Best Data Preparation Tools

Data preparation tools are a new class of software products designed to enable business analysts and data scientists to bypass data warehouses to perform some data integration and data preparation themselves before analysis. Data preparation tools handle as much of the data “cleaning” process as possible. Data prep features are often found within larger tools, such as data analytics platforms, BI tools, integration platforms, and broader machine learning platforms. Data preparation tools can search for...

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(1-25 of 100)

1
Alteryx Platform

The Alteryx AI Platform gives organization automated data preparation, AI-powered analytics, and machine learning with embedded governance and security.

Its self-service functionality, with self-service data prep, machine learning, and AI-generated insights, gives enterprise teams with a simplified user…

2
IBM Cognos Analytics

IBM Cognos is a full-featured business intelligence suite by IBM, designed for larger deployments. It comprises Query Studio, Reporting Studio, Analysis Studio and Event Studio, and Cognos Administration along with tools for Microsoft Office integration, full-text search, and dashboards.…

3
Microsoft Power BI

Microsoft Power BI is a visualization and data discovery tool from Microsoft. It allows users to convert data into visuals and graphics, visually explore and analyze data, collaborate on interactive dashboards and reports, and scale across their organization with built-in governance…

4
GS-Base
0 reviews

GS-Base is a database with spreadsheet and ETL functions that can be used to store any type of data: text and numeric fields, dates, long text memo fields, files, images, code snippets with syntax highlighting for 16 programming languages.

It can also analyze very large data sets using pivot tables with up to 256 million rows and 16,384 columns. It features around 300 built-in calculation function in calculated fields, for data validation, cleaning and conversion. GS-Base can use from 1 to 100 processor cores when updating calculated fields and pivot tables (e.g. Excel: 11 data functions, 1 million rows; GS-Base: 25 functions, 256 milli…

5
dbt

dbt is an SQL development environment, developed by Fishtown Analytics, now known as dbt Labs. The vendor states that with dbt, analysts take ownership of the entire analytics engineering workflow, from writing data transformation code to deployment and documentation. dbt Core is…

6
Datameer

Datameer helps businesses clean up, combine, and organize data to make sense of it and use it for reports and machine learning.

7
Toad Data Point

Toad Data Point is a cross-platform, self-service, data-integration tool that simplifies data access, preparation and provisioning. It provides data connectivity and desktop data integration, and with the Workbook interface for business users, it provides simple-to-use visual query…

8
Tableau Prep

Tableau Prep enables users to get to the analysis phase faster by helping them quickly combine, shape, and clean their data.

According to the vendor, a direct and visual experience helps provide users with a deeper understanding of their data, smart features make data preparation simple, and integration with the Tableau analytical workflow allows for faster speed to insight. Tableau Prep allows users to connect to data on-premises or in the cloud, whether it’s a database or a spreadsheet, and access, combine and clean disparate data without…

9
Quantemplate
0 reviews

Quantemplate's data integration, automation and analytics platform aims to turn insurance data sources into trusted insights.

It is presented as a data preparation solution for insurance professionals, automating data clean-up, then performing calculations, augmenting with external data a…

10
Altair Monarch

Altair Monarch (formerly Datawatch Monarch, acquired by Altair in December, 2018)…

11
JMP

JMP is a division of SAS and the JMP family of products provide statistical discovery tools linked to dynamic data visualizations.

12
Astera ReportMiner

Astera ReportMiner automates data extraction from unstructured documents with a drag-and-drop UI. It is used to create reusable, pattern-based templates. Combining AI and template-based extraction, ReportMiner allows for auto-generating and fine-tuning templates.

13
Zoho DataPrep
0 reviews

A self-service data preparation software tool used to connect, explore, transform and enrich data for analytics, machine learning, and data warehousing.

