Power BI vs Tableau: What’s The Best Data Visualization Tool?

Microsoft Power BI and Tableau are both powerful business intelligence tools for data visualization. At first glance their functionality and features might look very similar.?But what are their core differences?

In this article we’ll reveal what data analysts really think about these two popular business intelligence tools. We’ve analyzed over 2,300 reviews by Tableau and Power BI users with our proprietary text analytics solution?Thematic. Here are some of the insights!

The full article also includes a review of external comparisons and is available on our blog.

Power BI vs Tableau: What do users think?

Various sites have public reviews where users candidly speak about the pros and the cons of Power BI and Tableau. We have gathered over 2300 such reviews to provide deeper insight into this comparison. Using Thematic’s proprietary feedback analytics solution we crunched this data.

How Thematic works

Thematic’s advanced AI discovers “themes” in customer reviews. For example, the screenshot below shows five themes which capture the positive features of one of the platforms:?charts and visualizations,?multiple data sources,?ease of use, an?online version?and?dashboards. We aggregate these themes into trends and compares Power BI and Tableau side by side. Thematic also gives each theme a?sentiment score. If you’d like to try Thematic on your own feedback, there is a?free trial.

How are Power BI and Tableau used?

Analysis of the feedback data shows that Tableau users are more likely to talk about creating data visualizations. Power BI users are more likely to mention reporting and sharing data. This suggests Power BI users tend to use the platform to create reports and share them with stakeholders.

(Blue: Tableau | Orange: Power BI)

Microsoft and Power BI

Another key advantage that Power BI has is the fact it's owned by Microsoft. 4% of reviewers mention this in their feedback. Power BI has great connectivity with other Microsoft products and is easier to use if you’re already familiar with the Microsoft family of products. Power BI’s link to Microsoft gives it an edge over other analytics tools. Tableau also has big name backing, though, since it was purchased by Salesforce in 2019.

Pricing

Power BI has the edge over Tableau when it comes to pricing. Power BI Pro costs just $9.99 per month per user and the even more powerful Power BI Premium costs $20 per month per user.

(Blue: Tableau | Orange: Power BI)

More than 8% of users cite pricing as one of Power BI’s biggest strengths. Power BI users find that its cost is often included in the Microsoft subscription package, there is a free version, and users often specifically comment that it’s cheaper than Tableau.

In Tableau’s defense, users do note that it has reasonable pricing. It’s fair to small businesses since they charge per seat and they do have student rates. Users can choose from the full Tableau Creator package at $75 per month or opt for the Tableau Explorer at $35 per month if you only need to use existing dashboards. Users who just need to view and interact with dashboards can get the $15 per month Tableau Viewer subscription.

Ease of Use

A similar percentage of reviewers comment on ease of use for both Power BI and Tableau, but their feedback diverges when we take a closer look. Users of Tableau were more likely to comment on its drag-and-drop functionality than Power BI.

(Blue: Tableau | Orange: Power BI)

Overall, Tableau users highlighted more often the ease of creating data visualizations. Power BI users were more likely to note the ease of creating reports. This makes sense given our earlier data analysis showed Tableau is more often used to create data visualizations and Power BI for reporting.

(Blue: Tableau | Orange: Power BI)

Power BI users were also twice as likely to comment on the ease of working with Excel files, or to compare the ease of working in Power BI to that of Excel. One reviewer even described it as “Excel on steroids”.

Overall Power BI has a slight advantage over Tableau, especially for users who are used to working with Excel and other Microsoft products.

Training

Related to ease of use is the level of training and expertise that’s needed to use the platforms. 29% of Tableau users mentioned the theme "need for training" compared to 24% for Power BI users. Tableau users were especially likely to talk about the learning curve. Users of both platforms mentioned the time needed to master them and watching a tutorial to get up to speed.

(Blue: Tableau | Orange: Power BI)

For those who need to get started quickly and are not data analysts, Power BI is the logical choice.

Integrations

Both SaaS products can easily integrate with most popular third party data sources, allowing you to easily import data from SAP, Google Analytics, MySQL and other databases.

(Blue: Tableau | Orange: Power BI)

When it comes to integrations, Power BI again comes out on top with 20-30% of reviewers mentioning them. Power BI users are especially likely to mention Office 365, SQL and R Integration when talking about ease of use of working with them. Power BI offers access to many APIs and is constantly unveiling more connectors on a monthly basis.

Tableau respondents were more likely to talk about SQL and R Integration. Tableau’s Connector is generally considered more advanced than Power BI, but users are required to identify the data they want to analyze before making the connection.

Speed

When it comes to speed, Tableau users are slightly more likely to say that the solution is slow. Overall, around 15% of users comment on different aspects of performance such as the speed and the robustness of the solution.

(Blue: Tableau | Orange: Power BI)

Features

When it comes to features:

1. Which tool is better at working with multiple data sources?
2. Which tool allows better chart, dashboard and analytics customization?
3. Which tool has better filtering & segmenting capabilities?
4. What are Natural Language text analysis capabilities in both Power BI & Tableau?

If you are interested in answers to these questions, read my full article on our blog!

Let me know if we missed anything!