Sigma Computing vs. Tableau Desktop

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Sigma
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Sigma Computing headquartered in San Francisco provides a suite of data services such as code free data modeling, data search and explorating, and related BI and data visualization services.N/A
Tableau Desktop
Score 8.2 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
Sigma ComputingTableau Desktop
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Tableau Creator
$70.00
Per User / Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
SigmaTableau Desktop
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional DetailsContact us for pricing.All pricing plans are billed annually.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Sigma ComputingTableau Desktop
Considered Both Products
Sigma
Chose Sigma Computing
Sigma beats them all in terms of ease of use and interface. Tableau is more customizable than Sigma, particularly with custom graphics. Sigma is far more feature-rich than Metabase as a basic reporting tool. Sigma makes PowerBI look like a 1980s desktop tool. Dataiku is more …
Chose Sigma Computing
With Looker, to be effective, a substantial amount of coding & modeling needs to happen in LookML. Being another language to learn, users have to context switch again from at a minimum either SQL or Python into LookML. The concept of being able to source control, code review, …
Chose Sigma Computing
I have found that Tableau can be used to create a greater variety of custom and complex visuals, though these visuals are far more difficult to create in a quick turnaround. While Sigma may be more limited in terms of what types of visuals can be create or how customized they …
Chose Sigma Computing
Sigma is better than Tableau in my opinion because Sigma has the connection to live data, rather than stale csv files.
Chose Sigma Computing
Sigma Computing had better functionality and is beginner friendly. While Tableau is a more well known product, Sigma Computing has a better user interface that is easier to comprehend for those without a non-technical background. This makes it easier to showcase dashboards to …
Chose Sigma Computing
Sigma has a better view of tables and it is much easier to create new data sets/aggregations. Tableau is better in some visual aspects because there is more customization available, albeit more confusing than Sigma to do. Sigma is very intuitive and did not take long to learn …
Chose Sigma Computing
I'd rate Sigma to be extremely similar to Sisense except it looks not as nice. I would say that as a tool, Sigma is more user-friendly than Tableau, Power BI, Trevor, and Metabase.

I do feel that Looker is far more powerful and looks great, but I also recognize that Looker does …
Chose Sigma Computing
Sigma computing has better pricing than the competitors. We're always looking for what is good for the price but also gives us all we need to complete our reporting. It also brings about a lot of updates that are nice to see. The embedding helps other BI tools sometimes.
Chose Sigma Computing
Sigma is the easiest to use from a workbook developer perspective, and from a non-technical end user perspective. Everything from administration, semantic layer setup, to creating dashboards is easier in Sigma than these other tools. Developing content in Sigma is enjoyable, …
Chose Sigma Computing
Sigma has the capabilities of the other BI tools. I think it's pretty user friendly and easy to learn. Many of our stakeholders are used to using Excel so it's nice that it is a smooth onboarding process for them. We haven't looked into much of the visualization capabilities so …
Chose Sigma Computing
Less visually appealing. Feels like fewer pixels. Harder to make graphs and visuals. Really good integration with Snowflake and intuitive usage for custom equations and filters.
Chose Sigma Computing
2 biggest reasons for Sigma were easy of use for power users, and cost of having a large amount of viewers of the data.
Chose Sigma Computing
sorta in the middle.
One thing that differs than Domo or power bi, is that those softwares bring in the data into the platform, instead of how sigma runs a query against our data warehouse each time a user interacts with the dashboard (there is some small caching, so not always)
Chose Sigma Computing
Sigma is by far the best. It is easiest to learn and easiest to use on a day to day basis. I never have to wait for dashboards to load and it's very easy to understand the variables that are going into my visualizations. Best of all I can manipulate the data within Sigma …
Chose Sigma Computing
flexibility, works really well with Snowflake, export capability, level of support, the fact that Sigma Computing is a start up and improving so quickly. Web based software
Chose Sigma Computing
Sigma is user-friendly and target non technical users as well.
Sigma focuses on native cloud integration.
Sigma Computing also emphasizes collaboration, enabling multiple users to work together on the same data sets and share insights.
Chose Sigma Computing
Much easier to navigate and create the visualizations I need to conduct business.
Chose Sigma Computing
ease of implementation , easy to train the resources to get used to the tool as it has very user friendly user interface, the 14 days trial where sales and sigma technical team helped us understand the advantages and the helpline chat which is always helpful . licensing when it …
Chose Sigma Computing
Sigma isnt as strong in Scripting compared to above but with the seamless integration with Snowflake I can utilize the full power of SQL, Python etc.

