Retool vs. Tableau Desktop

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Retool
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Retool is a UI software component library presenting a fast way to build custom internal tools, from the company of the same name in San Francisco, California.
$10
per month per user
Tableau Desktop
Score 8.4 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.
$75
per month
Pricing
RetoolTableau Desktop
Editions & Modules
Team
$10
per month per user
Business
$50
per month per user
Enterprise
Custom Quote
Tableau
$75
per month per user
Tableau Enterprise
$115
per month per user
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
RetoolTableau Desktop
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
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
RetoolTableau Desktop
Features
RetoolTableau Desktop
Low-Code Development
Comparison of Low-Code Development features of Product A and Product B
Retool
7.0
3 Ratings
18% below category average
Tableau Desktop
-
Ratings
Drag-and-drop Interfaces5.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform Security7.42 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform User Management8.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Reusability6.02 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform Scalability8.43 Ratings00 Ratings
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Retool
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.4
175 Ratings
3% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports00 Ratings8.0145 Ratings
Customizable dashboards00 Ratings9.1174 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates00 Ratings8.1151 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Retool
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.3
172 Ratings
3% above category average
Drill-down analysis00 Ratings8.5167 Ratings
Formatting capabilities00 Ratings8.4170 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages00 Ratings8.0126 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration00 Ratings8.5165 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Retool
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.3
166 Ratings
1% above category average
Publish to Web00 Ratings8.0155 Ratings
Publish to PDF00 Ratings8.0154 Ratings
Report Versioning00 Ratings8.3120 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling00 Ratings8.6128 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers00 Ratings8.778 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Retool
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.3
164 Ratings
4% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)00 Ratings8.5162 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization00 Ratings8.5156 Ratings
Predictive Analytics00 Ratings8.6131 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining00 Ratings7.57 Ratings
Access Control and Security
Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Product A and Product B
Retool
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
9.0
149 Ratings
6% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)00 Ratings9.0145 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model00 Ratings8.9125 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)00 Ratings8.7136 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control00 Ratings9.010 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings9.283 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Retool
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
7.9
141 Ratings
2% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access00 Ratings8.7130 Ratings
Mobile Application00 Ratings7.3101 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile00 Ratings7.4122 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Retool
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
7.8
67 Ratings
1% above category average
REST API00 Ratings8.259 Ratings
Javascript API00 Ratings7.753 Ratings
iFrames00 Ratings6.951 Ratings
Java API00 Ratings8.348 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)00 Ratings7.454 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)00 Ratings8.148 Ratings
Best Alternatives
RetoolTableau Desktop
Small Businesses
Creatio
Creatio
Score 9.1 out of 10
Yellowfin
Yellowfin
Score 8.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Quixy
Quixy
Score 9.9 out of 10
Reveal
Reveal
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Creatio
Creatio
Score 9.1 out of 10
Kyvos Semantic Layer
Kyvos Semantic Layer
Score 9.5 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
RetoolTableau Desktop
Likelihood to Recommend
8.5
(3 ratings)
8.8
(203 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
7.5
(41 ratings)
Usability
7.9
(2 ratings)
8.2
(73 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(11 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(10 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
1.0
(57 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.4
(4 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(5 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(34 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(3 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(4 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
RetoolTableau Desktop
Likelihood to Recommend
Retool
Works well in: Connecting directly to databases and APIs holding candidate data. Allows teams to easily drill into records from different data sources. Quick to build dashboards. It wouldn't work well without a team to actually get it set up. There is limited design/ branding, making it look very basic. Your team requires training because data can be overwritten easily. Having some knowledge with your whole team is super important, and if you work with contractors or non-tech people, this can be a huge issue.
Read full review
Tableau
The best scenario is definitely to collect data from several sources and create dedicated dashboards for specific recipients. However, I miss the possibility of explaining these reports in more detail. Sometimes, we order a report, and after half a year, we don't remember the meaning of some data (I know it's our fault as an organization, but the tool could force better practices).
Read full review
Pros
Retool
  • Ease of use - someone with small amount of experience can use it.
  • Adaptability - you can build a lot of things with it.
  • Reliability - works quite well.
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
Retool
  • Some Retool apps can become slow to load or refresh.
  • When multiple team members work on the same app, changes can overwrite each other or break functionality.
  • The UI/UX is pretty basic.
Read full review
Tableau
  • Pricing should be more user-friendly and usage-driven
  • Making edits to the production reports is fairly tough and has a vast scope of additional capabilities
  • Tableau Desktop should be able to differentiate itself from the Tableau server else there is no major meaning of two different products being offered
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Retool
No answers on this topic
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
Retool
Because even though it is quite intuitive it is not the best tool I have ever seen.
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.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Retool
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.
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Performance
Retool
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
Retool
No answers on this topic
Tableau
Tableau support has been extremely responsive and willing to help with all of our requests. They have assisted with creating advanced analysis and many different types of custom icons, data formatting, formulas, and actions embedded into graphs. Tableau offers a weekly presentation of features and assists with internal company projects.
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In-Person Training
Retool
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.
Read full review
Online Training
Retool
No answers on this topic
Tableau
I think the training was good overall, but it was maybe stating the obvious things that a tech savvy young engineer would be able to pick up themselves too. However, the example work books were good and Tableau web community has helped me with many problems
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Retool
No answers on this topic
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.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Retool
We selected Retool because it offers the best balance of usability and power compared to alternatives like Appsmith, ToolJet, and OutSystems. It allows us to build much faster, with broad integrations and strong enterprise features like permissions and environment management. Competing tools were either too limited, required more engineering effort. Overall, retool support has been decent too.
Read full review
Tableau
I have used Power BI as well, the pricing is better, and also training costs or certifications are not that high. Since there is python integration in Power BI where I can use data cleaning and visualizing libraries and also some machine learning models. I can import my python scripts and create a visualization on processed data.
Read full review
Scalability
Retool
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.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Retool
  • Major impact - ability to build a backend system is huge.
  • Major impact - used every day by multiple people.
  • Major impact - ability to be used by less technical teammates.
Read full review
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