Pentaho vs. Tableau Desktop

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Pentaho
Score 6.1 out of 10
N/A
Pentaho is a suite of open source business intelligence and analytics products, now offered and supported by Hitachi Data Systems since the June 2015 acquisition.N/A
Tableau Desktop
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Tableau Desktop is a data visualization product from Tableau. It connects to a variety of data sources for combining disparate data sources without coding. It provides tools for discovering patterns and insights, data calculations, forecasts, and statistical summaries and visual storytelling.
$70
per month
Pricing
PentahoTableau Desktop
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Tableau Creator
$70.00
Per User / Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
PentahoTableau Desktop
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsAll pricing plans are billed annually.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
PentahoTableau Desktop
Considered Both Products
Pentaho
Chose Pentaho
Pentaho ranks #3 out of the four. I would always choose Qlik Sense overall since it is so incredibly fast and adaptable. It also has built-in ETL and has a much greater community. If you don't like Qlik, Tableau would be a second choice but the company is difficult to work …
Chose Pentaho
Tableau is having some technical limitations in terms of reporting and integration. But, in the case of Pentaho, it is very effective in terms of cost and also very high user-friendly. I would strongly believe that it will add more value to the organization. That's the reason I …
Chose Pentaho
With Pentaho and its open-source community version, we could start showing the power of the data process and the purpose of a data lake and data warehouse project in the company, without the need for any program language skills in the team or a developer team.
Chose Pentaho
We evaluated many typical BI software vendors including Micro-strategy, JasperSoft and Tableau. Tableau would have been a top pick if it had better support for OEM. We had to compete against Tableau in many customers to try to get them to upgrade to use our analytics and found …
Chose Pentaho
I have used Tableau, which also does a great job and has better integration features, but as a report generation/ ETL/ BI tool, I'd recommend Pentaho. I also prefer Pentaho as it is best suited for the current client base that the firm has. It fulfills specific needs with great …
Chose Pentaho
In terms of price, pentaho seems to be the clear winner for functionality that you get--especially with the community edition. If you don't need to license anything out, even the enterprise edition is fairly reasonably priced. With this in mind, it's a winner in the sense that …
Chose Pentaho
We have done extensive exploration of the BI marketplace but had to eliminate many of the BI vendors due our business model and their licensing model being incompatible or cost prohibitive. We provide reporting to hundreds of clients and hundreds of thousands of end-users and …
Chose Pentaho
As previously stated, Pentaho is an excellent tool for start ups and where CTOs are willing to invest in staff training. It may not be user friendly as Tableau or SAS, but once staff master it, development of new solutions becomes limitless.
Chose Pentaho
We evaluated Panorama, Cognos, MicroSrategy, Jasper Reports, Talend and homegrown solutions. Though each were awesome in their own right, none of them provided a end to end integration like we wanted. Pentaho did the job for us and more. Knowing that Pentaho was built by a team …
Tableau Desktop
Chose Tableau Desktop
In comparison to Tableau, the other dashboarding/BI tools I've used feel clunky, are very slow to develop in, and seem to lack features of a more modernized tool like Tableau. In Pentaho Analyzer, for instance, trying to include multiple worksheets or reports in a single …
Chose Tableau Desktop
Pentaho has fewer visualizations and they haven't been making a lot of improvements in their visualization space. You can't really add a lot of customized visualizations as well. If Tableau has 100 features then Pentaho Analyzer has 10 with no ray of hope for improvements. …
Chose Tableau Desktop
SSRS is poor in visualization and clients feel good while looking at dashboards compare to viewing reports on SSRS.
