SPSS Statistics gain access to tools that empower them to create and export data visualizations. These visualizations can be formatted in many different ways depending on what the user needs.

Local data storage. SPSS Statistics has the ability to securely store data on a user’s computer. This enables them to add layers of security that would not necessarily be present if the data was stored in the cloud.

Reviews from Real Users

IBM SPSS Statistics is a highly effective solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Two major advantages it offers are the wealth of functionalities that it provides and its high level of accessibility.

An Emeritus Professor of Health Services Research at a university writes, "The most valuable feature of IBM SPSS Statistics is all the functionality it provides. Additionally, it is simple to do the five-way analysis that you can in a multidimensional setup space. It's the multidimensional space facility that is most useful."

A Director of Systems Management & MIS Operations at a university, says, “The SPSS interface is very accessible and user-friendly. It's really easy to get information from it. I've shared it with experts and beginners, and everyone can navigate it.”

Databricks is utilized for advanced analytics, big data processing, machine learning models, ETL operations, data engineering, streaming analytics, and integrating multiple data sources.

Organizations leverage Databricks for predictive analysis, data pipelines, data science, and unifying data architectures. It is also used for consulting projects, financial reporting, and creating APIs. Industries like insurance, retail, manufacturing, and pharmaceuticals use Databricks for data management and analytics due to its user-friendly interface, built-in machine learning libraries, support for multiple programming languages, scalability, and fast processing.

What are the key features of Databricks?

User-friendly interface: Simplifies operations and usability.
Built-in machine learning libraries: Facilitates machine learning tasks.
Support for multiple programming languages: Enhances flexibility.
Scalability: Efficiently handles growing data needs.
Fast processing: Improves performance and speed.
Automated optimization: Reduces manual efforts.
Data visualization: Provides insightful visuals.
Collaborative features: Enhances teamwork.
Delta Lake performance: Boosts data management.
Seamless cluster management: Simplifies system operations.

What are the benefits or ROI to look for in Databricks reviews?

Efficiency in handling large datasets: Ensures smooth processing.
Interactive workspace environment: Improves user collaboration.
Integration with platforms: Provides connectivity benefits.
Performance optimization: Enhances overall system performance.
Support for data governance and security: Ensures data integrity and protection.

Databricks is implemented in insurance for risk analysis and claims processing; in retail for customer analytics and inventory management; in manufacturing for predictive maintenance and supply chain optimization; and in pharmaceuticals for drug discovery and patient data analysis. Users value its scalability, machine learning support, collaboration tools, and Delta Lake performance but seek improvements in visualization, pricing, and integration with BI tools.

Tableau is a tool for data visualization and business intelligence that allows businesses to report insights through easy-to-use, customizable visualizations and dashboards. Tableau makes it exceedingly simple for its customers to organize, manage, visualize, and comprehend data. It enables users to dig deep into the data so that they can see patterns and gain meaningful insights.

Make data-driven decisions with confidence thanks to Tableau’s assistance in providing faster answers to queries, solving harder problems more easily, and offering new insights more frequently. Tableau integrates directly to hundreds of data sources, both in the cloud and on premises, making it simpler to begin research. People of various skill levels can quickly find actionable information using Tableau’s natural language queries, interactive dashboards, and drag-and-drop capabilities. By quickly creating strong calculations, adding trend lines to examine statistical summaries, or clustering data to identify relationships, users can ask more in-depth inquiries.

Tableau has many valuable key features:

Tableau dashboards provide a complete view of your data through visualizations, visual objects, text, and more.
Tableau provides convenient, real-time options to collaborate with other users and instantly share data in the form of visualizations, sheets, and dashboards.
Tableau ensures connectivity to both live data sources and data extraction from external data sources as in-memory data. This gives users the flexibility to use data from more than one source without any restrictions.
Tableau gives many data source option, ranging from spreadsheets, big data, on-premise files, relational databases, non-relational databases, data warehouses, and big data, to on-cloud data.
Tableau has a lot of pre-installed information on maps, such as cities, postal codes, and administrative boundaries.
Tableau has a foolproof security system based on authentication and permission systems for data connections and user access. Tableau also gives you the freedom to integrate with other security protocols.

Tableau stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Some of these include its fast data access, easy creation of visualizations, and its stability. PeerSpot users take note of the advantages of these features in their reviews:

Romil S., Deputy General Manager of IT at Nayara Energy, notes, "Its visualizations are good, and its features make the development process a little less time-consuming. It has an in-memory extract feature that allows us to extract data and keep it on the server, and then our users can use it quickly.

Ariful M., Consulting Practice Partner of Data, Analytics & AI at FH, writes, “Tableau is very flexible and easy to learn. It has drag-and-drop function analytics, and its design is very good.”

Sample Customers

LDB Group, RightShip, Tennessee Highway Patrol, Capgemini Consulting, TEAC Corporation, Ironside, nViso SA, Razorsight, Si.mobil, University Hospitals of Leicester, CROOZ Inc., GFS Fundraising Solutions, Nedbank Ltd., IDS-TILDA

Elsevier, MyFitnessPal, Sharethrough, Automatic Labs, Celtra, Radius Intelligence, Yesware

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.

Buyer's Guide

Databricks vs. Tableau

April 2023

Free Report: Databricks vs. Tableau

Find out what your peers are saying about Databricks vs. Tableau and other solutions. Updated: April 2023.

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