Sigma also doesn't have a 3rd party marketplace to get visualizations and other customizations compared to these products
Chose Sigma Computing
Sigma is definitely more user-friendly and has powerful built-in functions and capabilities for analyzing and visualizing data in a low-code fashion. It allows our non-technical users to jump in and use data to answer the questions they are asking without having to wait for …
Chose Sigma Computing
Faster and easier to use that mode.
Chose Sigma Computing
Sigma Computing is easier for users, has less latency, and was a better experience working with the seller. It is a great solution that I am super impressed with. The alternatives we evaluated were more difficult and slower. Sigma is fast and easy and that is worth so much in …
Chose Sigma Computing
Sigma offered a novel approach to data analysis with its Excel-like functionality.
Tableau Desktop

No answer on this topic

Top Pros
Top Cons
TrustRadius Insights
Sigma ComputingTableau Desktop
Highlights

TrustRadius
Research Team Insight
Published

Sigma and Tableau Desktop are both software businesses can use to gain insight into large amounts of data and create informative, interactive data visualizations. Sigma is a data discovery and visualization platform designed to help businesses create visualizations without writing any code.  Tableau Desktop is a Business Intelligence tool built to help businesses gain useful insights from business data.  Sigma is more popular with mid-sized business, while Tableau Desktop is most popular with large enterprises, likely due to its support for big data analysis.

Features

Sigma and Tableau Desktop both include features for creating data visualizations, but they also have some unique features that set them apart from each other. 

Sigma is designed to handle cloud analytics and reporting quickly and efficiently.  Using Sigma, businesses can model data and create visualizations without waiting in reporting queues.  Additionally, Sigma utilizes a spreadsheet style interface so new users that aren’t familiar with data visualization tools can easily learn to create models and visualizations. 

Tableau Desktop helps experienced users quickly create complex and interactive visualizations, including a variety of visualization templates that can be used out of the box.  Tableau Desktop also makes it easy to connect multiple data sources with analysis.  Lastly, Tableau Desktop allows for the creation of detailed reporting dashboards.

Limitations

Sigma and Tableau Desktop help businesses analyze data, but they also have some limitations that are important to consider.

Sigma allows for efficient analysis and reporting, but visualizations and dashboards created using Sigma are aesthetically limited, which can result in less attractive visualizations. Additionally, while Sigma offers a mobile application, it is not as feature complete as the desktop application and is more difficult to use for new users.

Tableau Desktop creates aesthetically pleasing and complex visualizations, but it is slower when multiple users are trying to generate reports compared to Sigma.  Additionally, Tableau’s interface has a bigger learning curve compared to spreadsheet based business intelligence tools.  Tableau Desktop is ideal for businesses looking for high quality visualizations, but businesses looking for a simpler tool, or one with stronger analytics features may consider other options.

Pricing

Pricing details for Sigma aren’t available, but businesses can reach out to the vendor for a detailed quote.

Tableau Desktop pricing depends on the number of licenses purchased. The Viewer license costs $12.00 per month per user and allows for data viewing and interaction. The Explorer package costs $35.00 per month per user and allows for data querying and content sharing. Lastly, the Creator package costs $70.00 per month per user and allows for the creation of sophisticated visualization.