14
RapidMiner

RapidMiner is a data science and data mining platform, from Altair since the late 2022 acquisition. RapidMiner offers full automation for non-coding domain experts, an integrated JupyterLab environment for seasoned data scientists, and a visual drag-and-drop designer. RapidMiner’…

15
IBM SPSS Modeler

IBM SPSS Modeler is a visual data science and machine learning (ML) solution designed to help enterprises accelerate time to value by speeding up operational tasks for data scientists. Organizations can use it for data preparation and discovery, predictive analytics, model management…

16
SqlDBM
0 reviews

SqlDBM, from the company of the same name in San Diego, can be used to diagram an entire database without writing a single line of code. SqlDBM supports cloud-based data cloud providers like Snowflake, Databricks, Microsoft Azure Synapse, AWS Redshift, and other databases like PostgreSQL,…

17
Dataiku

The Dataiku platform unifies all data work, from analytics to Generative AI. It can modernize enterprise analytics and accelerate time to insights with visual, cloud-based tooling for data preparation, visualization, and workflow automation.

18
Zaloni Arena
0 reviews

Zaloni's end-to-end DataOps software, Arena, provides a collaborative metadata catalog that connects multi-cloud and on-premises data silos, highly-controlled data quality, tokenization and governance tools, and extensible, self-service data enrichment and consumption. Zaloni works…

19
Keboola Connection

Keboola provides an open and extensible cloud based data integration platform that enables clients to combine, enhance and publish data for their internal analytics projects and data products.

Keboola aims to help companies of all sizes:

  • Reduce time to launch for analytics projects
  • Enable collaboration around data…

20
dataTap
0 reviews

dataTap is a user friendly visual data management platform from Zensors.

The dataTap Python library is the primary interface for using dataTap's data management tools. Users can create datasets, stream annotations, and analyze model performance all with one library.

Zensors states with dataTap, users ca…

21
IBM InfoSphere Information Server

IBM InfoSphere Information Server is a data integration platform used to understand, cleanse, monitor and transform data. The offerings provide massively parallel processing (MPP) capabilities.

23
Databricks Data Intelligence Platform

Databricks in San Francisco offers the Databricks Lakehouse Platform (formerly the Unified Analytics Platform), a data science platform and Apache Spark cluster manager. The Databricks Unified Data Service aims to provide a reliable and scalable platform for data pipelines, data…

24
gathr.ai
0 reviews

Gathr.ai is a Data+AI fabric, helping enterprises rapidly deliver production-ready data and AI products. Data+AI fabric enables teams to acquire, process, and harness data, leverage AI services to generate intelligence, and build consumer applications.

25
Tabula.io
0 reviews

Tabula is a data automation platform that enables collaboration between business and data teams. The drag-and-drop interface allows both tech and non-technical teams to understand and talk data.

Tabula grows with the organization, with architecture that allows handling increasing volumes of data ensuring data management processes to scale. Tabula aims to improve overall team dat…

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Learn More About Data Preparation Tools

What are Data Preparation Tools?

Data preparation tools are a new class of software products designed to enable business analysts and data scientists to bypass data warehouses to perform some data integration and data preparation themselves before analysis. Data preparation tools handle as much of the data “cleaning” process as possible. Data prep features are often found within larger tools, such as data analytics platforms, BI tools, integration platforms, and broader machine learning platforms.


Data preparation tools can search for and access data throughout an organization, combine it with other external data sets, and do data cleansing and conversions as required before feeding the data back into business intelligence systems for analysis.These emerging tools use machine learning under the hood so that they can iterate and learn where to find insights in data sets, without being explicitly programmed to do so.


Self-service Data Preparation

A big role of data preparation tools is to get data into an analysis-ready state for end users with minimal, or no, data science knowledge. Historically, data preparation has required IT or data science resources for any sort of scaled preparation. Data preparation tools aim to democratize this process by making data preparation accessible for a wider range of users, from IT specialists to data analysts to line-of-business users.


Data preparation tools use several different features and capabilities to enable business-wide self-service. The most important features that virtually all modern data preparation tools include are:


  • Visual interfaces

  • Integration with all sources of data within the business

  • Machine learning for automated insights and recommended preparation steps

  • Data governance for repeatability and tracking



Data Preparation Tools Comparison

Data preparation tools can be challenging to compare. When evaluating different options, consider these factors:


  • