Google Charts vs. Tableau Server

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Google Charts
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Google Charts provides a way to visualize data on your website - for free. From simple line charts to complex hierarchical tree maps, the chart gallery provides a large number of ready-to-use chart types. The most common way to use Google Charts is with simple JavaScript that you embed in your web page.N/A
Tableau Server
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Tableau Server allows Tableau Desktop users to publish dashboards to a central server to be shared across their organizations. The product is designed to facilitate collaboration across the organization. It can be deployed on a server in the data center, or it can be deployed on a public cloud.
$12
Per User Per Month
Pricing
Google ChartsTableau Server
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Viewer
$12.00
Per User Per Month
Explorer
$35.00
Per User Per Month
Creator
$70.00
Per User Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google ChartsTableau Server
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Google ChartsTableau Server
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Google ChartsTableau Server
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Google Charts
8.7
50 Ratings
6% above category average
Tableau Server
9.3
95 Ratings
13% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports8.145 Ratings9.129 Ratings
Customizable dashboards9.448 Ratings9.494 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates8.744 Ratings9.381 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Google Charts
9.2
51 Ratings
13% above category average
Tableau Server
8.9
95 Ratings
9% above category average
Drill-down analysis8.645 Ratings8.795 Ratings
Formatting capabilities9.451 Ratings8.593 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages9.437 Ratings8.959 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration9.546 Ratings9.589 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Google Charts
9.0
51 Ratings
7% above category average
Tableau Server
7.9
91 Ratings
6% below category average
Publish to Web9.549 Ratings9.685 Ratings
Publish to PDF9.546 Ratings9.384 Ratings
Report Versioning8.643 Ratings8.270 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling8.637 Ratings7.577 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers8.730 Ratings5.19 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Google Charts
8.8
50 Ratings
9% above category average
Tableau Server
8.5
90 Ratings
5% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)8.949 Ratings8.886 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.847 Ratings8.885 Ratings
Predictive Analytics8.739 Ratings7.864 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Google Charts
8.8
45 Ratings
2% above category average
Tableau Server
7.5
95 Ratings
14% below category average
Multi-User Support (named login)8.844 Ratings7.593 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model8.739 Ratings7.590 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)8.841 Ratings7.592 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)8.831 Ratings7.562 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Google Charts
9.0
48 Ratings
12% above category average
Tableau Server
7.7
79 Ratings
3% below category average
Responsive Design for Web Access9.546 Ratings7.377 Ratings
Mobile Application9.529 Ratings7.261 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile8.744 Ratings7.968 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Google Charts
8.8
40 Ratings
10% above category average
Tableau Server
7.2
46 Ratings
10% below category average
REST API8.932 Ratings9.040 Ratings
Javascript API8.839 Ratings9.137 Ratings
iFrames8.826 Ratings9.140 Ratings
Java API8.926 Ratings5.57 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)8.828 Ratings6.19 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)8.728 Ratings4.67 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Google ChartsTableau Server
Small Businesses
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 8.9 out of 10
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Reveal
Reveal
Score 9.9 out of 10
Reveal
Reveal
Score 9.9 out of 10
Enterprises
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Google ChartsTableau Server
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(61 ratings)
7.2
(111 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.3
(8 ratings)
10.0
(20 ratings)
Usability
8.9
(33 ratings)
5.4
(17 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Performance
5.0
(1 ratings)
8.1
(8 ratings)
Support Rating
8.2
(33 ratings)
3.3
(18 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(4 ratings)
Online Training
5.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(9 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.1
(13 ratings)
Configurability
8.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Google ChartsTableau Server
Likelihood to Recommend
Google
We can easily recommend Google Charts to any company that needs a way to visually represent their data. Another great thing about Google Charts is that it is free to use and does not require any membership fees. Although it requires a skilled used to be able to use the charts, the results are great and can be beneficial to any company who is looking to make better decisions.
Read full review
Tableau
Tableau Server is well suited for a data warehouse build and handling big data. Tableau data aggregation, transformation, clustering capability is powerful and easy to implement. The choice of charts and visualisation tools is outstanding. Customisation and dynamic data visualisation capability is superb. The user interface takes some time getting used to.
Read full review
Pros
Google
  • they're free with Google suite and they have backing in terms of powerful Google apps which can be plugged in to perform multiple actions like using Google sheets to import raw data into Google Charts
  • they're the most simple app to use when it comes to creating charts and visual dashboards
  • ease of customization
  • ease of using custom APIs from developers side to help make any types of charts and dashboards you want
Read full review
Tableau
  • It's good at doing what it is designed for: accessing visualizations without having to download and open a workbook in Tableau Desktop. The latter would be a very inefficient method for sharing our metrics, so I am glad that we have Tableau Server to serve this function.
  • Publishing to Tableau Server is quick and easy. Just a few clicks from Tableau Desktop and a few seconds of publishing through an average speed network, and the new visualizations are live!
  • Seeing details on who has viewed the visualization and when. This is something particularly useful to me for trying to drive adoption of some new pages, so I really appreciate the granularity provided in Tableau Server
Read full review
Cons
Google
  • I would like a couple more introductory videos or a live chat option for when you run into an issue. I think this is a Google-wide problem, not only linked to Google Charts.
  • I have run into some issues with the Dynamic Data but also admittedly could potentially dive in deeper and investigate.
