Apache Kafka vs Tableau Desktop | TrustRadius

What users are saying about

Score 8.9 out of 10

Based on 59 reviews and ratings

Score 8.2 out of 10

Based on 1685 reviews and ratings

Feature Rating Comparison

Apache Kafka

Tableau Desktop

Pixel Perfect reports

Customizable dashboards

Report Formatting Templates

Apache Kafka

Tableau Desktop

Drill-down analysis

Formatting capabilities

Integration with R or other statistical packages

Report sharing and collaboration

Apache Kafka

Tableau Desktop

Publish to Web

Publish to PDF

Report Versioning

Report Delivery Scheduling

Delivery to Remote Servers

Apache Kafka

Tableau Desktop

Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)

Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization

Predictive Analytics

Apache Kafka

Tableau Desktop

Multi-User Support (named login)

Role-Based Security Model

Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)

Single Sign-On (SSO)

Apache Kafka

Tableau Desktop

Responsive Design for Web Access

Dedicated iOS Application

Dedicated Android Application

Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile

Apache Kafka

Tableau Desktop

REST API

Javascript API

iFrames

Java API

Themeable User Interface (UI)

Customizable Platform (Open Source)

Pros

Apache Kafka is able to handle a large number of I/Os (writes) using 3-4 cheap servers.
It scales very well over large workloads and can handle extreme-scale deployments (eg. Linkedin with 300 billion user events each day).
The same Kafka setup can be used as a messaging bus, storage system or a log aggregator making it easy to maintain as one system feeding multiple applications.

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Verified User

Analyst in Information Technology

Airlines/Aviation Company, 51-200 employees

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Love the interface. It's very smooth and easy to connect multiple numbers of data points
Provided a lot of self-learning tutorials which are easy to follow
You can display info in different ways (categorical versus numerical)
User friendly and has clean display

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Assistant Director, Master of Science in Entrepreneurship and Innovation

USC Marshall School of BusinessHigher Education, 10,001+ employees

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Cons

Still a bit inmature, some clients have required recoding in the last few versions
New feaures coming very fast, several upgrades a year may be required
Not many commercial companies provide support

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Juan Francisco Tavira

Global Technology Centre - Middleware

ProdubanFinancial Services, 10,001+ employees

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Very steep learning curve for those who haven't used it previously.
Because it's a powerful tool, getting it to do simple things can be extremely difficult.
A jack-of-all-trades solution, sometimes it's hard to find or create industry-specific visualizations, such as NPS gauges.

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Verified User

Analyst in Marketing

Telecommunications Company, 201-500 employees

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Likelihood to Renew

Apache Kafka 9.0

Based on 1 answer

Kafka is quickly becoming core product of the organization, indeed it is replacing older messaging systems. No better alternatives found yet

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Juan Francisco Tavira

Global Technology Centre - Middleware

ProdubanFinancial Services, 10,001+ employees

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Tableau Desktop 8.9

Based on 39 answers

Our use of Tableau Desktop is still fairly low, and will continue over time. The only real concern is around cost of the licenses, and I have mentioned this to Tableau and fully expect the development of more sensible models for our industry. This will remove any impediment to expansion of our use.

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Verified User

Manager in Information Technology

Mining & Metals Company, 10,001+ employees

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Usability

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Tableau Desktop 9.4

Based on 31 answers

Tableau [Desktop's] interface is clean, minimalistic, and does a good job of hiding more complicated features so that the average user can get to work quickly and easily. As users become more proficient with the software, more features and customization become available, but they don't have to interact with those Advanced features from the get-go. Some scripting is available as well; the one area where this is week is in variable assignment.

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Christopher Penn

Chief Data Scientist

Trust InsightsResearch, 1-10 employees

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Reliability and Availability

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Tableau Desktop 8.0

Based on 10 answers

When used as a stand-alone tool, Tableau Desktop has unlimited uptime, which is always nice. When used in conjunction with Tableau Server, this tool has as much uptime as your server admins are willing to give it. All in all, I've never had an issue with Tableau's availability.

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Associate Data Analytics Consultant

MarinerInformation Technology and Services, 11-50 employees

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Performance

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Tableau Desktop 6.1

Based on 9 answers

Tableau Desktop's performance is solid. You can really dig into a large dataset in the form of a spreadsheet, and it exhibits similarly good performance when accessing a moderately sized Oracle database. I noticed that with Tableau Desktop 9.3, the performance using a spreadsheet started to slow around 75K rows by about 60 columns. This was easily remedied by creating an extract and pushing it to Tableau Server, where performance went to lightning fast

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Verified User

Professional in Research & Development

Biotechnology Company, 201-500 employees

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Support Rating

Apache Kafka 8.8

Based on 6 answers

We are using the Apache open source version of Kafka. The community is a good place to ask questions. and we can get most of our problems resolved there.