Features
Sigma ComputingTableau Desktop
BI Standard Reporting
Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Sigma Computing
7.2
157 Ratings
13% below category average
Tableau Desktop
8.5
166 Ratings
4% above category average
Pixel Perfect reports7.0100 Ratings8.3138 Ratings
Customizable dashboards7.7155 Ratings9.0165 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates7.1127 Ratings8.3144 Ratings
Ad-hoc Reporting
Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Product A and Product B
Sigma Computing
7.8
160 Ratings
4% below category average
Tableau Desktop
8.9
163 Ratings
9% above category average
Drill-down analysis8.5150 Ratings9.2158 Ratings
Formatting capabilities7.3157 Ratings8.9161 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages7.35 Ratings8.3121 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration8.2156 Ratings9.3156 Ratings
Report Output and Scheduling
Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Product A and Product B
Sigma Computing
8.8
150 Ratings
5% above category average
Tableau Desktop
8.8
157 Ratings
5% above category average
Publish to Web9.299 Ratings9.2148 Ratings
Publish to PDF8.1124 Ratings8.4148 Ratings
Report Versioning9.4114 Ratings8.6115 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling9.2127 Ratings9.1122 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers8.364 Ratings8.572 Ratings
Data Discovery and Visualization
Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Product A and Product B
Sigma Computing
6.4
143 Ratings
23% below category average
Tableau Desktop
8.6
155 Ratings
6% above category average
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)7.3141 Ratings8.9153 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization5.626 Ratings8.8148 Ratings
Predictive Analytics6.218 Ratings8.7125 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
Sigma Computing
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.7
141 Ratings
1% above category average
Multi-User Support (named login)00 Ratings8.8138 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model00 Ratings8.4118 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)00 Ratings8.7128 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control00 Ratings9.02 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)00 Ratings8.976 Ratings
Mobile Capabilities
Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Product A and Product B
Sigma Computing
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.4
134 Ratings
5% above category average
Responsive Design for Web Access00 Ratings8.6123 Ratings
Mobile Application00 Ratings8.396 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile00 Ratings8.7116 Ratings
Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding
Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Product A and Product B
Sigma Computing
-
Ratings
Tableau Desktop
8.6
63 Ratings
8% above category average
REST API00 Ratings8.555 Ratings
Javascript API00 Ratings8.350 Ratings
iFrames00 Ratings8.848 Ratings
Java API00 Ratings8.745 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)00 Ratings8.452 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)00 Ratings8.845 Ratings
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Sigma ComputingTableau Desktop
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Score 8.9 out of 10
BrightGauge
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Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Reveal
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Score 9.9 out of 10
Reveal
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Score 9.9 out of 10
Enterprises
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User Ratings
Sigma ComputingTableau Desktop
Likelihood to Recommend
8.8
(164 ratings)
8.8
(193 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.9
(5 ratings)
8.9
(39 ratings)
Usability
7.3
(48 ratings)
8.6
(63 ratings)
Availability
8.2
(2 ratings)
8.0
(10 ratings)
Performance
9.1
(2 ratings)
6.1
(9 ratings)
Support Rating
8.9
(45 ratings)
6.9
(56 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.4
(4 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(4 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(2 ratings)
8.0
(34 ratings)
Configurability
7.3
(1 ratings)
8.1
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.1
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.2
(2 ratings)
7.0
(3 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
7.3
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Sigma ComputingTableau Desktop
Likelihood to Recommend
Sigma Computing
Its a great tool to have. The ability to come in the morning and by using the report being able see how the day will go. Seeing the goal and the current inventory and also to be able to adjust as the day goes on. With the report updates the report as changes to the inventory happen live or if any issues arise. being able to see that live and being to react quickly.
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
Sigma Computing
  • Allows end users to easily dive into the data without having direct access to the table in our database management software.
  • Can easily turnaround dashboards that are detailed and visually pleasing.
  • Sigma is intuitive and as new features are rolled out it is easy to adopt and incorporate them into new and existing dashboards.
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
Sigma Computing
  • Viewer level license is quite limited. These users can't download data or even add filters on datasets. Something to keep in mind.
  • Directly querying the underlying data warehouse will lead to increased usage. Not a big deal on something like Redshift, but your Snowflake consumption will increase, potentially by a lot.
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
Sigma Computing
Sigma has helped us a lot and has become an integral part of our daily workflow. It would be difficult to switch to another platform and have to rebuild the numerous metrics and performance reports that we have already established
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
Sigma Computing
It has a clean and modern interface. However, it is not completely intuitive. I think it would be better and easier to navigate with more Windows style drop down menus and/or tabls. There is a significant learning curve, but that may be due in part to the technical nature of this type of software tool.
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
Sigma Computing
Yes, as long as you don’t conduct user error sigma is always up and running and waiting for you to complete your dashboards
Read full review
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
Sigma Computing
It depends, it loads quickly for smaller dashboards but when loading larger amounts of data it takes more time to do so
Read full review
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
Read full review
Support Rating
Sigma Computing
Support team is helpful in answering questions and providing help with using the UI. There are knowledgeable people within the support team. There are also good online support tools. There are significant community support resources available. There is however lack of a live support. It would be useful to have live phone number or chat to use.
Read full review
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
Sigma Computing
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
Sigma Computing
No answers on this topic
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
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Sigma Computing
Was not involved in implementation
Read full review
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
Sigma Computing
Sigma is by far the best. It is easiest to learn and easiest to use on a day to day basis. I never have to wait for dashboards to load and it's very easy to understand the variables that are going into my visualizations. Best of all I can manipulate the data within Sigma very easily. In these other platforms data manipulation is difficult or must be done in the data warehouse
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Scalability
Sigma Computing
It is a cloud service offering that is able to expand based on your usage
Read full review
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
Sigma Computing
  • Monitoring health of cloud platform has allowed the company to anticipate issues before they affect customers – Sigma prompted us building a canary monitoring process that provides customer container health.
  • Customer success has used an activity report to discover customers running runaway processes that they were unaware of, creating an alert to contact the customer and prevent an embarrassing situation.
  • Customer success uses the activity report to prompt conversations regarding increases or declines in behavior that led to increasing contract limits or addressing churn concerns.
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

Sigma Screenshots

Screenshot of Custom calculations that can be added to tables and visualizations – no SQL skills necessary.Screenshot of Visualization tableScreenshot of Custom bins to drive complex cohort analysis built without SQL code.Screenshot of Complex cohort analyses built without code.Screenshot of Lookups provide familiar spreadsheet functionality to business users.Screenshot of A Sigma Workbook, that brings together spreadsheets, charts, and data narratives onto a live, collaborative canvas.