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Tableau vs ThoughtSpot 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
7.2
Tableau offers rapid insights and cost reductions, enabling users to recoup investments quickly despite some viewing it as costly.
Sentiment score
7.1
ThoughtSpot users report improved time efficiency and cross-regional marketing, yet ROI varies with user count and onboarding ease.
This saves a significant amount of time, particularly for reports that would have needed around fifty people.
Using ThoughtSpot has resulted in significant time savings and improved business sales by allowing us to identify sellers and buyers across regions, facilitating targeted marketing.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.0
Tableau's customer service is responsive and professional, with praised technical support, though some note wait time concerns.
Sentiment score
6.7
ThoughtSpot's support is proactive and responsive but has a limited knowledge base and lengthy feature integration processes.
The technical support for Tableau is quite good.
I stopped opening tickets due to insufficient and untimely responses.
ThoughtSpot provides a dedicated customer success person and the ability to submit tickets online, with a response time of no more than a day.
The knowledge base for ThoughtSpot is less robust compared to others.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.7
Tableau effectively scales with optimized configurations, but performance may decline with extremely large datasets, impacting scalability and cost.
Sentiment score
7.1
ThoughtSpot's scalability is praised, enhanced by Snowflake partnership, despite challenges in managing roles for large user bases.
Tableau, Power BI, or Looker have separate tools for preparation, customization, and storytelling.
The platform does not have technical problems with scaling data or connections.
I do find ThoughtSpot scalable.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Tableau is generally stable, efficient with varying data sizes, but may struggle with complex datasets or insufficient infrastructure.
Sentiment score
7.2
ThoughtSpot is stable with rare issues, offers high performance on large datasets, but needs integration and resource improvements.
This workaround consumed a lot of resources and led to reduced performance, with pinboards loading for approximately two minutes for each filter criterion.
The upgrades are smooth with no downtime, which is super important.
I use it primarily for large datasets, and it performs faster than regular data visualization tools such as Power BI, which has limits on dataset size.
 

Room For Improvement

Tableau users seek faster data processing, better customization, machine learning integration, and affordable pricing, plus enhanced support and training.
ThoughtSpot needs improvements in visualization, customization, data handling, and usability, lagging behind competitors like Power BI and Tableau.
We cannot send the entire Excel file reports via email within Tableau.
Enhancing integration capabilities with other tools like DBT would also be beneficial as it would make our lives easier.
Currently, it is not as customizable as the options available on Power BI or Tableau.
Handling governance when there are many models and dashboards is complex.
 

Setup Cost

Tableau's licensing is costly but offers valuable functionality, yet smaller firms find its pricing prohibitive and complex based on roles.
ThoughtSpot offers flexible pricing, often cheaper than Tableau but pricier than Power BI, with negotiable licensing models controlling costs.
The cost for viewer rights is around $60, but it can vary based on the business and is usually for a year.
ThoughtSpot's pricing is reasonable and in line with other BI tools.
HubSpot is expensive.
 

Valuable Features

Tableau excels with interactive visuals, diverse data connections, and user-friendly interface, driving efficiency and insights alongside strong community support.
ThoughtSpot provides user-friendly, scalable data exploration with diverse database compatibility, enabling efficient, non-technical analytics and business intelligence.
Tableau efficiently handles large amounts of data and automates processes, reducing the need for manual work.
Its compatibility with most databases, including the latest from FlexMovely and Redshift, allows users to create joins and worksheets easily.
This alerting feature is very beneficial for our company at the moment, and we use it extensively.
The main core of HubSpot is to create models, connect data pipelines, and create business models and dashboards on top of them.
 

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
6.5
Number of Reviews
296
Ranking in other categories
Reporting (2nd)
ThoughtSpot
Ranking in BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
18th
Ranking in Data Visualization
14th
Ranking in Embedded BI
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Tableau is 17.5%, down from 19.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ThoughtSpot is 1.4%, down from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
BI (Business Intelligence) Tools
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Sushma Polavarapu - PeerSpot reviewer
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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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
Educational Organization
44%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ThoughtSpot?
ThoughtSpot is expensive. When compared with Tableau and Sisense, it is around seven or eight on the expense scale.
What needs improvement with ThoughtSpot?
The visualization customization needs improvement. Currently, it is not as customizable as the options available on Power BI or Tableau. It mainly offers basic chart options.
What is your primary use case for ThoughtSpot?
I use ThoughtSpot as one of the visualization tools. I mainly create some live boards and provide access to the data sources and worksheets to users so they can create their own analyses and answer...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online
No data available
 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about Tableau vs. ThoughtSpot and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
847,625 professionals have used our research since 2012.