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Verified User

Strategist in Information Technology

Package/Freight Delivery Company, 10,001+ employees

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Tableau Desktop 8.8

Based on 24 answers

The support team is easily approachable. All the questions and queries are answered on time. There is also a feedback mechanism which helps the team to make modifications and enhancements in the current software version. There is also a feedback process to check the efficiency of the support team of Tableau Desktop.

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Verified User

Analyst in Finance and Accounting

Banking Company, 5001-10,000 employees

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In-Person Training

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Tableau Desktop 9.4

Based on 4 answers

It is admittedly hard to train a group of people with disparate levels of ability coming in, but the software is so easy to use that this is not a huge problem; anyone who can follow simple instructions can catch up pretty quickly.

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Jon Boeckenstedt

Associate Vice President

DePaul University, Division of Enrollment Management and MarketingHigher Education, 1001-5000 employees

View all 4 answers on this topic

Online Training

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Tableau Desktop 8.0

Based on 4 answers

The training for new users are quite good because it covers topic wise training and the best part was that it also had video tutorials which are very helpful

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Chandra Bhanu Pratap Singh

BI Developer

CognizantInformation Technology and Services, 10,001+ employees

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Implementation Rating

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Tableau Desktop 8.0

Based on 36 answers

Again, training is the key and the company provides a lot of example videos that will help users discover use cases that will greatly assist their creation of original visualizations. As with any new software tool, productivity will decline for a period. In the case of Tableau, the decline period is short and the later gains are well worth it.

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Decision Sciences - Modeling, Simulation & Analysis

San Francisco State UniversityHigher Education, 1001-5000 employees

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Alternatives Considered

I would only use RabbitMQ over Kafka when you need to have delay queues or tons of small topics/queues around.I don't know too much about Pulsar - currently evaluating it - but it's supposed to have the same or better throughput while allowing for tons of queues. Stay tuned - I might update this review after we finish evaluating Pulsar. It's much less battle-tested though.

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Verified User

Engineer in Engineering

Internet Company, 201-500 employees

View all 6 answers on this topic

When we first looked at getting a visualization software for analytics we looked into two options Microsoft Power BI and Tableau Desktop, and even though Power BI is more cost-effective we decided to go with Tableau Desktop as it had more options that we are looking for such as free reader and Tableau Server and offers a very comprehensive and simple interface that is easier to learn for new staff.

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Clinton Shields

Health Information Analytics Analyst

Kings View Community Services, Inc.Hospital & Health Care, 201-500 employees

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Scalability

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Tableau Desktop 7.0

Based on 3 answers

Tableau Desktop's scaleability is really limited to the scale of your back-end data systems. If you want to pull down an extract and work quickly in-memory, in my application it scaled to a few tens of millions of rows using the in-memory engine. But it's really only limited by your back-end data store if you have or are willing to invest in an optimized SQL store or purpose-built query engine like Veritca or Netezza or something similar.

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Verified User

C-Level Executive in Finance and Accounting

Internet Company, 51-200 employees

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Return on Investment

Positive impact on ROI since now we can use one large deployment of Apache Kafka that can be used for multiple scenarios ( storage systems, log aggregate, messaging queue ).
It is open-source so there are no licenses or subscription fees reducing the cost of deployment.
Data can now be ingested and analyzed in real-time making it easy to fine-tune the customer experience and decision making for internal IT.

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Verified User

Analyst in Information Technology

Airlines/Aviation Company, 51-200 employees

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Tableau has provided my clients with the information necessary to allocate multi-million dollar research budgets effectively, ensuring the company is getting the most bang for its buck.
Tableau has given my office the ability to present data quickly and easily in a professional format that customers can understand, and has them returning frequently for additional analysis and projects.

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Innovation Research Manager

Wright Brothers InstituteDefense & Space, 11-50 employees

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Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Apache Kafka Editions & Modules

—

Additional Pricing Details

—

General

Free Trial

Yes

Free/Freemium Version

Yes

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Yes

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Tableau Desktop Editions & Modules

Edition

Tableau Viewer	$12¹
Tableau Explorer	$35¹
Tableau Creator	$70¹

Per User / Per Month

Additional Pricing Details

—

Rating Summary

Apache Kafka

Tableau Desktop

Apache Kafka

Tableau Desktop

Apache Kafka

Tableau Desktop

Apache Kafka

Tableau Desktop

Apache Kafka

Tableau Desktop

Apache Kafka

Tableau Desktop

Apache Kafka

Tableau Desktop

Apache Kafka

Tableau Desktop

Apache Kafka

Tableau Desktop

Apache Kafka

Tableau Desktop

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