Chose Tableau Desktop
Tableau Desktop is better than any of its competitors as it is cost effective and user friendly.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
PentahoTableau Desktop
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Pentaho
9.0
20 Ratings
10% above category average
Tableau Desktop
8.4
167 Ratings
3% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports8.618 Ratings8.5139 Ratings
Customizable dashboards9.918 Ratings8.7166 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates8.718 Ratings7.9145 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Pentaho
8.7
19 Ratings
8% above category average
Tableau Desktop
9.0
164 Ratings
11% above category average
Drill-down analysis7.618 Ratings9.0159 Ratings
Formatting capabilities8.319 Ratings9.3162 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages9.312 Ratings8.3122 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration9.717 Ratings9.4157 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Pentaho
9.7
20 Ratings
15% above category average
Tableau Desktop
8.4
158 Ratings
1% above category average
Publish to Web9.618 Ratings8.4149 Ratings
Publish to PDF9.819 Ratings7.9149 Ratings
Report Versioning9.713 Ratings8.4116 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling9.917 Ratings9.3123 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers9.310 Ratings8.273 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Pentaho
8.1
17 Ratings
2% above category average
Tableau Desktop
8.5
156 Ratings
6% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)7.916 Ratings9.0154 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization8.216 Ratings8.5149 Ratings
Predictive Analytics8.314 Ratings8.5126 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining00 Ratings8.02 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Pentaho
9.1
20 Ratings
7% above category average
Tableau Desktop
8.7
142 Ratings
2% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)9.320 Ratings9.0139 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model9.519 Ratings8.1119 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)9.918 Ratings8.7129 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)7.610 Ratings8.877 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control00 Ratings9.03 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Pentaho
8.3
11 Ratings
4% above category average
Tableau Desktop
8.2
135 Ratings
3% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access9.710 Ratings8.4124 Ratings
Mobile Application6.97 Ratings7.497 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile8.711 Ratings8.7117 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Pentaho
8.6
10 Ratings
9% above category average
Tableau Desktop
9.1
64 Ratings
15% above category average
REST API8.310 Ratings9.356 Ratings
Javascript API9.09 Ratings8.951 Ratings
iFrames7.39 Ratings9.449 Ratings
Java API8.79 Ratings9.846 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)8.910 Ratings8.653 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)9.610 Ratings8.946 Ratings
Best Alternatives
PentahoTableau Desktop
Small Businesses
Cyfe
Cyfe
Score 8.8 out of 10
Cyfe
Cyfe
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Reveal
Reveal
Score 10.0 out of 10
Reveal
Reveal
Score 10.0 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
PentahoTableau Desktop
Likelihood to Recommend
9.1
(31 ratings)
8.8
(194 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.8
(11 ratings)
8.9
(39 ratings)
Usability
9.3
(6 ratings)
8.6
(63 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(10 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
6.1
(9 ratings)
Support Rating
9.3
(7 ratings)
7.0
(56 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.4
(4 ratings)
Online Training
9.5
(2 ratings)
8.0
(4 ratings)
Implementation Rating
5.0
(1 ratings)
8.0
(34 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
8.1
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(3 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
PentahoTableau Desktop
Likelihood to Recommend
Hitachi Vantara
Pentaho is very well suited to perform data extraction & data mining from various cloud storage & transform that data using various available data models. However, the software struggles when it comes to visualizing the extracted data in an appealing manner & can be difficult for end-users to get an understanding of data tables created using those models.
Read full review
Tableau
Tableau Desktop is one the finest tool available in the market with such a wide range of capabilities in its suite that makes it easy to generate insights. Further, if optimally designed, then its reports are fairly simple to understand, yet capable enough to make changes at the required levels. One can create a variety of visualizations as required by the business or the clients. The data pipelines in the backend are very robust. The tableau desktop also provides options to develop the reports in developer mode, which is one of the finest features to embed and execute even the most complex possible logic. It's easier to operate, simple to navigate, and fluent to understand by the users.
Read full review
Pros
Hitachi Vantara
  • Integrate and synchronize with big data easily
  • Import data from any sources and different databases
  • Managing data in on-premise, hybrid and cloud environments.
  • Compatibility and flexibility of the platform with any type of scenario and any business or industry
  • Various tools in the software suite to transformation of data
  • Simple interface appearance and creative UI graphics
Read full review
Tableau
  • An excellent tool for data visualization, it presents information in an appealing visual format—an exceptional platform for storing and analyzing data in any size organization.
  • Through interactive parameters, it enables real-time interaction with the user and is easy to learn and get support from the community.
Read full review
Cons
Hitachi Vantara
  • I think the relative obscurity of the tool is a downside, not as many developers, consultants or peers you can tap into.
  • Lack of a solid user community held us back, looking at Power BI and Qlik, they have huge user communities that help each other out. Would have liked that here.
  • Smaller company means smaller sales force, and the lack of a local presence made it hard to only interact online with the account rep. Other companies have someone local who often stops by with pre-sales developers to just pitch in free of charge when they have time.
Read full review
Tableau
  • Formatting the data to work correctly in graphical presentations can be time consuming
  • Daily data extracts can run slowly depending on how much data is required and the source of the data
  • The desktop version is required for advanced functionality, editing on [the] Tableau server allows only limited features
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Hitachi Vantara
I will use Pentaho until I find a better tool with a better, easier to use report designer client. For now, Pentaho has been the most powerful reporting tool for our clients because of its ability to connect to Odoo, integrate in Odoo (reports are accessible in Odoo) and the flexibility in report design and parameter integration
Read full review
Tableau
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.
