Grafana vs. Tableau Cloud

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Grafana
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Grafana is a data visualization tool developed by Grafana Labs in New York. It is available open source, managed (Grafana Cloud), or via an enterprise edition with enhanced features. Grafana has pluggable data source model and comes bundled with support for popular time series databases like Graphite. It also has built-in support for cloud monitoring vendors like Amazon Cloudwatch, Microsoft Azure and SQL databases like MySQL. Grafana can combine data from many places into a single dashboard.
$0
Tableau Cloud
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Tableau Cloud (formerly Tableau Online) is a self-service analytics platform that is fully hosted in the cloud. Tableau Cloud enables users to publish dashboards and invite colleagues to explore hidden opportunities with interactive visualizations and accurate data, from any browser or mobile device.
$15
per month per user
Pricing
GrafanaTableau Cloud
Editions & Modules
Grafana Cloud - Pro
$8
per month up to 1 active user
Grafana Cloud - Free
Free
10k metrics + 50GB logs + 50GB traces up to 3 active users
Grafana Cloud - Advanced
Volume Discounts
custom data usage custom active users
Grafana - Enterprise Stack
Custom Pricing
Tableau Viewer
$15
per month billed annually per user
Enterprise Viewer
$35
per month billed annually per user
Tableau Explorer
$42
per month billed annually per user
Enterprise Explorer
$70
per month billed annually per user
Tableau Creator
$75
per month billed annually per user
Enterprise Creator
$115
per month billed annually per user
Tableau+
Contact Sales
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
GrafanaTableau Cloud
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Features
GrafanaTableau Cloud
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Grafana
8.0
5 Ratings
5% below category average
Tableau Cloud
7.0
69 Ratings
15% below category average
Pixel Perfect reports6.45 Ratings7.051 Ratings
Customizable dashboards10.05 Ratings8.069 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates7.65 Ratings6.058 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Grafana
7.3
4 Ratings
9% below category average
Tableau Cloud
6.9
69 Ratings
15% below category average
Drill-down analysis6.84 Ratings8.069 Ratings
Formatting capabilities8.04 Ratings6.066 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages6.24 Ratings6.043 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration8.44 Ratings7.567 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Grafana
8.7
4 Ratings
3% above category average
Tableau Cloud
7.1
67 Ratings
15% below category average
Publish to Web7.84 Ratings7.063 Ratings
Publish to PDF9.04 Ratings7.562 Ratings
Report Versioning9.04 Ratings7.050 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling8.44 Ratings8.055 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers9.44 Ratings6.034 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Grafana
7.7
4 Ratings
6% below category average
Tableau Cloud
6.8
65 Ratings
16% below category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)8.24 Ratings7.562 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.64 Ratings6.561 Ratings
Predictive Analytics7.04 Ratings6.553 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining6.82 Ratings6.52 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Grafana
-
Ratings
Tableau Cloud
7.0
64 Ratings
19% below category average
Multi-User Support (named login)00 Ratings7.058 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model00 Ratings7.051 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)00 Ratings7.054 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control00 Ratings6.52 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings7.549 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Grafana
-
Ratings
Tableau Cloud
6.4
54 Ratings
21% below category average
Responsive Design for Web Access00 Ratings5.552 Ratings
Mobile Application00 Ratings6.039 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile00 Ratings7.046 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Grafana
-
Ratings
Tableau Cloud
6.4
36 Ratings
20% below category average
REST API00 Ratings6.031 Ratings
Javascript API00 Ratings6.529 Ratings
iFrames00 Ratings6.529 Ratings
Java API00 Ratings6.026 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)00 Ratings6.530 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)00 Ratings7.029 Ratings
Best Alternatives
GrafanaTableau Cloud
Small Businesses
Supermetrics
Supermetrics
Score 9.4 out of 10
BrightGauge
BrightGauge
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Mathematica
Mathematica
Score 8.2 out of 10
Reveal
Reveal
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Sigma
Sigma
Score 9.2 out of 10
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Jaspersoft Community Edition
Score 9.7 out of 10
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User Ratings
GrafanaTableau Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(5 ratings)
8.3
(70 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(23 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.7
(20 ratings)
User Testimonials
GrafanaTableau Cloud
Likelihood to Recommend
Grafana Labs
If I was starting over on an Observability platform, Grafana would be my number 1 choice due to the flexibility and ability to act as a single platform either on its own or combining multiple data sources. The trick however, is that it can be fairly complex to learn and setup, so time is needed to make it a successful implementation. There is a level of cognitive load required
Read full review
Tableau
We just need to refresh our data once a day for our unique use case, which allows the complete online system to run on extracts. For us, this is critical because our daylight hours are spent focusing on new updates and implementations rather than worrying about excessive database traffic (which would be required with a direct connection to the online system). The process of importing extracts is straightforward and sturdy enough to handle massive amounts of data.