  • It would be great if Google Charts made it possible to integrate Google Chat into the platform.
Read full review
Tableau
  • Tableau Server has had some issue handling some of our larger data sets. Our extract refreshes fail intermittently with no obvious error that we can fix
  • Tableau Server has been hard to work with before they launched their new Rest API, which is also a little tricky to work with
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Likelihood to Renew
Google
Google Charts is a good product. It's widely supported with deep documentation and a large community. But for me, it wasn't customizable enough. When we started with simple charts, it was great, but as we got deeper and more complex, our needs outgrew the library. If I was going forward, I would choose a more barebones library with more freedom and extensibility.
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Tableau
It simply is used all the time by more and more people. Migrating to something else would involve lots of work and lots of training. The renewal fee being fair, it simply isn't worth migrating to a different tool for now.
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Usability
Google
Google Charts is about as easy to use as the rest of their applications. The UI is very well thought out, allowing you to add what you need, and customize it to your exact liking. The default theme is actually really nice, which helps as most of the time, customizing is not needed.
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Tableau
Tableau Server is unbeatable at creating easy to use, interactive dashboards for busy executives. The software also saves time for the busy analyst that is tired of always using Excel. Tableau Server is a head and shoulders improvement over Excel.
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Reliability and Availability
Google
Google charts is always available and provides fast output.
Read full review
Tableau
Our instance of Tableau Server was hosted on premises (I believe all instances are) so if there were any outages it was normally due to scheduled maintenance on our end. If the Tableau server ever went down, a quick restart solved most issues
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Performance
Google
Connectivity is occasionally very slow.
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Tableau
While there are definitely cases where a user can do things that will make a particular worksheet or dashboard run slowly, overall the performance is extremely fast. The user experience of exploratory analysis particularly shines, there's nothing out there with the polish of Tableau.
Read full review
Support Rating
Google
As a free tool with massively powerful, infinitely customisable charts that can be dynamically updated - Google Charts is my favourite data visualisation tool. However, my hatred of JavaScript does jade my view on it. This is the price of the tool though, and I'm glad it's available for me.
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Tableau
We have consistently had highly satisfactory results every time we've reached out for help. Our contractor, used for Tableau server maintenance and dashboard development is very technically skilled. When he hits a roadblock on how to do something with Tableau, the support staff have provided timely and useful guidance. He frequently compares it to Cognos and says that while Cognos has capabilities Tableau doesn't, the bottom line value for us is a no-brainer
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In-Person Training
Google
No answers on this topic
Tableau
In our case, they hired a private third party consultant to train our dept. It was extremely boring and felt like it dragged on. Everything I learned was self taught so I was not really paying attention. But I do think that you can easily spend a week on the tool and go over every nook and cranny. We only had the consultant in for a day or two.
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Online Training
Google
The online training was solely done through self training on google's guide to charts.
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Tableau
The Tableau website is full of videos that you can follow at your own pace. As a very small company with a Tableau install, access to these free resources was incredibly useful to allowing me to implement Tableau to its potential in a reasonable and proportionate manner.
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Implementation Rating
Google
Easy to implement
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Tableau
Implementation was over the phone with the vendor, and did not go particularly well. Again, think this was our fault as our integration and IT oversight was poor, and we made errors. Would they have happened had a vendor been onsite? Not sure, probably not, but we probably wouldn't have paid for that either
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Alternatives Considered
Google
Google Charts stacks up better since it is free and does not have the constant pressure for cost overruns, add-ons, annual maintenance and implementation services. The speed of using Google Charts is quick, saving users potentially weeks in getting up and going. For the readers of websites with limited resources, the application shows up nicely is look and feel with charts. Great way of showing data visually.
Read full review
Tableau
Today, if my shop is largely Microsoft-centric, I would be hard pressed to choose a product other than Power BI. Tableau was the visualization leader for years, but Microsoft has caught up with them in many areas, and surpassed them in some. Its ability to source, transform, and model data is superior to Tableau. Tableau still has the lead in some visualizations, but Power BI's rise is evidenced by its ever-increasing position in the leadership section of the Gartner Magic Quadrant.
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Scalability
Google
Google Charts is essential for quick, easy, reporting. There are opportunities for advanced features.
Read full review
Tableau
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Google
  • teams were easily able to create charts and find out progress on our learning courses and thus take actionable insights to their managers, professors
  • students could also know their progress on various courses from one single view, same for instructors in terms of imparting education
  • sales team could learn which kind of courses sold more to focus more on those areas
Read full review
Tableau
  • Tableau does take dedicated FTE to create and analyze the data. It's too complex (and powerful) a product not to have someone dedicated to developing with it.
  • There are some significant setup for the server product.
  • Once sever setup is complete, it's largely "fire and forget" until an update is necessary. The server update process is cumbersome.
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ScreenShots

Tableau Server Screenshots

Screenshot of Tableau Server interface and administration view 1.Screenshot of Tableau Server interface and administration view 2.Screenshot of Tableau Server permissions view.Screenshot of Tableau Services Manager (TSM) view 1.Screenshot of Tableau Services Manager (TSM) view 2.