Read full review
Usability
Hitachi Vantara
The Pentaho tools are designed so you can start playing around on your own. Of course, you will need guidance at some point, but the training teams are good at guiding new users, and the online documentation is usually pretty up-to-date.
Some of the tools, such as the Pentaho Data Integration tool and the Pentaho Server, are pretty self-explanatory. The other tools maybe are not so quickly and obvious to use, but again, with some documentation and some customer support, you can find your way around them.
Read full review
Tableau
Tableau Desktop has proven to be a lifesaver in many situations. Once we've completed the initial setup, it's simple to use. It has all of the features we need to quickly and efficiently synthesize our data. Tableau Desktop has advanced capabilities to improve our company's data structure and enable self-service for our employees.
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Reliability and Availability
Hitachi Vantara
No answers on this topic
Tableau
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.
Read full review
Performance
Hitachi Vantara
No answers on this topic
Tableau
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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Support Rating
Hitachi Vantara
They were responsive to our questions when we raised issues. They gave us workarounds when required. They were quite knowledgeable when it came to issue analysis and providing fixes. They were forthright in informing us if a bug was not due for release soon.
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Tableau
I have never really used support much, to be honest. I think the support is not as user-friendly to search and use it. I did have an encounter with them once and it required a bit of going back and forth for licensing before reaching a resolution. They did solve my issue though
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In-Person Training
Hitachi Vantara
No answers on this topic
Tableau
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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Online Training
Hitachi Vantara
Course Taken: DI1000 Pentaho Data Integration Fundamentals Setup A week before your class started, the instructor will start sending out class material and lab setup instructions. This is helpful so that you understand how the environment is laid out and can start reviewing the content. Ultimately it saved about a 1/2 day trying to setup with 10 other people online which was great! The Course The 3-day course was laid out like many other technical classes with 15-30 minutes instruction and 15-60 minutes of lab exercises. The instructor was very knowledgeable with the functionality from version to version and answered questions as we went along. I was amazed at some of the functionality that was available that I was not using at the time and quickly implemented changes to many existing transformations and jobs. The novice users seemed to catch on quickly and more experienced users explained how some of the functionality was used in their home environments. Towards the end there was enough time so that we were able to ask very directed questions about our own environments. Overall, I really found the class to be informative and deliver enough information to be dangerous. My skills improved and I was able to design better and efficient transformations for the HIE. Course Description: https://training.pentaho.com/instructor-led-training/pentaho-data-integration-fundamentals-di1000
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Tableau
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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Implementation Rating
Hitachi Vantara
Get the right people in before starting implementation. Start small and build as you go approach is time consuming and involves lot of rework. Evangalize within the organization the capabilities and limitations equally so that correct delivery expectations are set. Set expectations with the Customer that the tool cannot replace proprietary software in terms of stability/usability and that timelines could change given the new ness of the product.
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Tableau
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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Alternatives Considered
Hitachi Vantara
Since the Pentaho platform offers a range of broad functionality across data preparation and advanced analytics, it also can be easily integrated to support many data sources and machine-learning frameworks. Based on that fact, we selected Pentaho to be used in our internal department. It also supports many of our BI use cases as required by company management or the business user. Last but not least, the Pentaho license is cheaper than their competitor.
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Tableau
If we do not have legacy tools which have already been set up, I would switch the visualization method to open source software via PyCharm, Atom, and Visual Studio IDE. These IDEs cannot directly help you to visualize the data but you can use many python packages to do so through these IDEs.
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Scalability
Hitachi Vantara
No answers on this topic
Tableau
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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Return on Investment
Hitachi Vantara
  • Pentaho has improved our overall business process.
  • Pentaho has helped the Managers and Directors to analyze the numbers going up and down from time to time.
  • We have a started a big project using Pentaho that is going to include all the business processes in the organization.
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Tableau
  • Tableau was acquired years ago, and has provided good value with the content created.
  • Ongoing maintenance costs for the platform, both to maintain desktop and server licensing has made the continuing value questionable when compared to other offerings in the marketplace.
  • Users have largely been satisfied with the content, but not with the overall performance. This is due to a combination of factors including the performance of the Tableau engines as well as development deficiencies.
Read full review
ScreenShots