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Pentaho Business Analytics vs Tableau comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

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

Pentaho Business Analytics
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
20th
Ranking in Reporting
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Operations Analytics (4th)
Tableau
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
2nd
Ranking in Reporting
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
296
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (1st), Embedded BI (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Pentaho Business Analytics is 0.5%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tableau is 17.5%, down from 19.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Sayan König - PeerSpot reviewer
Flexible, easy to understand, and simple to set up
The repository should be improved. There should be the possibility to have versioning, to make it combinable with some Git repositories or something like that, to check out the processes and make sure it has a traceable history. The solution could really be improved. There are too many bugs in our version.
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

"The interface of Pentaho Business Analytics is easy to use and does not require high-level skills to operate the tool."
"The most valuable feature of Pentaho is the Tableau report."
"It is robust, offers market intelligence, and utilizes modules effectively."
"Pentaho Business Analytics' best features include the ease of developing data flows and the wide range of options to connect to databases, including those on the cloud."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"I use the BI Server, CDE Dashboards, Saiku, and Kettle, because these tools are very good and highly experienced."
"Easy to use components to create the job."
"We were able to install it without any assistance from tech support."
"The most valuable feature is that we can integrate with our own database, and it will displays the KPIs. This is highly required from the business side."
"The UI part is the best. The end-users can easily get started with Tableau Desktop or Tableau Online because of its user-friendliness."
"Data handling, visualizations, and aesthetics of it are the most valuable features."
"It is very easy to create dashboards, charts, and graphs."
"It has made the reporting stage simple and enabled us to focus mainly on the ETL part"
"Show Me is a feature to help with knowing which chart is an appropriate one for the selected variables, and it makes helps in creating appropriate visuals."
"While using this solution I have found the valuable features to be ease of use and the visualization. It is a complete solution."
"The initial setup is simple."
 

Cons

"Logging capability is needed."
"Deployment is not simple. It is not simple because we are dealing with a lot of data; we are dealing with a lot of storage. So, it's not a simple process."
"We did not achieve the ROI. The work delivered to users had lesser value than the subscription cost."
"Pentaho Business Analytics is hard to learn and not suited for initial users as it requires knowledge of operating systems, Java, and other technical skills."
"Version control would be a good addition."
"Pentaho Business Analytics' user interface is outdated."
"The tool is very good, and yet it has some problems as it relies heavily on Java."
"Another concern is that Pentaho is not customizable or interactive."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"There should be more GIS features, such as location analysis, which is quite limited. There are very few location-based functionalities."
"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."
"More integration with Python or something related to machine learning would be a good improvement."
"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."
"Whenever it comes to specialized visualization, Tableau is an absolute failure."
"The extraction, transformation and loading of data in Tableau takes a lot of time and we do not have confidence that Tableau is showing all the data we need."
"From the developer perspective, the data connection handling the target data set is what most needs to be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pentaho is expensive ."
"We were lucky enough to find a Pentaho OEM partner who offered a data warehouse model and the ETL software for about 60K SGD per year."
"Free and commercial versions are available."
"I'm using Tableau Public, which is free."
"At $70 per month, I think the price is a bit scary. I have a small consulting firm in Ghana, working in about 15 different African countries, and when it comes to our part of the world, $70 a month is a lot of money for software."
"I wish there was more of a subscription model with the pricing when it comes to Tableau, so you can get all the latest version upgrades/features if you pay monthly/annually."
"The company chose to purchase a creator license for me, which was $70. With that license, you can also be an administrator. We also have 20-25 extra licenses and they cost around $20-$35 each. Those are for normal users who will be viewing the dashboards. Those are monthly charges."
"The cost of the solution should be improved."
"Basically, we prefer a permanent license. A one-time charge is much better."
"The product's price is relatively inexpensive and manageable for enterprise-level companies."
"The professional version of Tableau is quite expensive."
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Comparison Review

it_user79932 - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 4, 2015
Comparison of SAP BO, Tableau, QlikView, Cognos, Microsoft, OBIEE and Pentaho
1. SAP BO/BI Enterprise scalability Security Ease of use Semantic layer 2. Tableau Visualization Data discovery Turnaround time 3. IBM Cognos Enterprise scalability Security In-memory feature 4. MS BI - Flexibility 5. Pentaho - Open source but still enterprise grade 6. QlikView Data…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
13%
Educational Organization
7%
Government
6%
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

Seeking lightweight open source BI software
There are many...It would rather depend what System BI architecture or Enterprise legacy you have at your end...I would recommend as follows: 1) If you have legacies of SAP, Oracle - look for SAP...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pentaho Business Analytics?
For those starting to use this tool, there is a free version available which is beneficial. The company also finds the pricing to be good.
What needs improvement with Pentaho Business Analytics?
The tool is very good, and yet it has some problems as it relies heavily on Java. The platform works with Java, and it has brought some issues to the company.
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 ...
 

Also Known As

Pentaho, Kettle, Hitachi Pentaho Business Analytics
Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cargo 2000 Lufthansa, Marketo, ModCloth, Cardiac Science, Telefonica, ExactTarget, Active Broadband Networks, and Brussels Airport.
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 Pentaho Business Analytics vs. Tableau and other solutions. Updated: February 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.