Sigma vs Tableau comparison

Sigma Computing and Salesforce are both solutions in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category. Sigma Computing is ranked #17 with an average rating of 7.0, while Salesforce is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.5. Sigma Computing holds a 1.2% mindshare in BIT, compared to Salesforce’s 17.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Sigma Computing users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of Salesforce users who would recommend it.

Sigma

Read 6 Sigma reviews

1,348 Views
647 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Tableau

Read 296 Tableau reviews

17,456 Views
14,743 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Sigma

Tableau

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Tableau and Sigma compete in the analytics and business intelligence market. Sigma often has the upper hand in features and ease of deployment, making it a compelling choice for many users.

Features: Tableau offers powerful data visualization capabilities, extensive third-party integrations, and a comprehensive dashboard experience. Sigma provides an intuitive spreadsheet-like interface for data exploration, real-time collaboration features, and seamless cloud integration. Key differences include Tableau's advanced visualization tools versus Sigma's flexibility and ease of collaboration.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Tableau follows a traditional deployment model with comprehensive customer support known for responsiveness. Sigma's cloud-based approach simplifies deployment and provides proactive service with quick responses, offering a cloud-first solution for faster updates and deployment.

Pricing and ROI: Tableau typically involves higher initial costs due to licensing fees and setup, leading to a more gradual ROI driven by its extensive features. Sigma offers lower upfront costs with a cloud subscription model, resulting in quicker ROI, especially concerning ongoing operational efficiencies. The contrast lies in the immediate value and lower initial investment that Sigma offers compared to Tableau's feature-rich but costlier solution.

To learn more, read our detailed Sigma vs. Tableau Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Sigma vs. Tableau

April 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 847,625 peers since 2012

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

Sigma

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

17th

Ranking in Data Visualization

13th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

8.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Tableau

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

2nd

Ranking in Data Visualization

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

296

Ranking in other categories

Reporting (2nd), Embedded BI (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Sigma is 1.2%, up 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

Russell Rothstein

Founder and CEO at PeerSpot

Modern dashboards and reports enhance decision-making and presentations

I would love to be able to create my own reports in Sigma, as I can do in Salesforce. Either we are not using it properly, or the software is too complicated. It would be great if there was a way for me to create reports without relying on a data analyst. I'm interested in the upcoming AI co-pilot to enable natural language generation of visualizations and reports. Also, the marketing materials did not match what I feel we've received. Regarding pricing, Sigma's pricing doesn't allow more people to have the ability to create their own reports. We have very few admin or report creator licenses, while everyone else is on a view-only mode.

Read full review

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The tool's interface is easy to use. The functions listed as a part of the menu items are easy to use."

"Sigma serves as the visualization and reporting front end."

"The most valuable feature of Sigma is the detailed reports."

"I find the collaborative features, such as commenting, to be very valuable."

"Sigma is a great software for non-technical business users. If someone's familiar with pivot tables or Excel or Google Sheets, they should be able to pick up Sigma pretty quickly. There is a very low bar for onboarding."

"The most valuable feature of Sigma is the detailed reports."

"The most valuable aspect for me is having real-time data."

"Tableau Prep tool for data preparation is a most valuable tool."

"Tableau is very flexible and easy to learn. It has drag-and-drop function analytics, and its design is very good. It is a very good tool, and it basically brings life into data with good design. We have been creating a lot of interactive visualizations and dashboards. It has a public version. There are public communities from where you can get a lot of examples for practice."

"It most valuable feature is its ease of developing visualizations, not just charts and graphs."

"A valuable feature of Tableau is that it is a useful tool for small setups. I shuffle between Tableau and MicroStrategy, so I use Tableau for personal purposes more than enterprise. I like the light version of Tableau for personal usage and doing some use cases on my own. When it comes to something small, I use Tableau for setups, rather than any other tool."

"Easy for beginners to use"

"The dashboards are amazing, with different report types and stunning visuals. Most importantly, Tableau's AI with machine learning automatically predicts features and reports based on historical data. These are the three most valuable features for me."

"It is definitely easy to use. It is intuitive, and more or less, everything can be done from the front end. As such, there is no concept of metadata. You can just take data from a database and start building your own stuff, such as OLAP data warehouse. You don't need extensive metadata modeling like Oracle BI."

