Tableau vs ThoughtSpot comparison

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Tableau

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 1, 2025

Tableau and ThoughtSpot compete in the BI and data analytics category, offering distinct approaches to data visualization and analysis. Tableau seems to have the upper hand in data visualization capabilities, while ThoughtSpot excels in search-driven analytics and user-friendly querying.

Features: Tableau offers extensive data visualization capabilities, easy integration with various data sources, and user-friendly drag-and-drop functionality for creating interactive dashboards. ThoughtSpot features powerful search-driven analytics, AI-driven insights, and the ability to query large datasets simply, ideal for self-service analytics within organizations.

Room for Improvement: Tableau faces challenges such as high pricing, complex licensing, and difficulty efficiently handling large datasets. Users also highlight its limited ETL capabilities and steep learning curve. ThoughtSpot could improve by expanding data connectivity, enhancing stability, and offering more visualization customization to better compete with established tools like Tableau.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Tableau provides versatile deployment options across on-premises, public, and hybrid clouds. While its support is generally praised, users sometimes find response times slow. ThoughtSpot is noted for its ease of setup, particularly in the cloud, and positive customer support, focusing on resolving user issues and enhancing satisfaction.

Pricing and ROI: Tableau's pricing can be high, especially for larger enterprises; however, its comprehensive features can quickly return investment through improved reporting efficiency. ThoughtSpot’s flexible, pay-as-you-go pricing appeals to cost-conscious organizations, potentially offering quicker ROI by focusing on data exploration and AI-driven insights.

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

Tableau vs. ThoughtSpot

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Helped 837,501 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

Tableau

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

2nd

Ranking in Data Visualization

1st

Ranking in Embedded BI

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.4

Number of Reviews

295

Ranking in other categories

Reporting (2nd)

ThoughtSpot

Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

21st

Ranking in Data Visualization

16th

Ranking in Embedded BI

8th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Tableau is 18.2%, down from 18.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ThoughtSpot is 1.4%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

BI (Business Intelligence) Tools

Featured Reviews

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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Sushma Polavarapu

Sr Data Analytics Consultant at Capgemini

Creates user-friendly analysis environments for large datasets

The tool is user-friendly for the end users. It is primarily a search-based tool. Users do not need a technical background to work directly on the dataset. Its compatibility with most databases, including the latest from FlexMovely and Redshift, allows users to create joins and worksheets easily. ThoughtSpot is fast, even with one to ten terabytes of data.

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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

"From the data science point of view, we use it for model building purposes. For example, if we are using it for a bank and we want to understand how much loan the bank can provide, we can use visualization to show the educational qualification, salary, gender, and city of a customer, and by using this information, we can arrive at the loan amount that this person is eligible for. I can also use it to view all prospective customers, so essentially, this is going to help me in model building as well as in understanding and segmenting customers and doing forecasting and predictive analytics. We use model widgets, and we can create thousands of visualizations, such as motion charts and bubble charts. We can also create animated versions of the graphs and view the data from multiple dimensions. These are the features that we typically use and like."

"It provides supporting data for critical policy and operational changes"

"Tableau's most valuable feature is its ability to connect with various data sources and display real-time data on three different dashboards."

"The most valuable feature is the aggregation function."

"I like the visualization component."

"The solution provides the leverage of having custom visualization and the capability of self-service."

"Tableau has data relationships that can be applied to a data source which helps build out a directory which is helpful. Data blending has also been valuable to us."

"The action feature which Tableau has is very useful for us. If we click on one visualization, it will pass the value to another visualization. That interactivity within different visualizations is the most valuable feature of Tableau."

More Tableau pros

"I like ThoughtSpot's search capabilities. You can also create custom analytics even if you aren't an experienced data analyst. We have users with no data analytics experience making some of the dashboards we've created, copying components, and customizing them to their specific use cases."

"The initial setup was very straightforward."

"Stability is very important, and HubSpot performs well."

"The tool is user-friendly for the end users."

"The main core of HubSpot is to create models, connect data pipelines, and create business models and dashboards on top of them."

"It's easy to drill down or expand data to get more details right out of the box."

"The tool is user-friendly for the end users."