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Pros
Grafana Labs
  • Alerting through many different medium as Slack, Email, Webhook etc
  • Beautiful and unlimited number of dashboards to view your metrics and tweak them as you please
  • Log aggregation and powerful Logql to filter and view your logs
  • Microservices monitoring
  • Large number of plugins and data sources to collect your metrics from almost anywhere
Read full review
Tableau
  • Tableau Online is completely cloud based and that's why the reports and dashboards are accessible even on the go. One doesn't always need to access the office laptop to access the reports.
  • The visualizations are interactive and one can quickly change the level at which they want to view the information. For example, one person might be more interested in looking at the country level performances rather than client level. This is intuitive and one doesn't need to create multiple reports for the same.
  • The feature to ask questions in plain vanilla English language is great and helpful. For quick adhoc fact checks one can simply type what they are looking for and the Natural Language Programming algorithms under the hood parse the query, interpret it and then fetch the results accordingly in a visual form.
Read full review
Cons
Grafana Labs
  • There are some settings which we can't configure from UI (Web Console).
  • We've open[ed] up configuration files in command line text editors and manually do the settings e.g. LDAP/SSO configuration.
  • In terms of visualization, it's best, but it doesn't support log analysis otherwise it could destroy business of all other visualization tools.
Read full review
Tableau
  • Can be a steep learning curve for new users
  • Modeling and building algorithms aren't always intuitive and take some testing/retesting to ensure it's working as it should
  • Inability to integrate easily with our HRIS platform. Reports are pulled from HRIS at various intervals and uploaded into Tableau
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Usability
Grafana Labs
It is infinitely flexible. If you can imagine it, Grafana can almost certainly do it. Usability may be in the eye of the beholder however, as there is time needed to curate the experience and get the dashboards customized to how it makes sense to you. I know one thing they are working on are more templates, based on data sources
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Tableau
From an end user perspective Tableau Online is overall very easy to navigate once you get used to it, my only complaint is that when expanding or contracting a graph, the "plus" and "minus" on the bottom left is sometimes hidden, and should always be visible. From a builder perspective, it can take some getting used to but the sheer depth of customization makes it all worthwhile.
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Support Rating
Grafana Labs
No answers on this topic
Tableau
In times where the system is down, support has always been quick to notify and keep us apprised of the latest developments. It's crucial for our system to always be available, but when emergencies have arisen, I don't recall a time where the Tableau Online Support hasn't been able to address our concerns in a timely manner.
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Alternatives Considered
Grafana Labs
Grafana blows Nagios out of the water when it comes to customization. The ability to feed almost any data source makes it very versatile and the cost is great.
Read full review
Tableau
Googles dashboard suite is very user-friendly and anyone can edit and make changes with very little knowledge or practice. But nothing I’ve worked with compares to the customization and multi streams of data in a user-friendly package like tableau does. It’s a really cool piece of software and I would choose that again.
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Return on Investment
Grafana Labs
  • Time-consuming reports reduced
  • Spotting trends in services
  • Preventive maintenance
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Tableau
  • When we release new products, we are now able to quickly see data and toggle between current periods and previous to see performance
  • Generating new reports requires less IT time to build
  • Data can be shared across many different device types
  • We now have integration where our customers can extract data from our software more easily-this was a big ask from our customers
Read full review
ScreenShots