"The product has the best features for analytical views and filters."

More Tableau pros

Cons

"Sigma could have better reports."

"I would like to see better visualization options. That would allow me to build out more visually pleasing dashboarding in Sigma."

"Sigma could have better reports."

"Either we are not using it properly, or the software is too complicated. It would be great if there was a way for me to create reports without relying on a data analyst."

"Sigma lacks a versioning feature to track changes. There is a need for better structuring, like a folder system, to organize diagrams efficiently."

"The only minor area for improvement lies in handling highly complex visualizations."

"The product's roadmap regarding introducing new features in the solution or new versions of the tool can be made better in the future."

"We did have issues with Tableau 10.1 server with the brokers failing on heavy load but since moving to 10.2, then to 10.3, this issue seems to have been resolved and the environment is now quite stable."

"Reports should be downloadable as PDF files."

"Other tools are more competitively priced."

"The charting is overly complex in comparison with Power BI's"

"I take a long time to process the hundreds of thousands or millions of records that must be processed every day."

"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."

"When I've done presentations in the past, I've had issues with uploading the cartography."

"SAP BusinessObjects has some semantic layer designs that give the flexibility to do ad hoc reporting or dashboard designing. If that can be brought into Tableau, it would be great. We have the data in the database, but we should also be able to bring something between the database and the dashboard and do some semantic layer modeling for ad hoc reporting requirements."

More Tableau cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The retail price is set at one thousand dollars per creator per year."

"Tableau can be costly (but this can be indefinable, such as user experience vs. cheaper etc.)"

"Tableau is not as cost-effective as Microsoft BI."

"For data extraction and analysis, Tableau is better than any other tool I have used with the same pricing model."

"Be careful with the Tableau Viewer's licenses, and stay with the right number of users."

"I recommend that you discuss your needs with the salesperson and try to negotiate the price."

"Tableau's prices are relatively high for our market. I am from Serbia, so many companies in this market don't have the ability to pay for expensive software. My clients are quite satisfied with a lot of Tableau's qualities except for the prices."

"Tableau's licensing is pretty straightforward and simple."

"It is a bit overpriced."

More Tableau pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which BI (Business Intelligence) Tools solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

847,625 professionals have used our research since 2012.

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

16%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Healthcare Company

10%

Educational Organization

44%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Sigma?

The tool's interface is easy to use. The functions listed as a part of the menu items are easy to use.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sigma?

The pricing of Sigma is a concern, as it restricts our ability to provide more users with report-creating capabilities due to the high cost of admin or report creator licenses. Most users have view...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Sigma?

See all answers

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...

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 been working on and off Tableau for about a year, but getting to work on it consta...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Hex vs Sigma

Compared 37% of the time

Apache Superset vs Sigma

Compared 17% of the time

Microsoft Power BI vs Sigma

Compared 9% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Sigma

Compared 8% of the time

Omni vs Sigma

Compared 6% of the time

More Sigma Competitors

Microsoft Power BI vs Tableau

Compared 19% of the time

Domo vs Tableau

Compared 13% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs Tableau

Compared 7% of the time

Databricks vs Tableau

Compared 6% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs Tableau

Compared 5% of the time

More Tableau Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Sigma

March 2025

Download Sigma product report

Buyer's Guide

Tableau

March 2025

Download Tableau product report

Also Known As

No data available

Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online

Overview

Sigma is the next-generation of analytics for cloud data warehouses with a familiar spreadsheet-like interface that gives business experts the power to ask any question of their data no matter the query.

Sigma Computing

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.”

Salesforce

Sample Customers

Snowflake, Fivetran ,Autodesk, Flowspace, Super League Gaming, Zumper, Clover, Volta, Olivela

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

Sigma vs. Tableau

April 2025

Free Report: Sigma vs. Tableau

Find out what your peers are saying about Sigma vs. Tableau and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

847,625 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Sigma vs. Tableau report.

See our list of best BI (Business Intelligence) Tools vendors and best Data Visualization vendors.

We monitor all BI (Business Intelligence) Tools reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.