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: December 2024).

Tableau vs. ThoughtSpot

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Helped 831,158 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

19th

Ranking in Data Visualization

14th

Ranking in Embedded BI

8th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the BI (Business Intelligence) Tools category, the mindshare of Tableau is 19.7%, up from 18.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ThoughtSpot is 1.5%, up from 1.4% 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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Anthony Fiorino

SVP, Head of Enterprise Data Mgmt & Data Intelligence at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees

You can drill down into any data right out of the box, with a straightforward deployment, and great support

The most valuable feature is probably the core functionality itself, which is the ability to search and drill down into any data right out of the box. Of course, there's data modeling needed, and things like that, but I can throw it at a set, and I can get up and running in a matter of hours. If a new group comes to me and says, "Hey, I've heard about ThoughtSpot. I have some data and I want to be able to do some analytics, do some profiling, do some BI against it." In a couple of hours, I connect to their source and I just do it. Now for a production product, we have to model and perform it over time, but at least I can get people up and running extremely fast with a tool that's intuitive and easy to use.

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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

"Better interaction and less time spent with end users."

"The most valuable feature is the interface, which is user-friendly and intuitive."

"One of the most valuable features of Tableau is that it's a visual analytics solution, not just a dashboarding solution. Compared to Power BI, which is a dashboarding solution, there are no limitations with Tableau. For example, when you add a chart or a map to Power BI, it has a 3,000-point limitation. When you try to track your whole vehicle on the map, you only see the first 3,000 rows on the map, and Power BI doesn't tell you which part of the data is shown on the map. But Tableau doesn't have any limitations, which means that you can see five million data points on a map. It starts the project by creating the visuals that directly converts to SQLs. In that way, all the components have no limitations. When we compared Tableau to Power BI, we also found Tableau to be more fancy. Fancy means you can create more visual graphics and more visual dashboards. With Power BI, this isn't so—it's just some tables and some simple charts together. Tableau is more for business users who want to analyze data. Tableau can directly connect the analytics systems, like R or Titan, and get the results in screen, so it's a good solution for analytics scientists. It has some predefined capabilities to understand the data."

"Scheduled extract and the multiple connectors are fantastic!"

"Very user friendly."

"The ease of presenting findings is very helpful."

"Tableau will automatically show charts for the related data that I choose making it very easy to use."

"I like the visualization component."

More Tableau pros

"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."

"The initial setup was very straightforward."

"The scalability is good."

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

"The ability to do ad hoc explorations of data has been most valuable."

"It is easy to set up the solution."

"ThoughtSpot takes the modifying of existing reports out of our hands."

"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."

Cons

"Formatting controls could use some improvement."

"Provide additional enhancements in any business process: Operations, Marketing and Sales, Finance, Human Resources, Logistics, etc."

"At the organizational level, increasing the servers' capabilities to support us as an enterprise tool."

"They need to improve the icons and the filters, because they look too old, resembling Excel from 1997."

"If they could add global filters in the stories, more chart types, and default colours, it would help."

"Most of the problems in Tableau Online that I have noticed have to do with performance or weird, inexplicable bugs that I can't pin down. For example, you might try unloading some data, and you'll be waiting for a long time without anything happening."

"Firstly, the high cost of Tableau licenses makes it inaccessible for many mid-scale clients. Secondly, the server requires at least 128GB of RAM, which can be impractical for some systems. We need a dedicated system to use Tableau."

"Reports should be downloadable as PDF files."

More Tableau cons

"A customized visualization is lacking in this product."

"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 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."

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

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

"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."

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

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Tableau is high, although there are different types of licenses available."

"The pricing is $70 per month. You have to pay about $800 or something in that ballpark annually for one license."

"This license is on a yearly basis."

"Its price is a concern. It is more expensive than Power BI. My guess would be that it is $1000 or less per year. We might go for Power BI in the future because of its umbrella with Microsoft licensing. It is much cheaper for us to use Power BI, and some folks will go in that direction because they don't want to pay the higher license."

"In general, if someone is new and wants to learn Tableau, it's around $70 per month."

"Best advice on pricing is to anticipate the desire for more licenses once the results of this product are acknowledged in other parts of your company."

"For our organization, the cost hasn't been an issue."

"I rate the product price in the Indian region a seven to eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."

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

42%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

24%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

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

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Databricks vs Tableau

Compared 6% of the time

SAP Analytics Cloud vs Tableau

Compared 4% of the time

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Compared 25% of the time

Looker vs ThoughtSpot

Compared 11% of the time

Databricks vs ThoughtSpot

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon QuickSight vs ThoughtSpot

Compared 6% of the time

TIBCO Spotfire vs ThoughtSpot

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Tableau

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Also Known As

Tableau Desktop, Tableau Server, Tableau Online

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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.”

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