"I would say the return on investment is good. Whatever we invested, we got results. We have been finding it easy to use and onboard new use cases."

More ThoughtSpot pros

Cons

"The development part should be better. We are putting a lot of effort in during development, so if we face any struggles, we have to find workaround solutions on the internet."

"The solution does have scalability issues."

"The data preparation could integrate better with Tableau."

"I would like Tableau to handle geospatial data better in terms of multiple layers and shapefiles."

"In the next release, there should be more information describing each chart because users have a difficult time telling them apart. They should also include the animations/videos, similar to Power BI."

"I don't have the ability in Tableau to create a tooltip and see the picture of a piece of jewelry or watch that is a best seller."

"Tableau has so many functions, so sometimes it's hard to find the right solution quickly. I have to search multiple menu bars to find the right command."

"Areas for improvement would be visualization and augmented analytics. In the next release, I would like to see automated insights from the data added to the dashboard."

More Tableau cons

"I would like to see more flexibility in adding the pins. Currently, we have four different sizes in which I can add pins, but I would like to be able to resize my pins."

"The most difficult thing I found is that it only deals with the files and does not have direct connectivity to databases."

"In terms of features, I'd like to be able to pivot data - for example, going from rows to columns. It's not easy to do."

"The dashboards could give you more ability to fine tune the appearance. You get a great deal more control over how something looks in Power BI than you do in ThoughtSpot."

"If I want to order columns, this feature is not there."

"ThoughtSpot is a fairly new product, so some usability aspects aren't as mature as we'd like them to be. One example is their organizational methodology, like how objects are organized in their dashboards inside the product. They're all on a flat list, which works if you've got five or 10 dashboards. However, it's insufficient when you're a large enterprise with multiple groups looking at the same dashboards. It isn't organized well."

"The visualization customization needs improvement."

"The one area of the solution that I do hear needs improvement is on the visualization front."

More ThoughtSpot cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The initial cost that is set according to CPU cores is expensive."

"Tableau has reasonable pricing."

"Its price is reasonable. Everything is included in the license."

"The price of this solution could definitely be lower. It's quite expensive."

"The product's price is relatively inexpensive and manageable for enterprise-level companies."

"Tableau is an expensive solution compared to Power BI."

"We are paying an annual licensing fee."

"It's an annual fee with everything included but it's quite expensive."

More Tableau pricing and cost advice

"I give the pricing a six out of ten."

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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

Educational Organization

44%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

24%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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 ...

What do you like most about ThoughtSpot?

It's easy to drill down or expand data to get more details right out of the box.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ThoughtSpot?

I like the pricing structure. I get billed by how much data I put in, not how many people are looking at the data. It's better for me as I can control pricing a bit more easily.

What needs improvement with ThoughtSpot?

We'd like more flexibility with the calendar as our fiscal year does not align with the calendar year. We have to load or create our own custom calendar to actually need our fiscal year-end. With o...

Microsoft Power BI vs Tableau

Comparisons

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Compared 8% of the time

Databricks vs Tableau

Compared 6% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs Tableau

Compared 4% of the time

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Compared 24% of the time

Databricks vs ThoughtSpot

Compared 12% of the time

Looker vs ThoughtSpot

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs ThoughtSpot

Compared 7% of the time

TIBCO Spotfire vs ThoughtSpot

Compared 6% of the time

More ThoughtSpot Competitors

Product Reports

Tableau

Download Tableau product report

Download ThoughtSpot product report

Also Known As

Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online

No data available

Overview

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

ThoughtSpot is a powerful business intelligence tool that allows easy searching and drilling into data. Its ad hoc exploration and query-based search features are highly valued, and it is easy to set up, stable, and scalable.

The solution is used for reporting purposes, self-service BI, and embedding into other applications for customers to do self-service analytics. It helps businesses with metrics, KPIs, and important insights by sourcing data from various sources into one golden source and visualizing it in an easy way for the business to consume. The pricing model is ideal, charging for data rather than the number of users.

Sample Customers

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.

Primary Capital Mortgage, Sterling Backcheck, RichRelevance, Rambus, Batteries Plus Bulbs

Tableau vs. ThoughtSpot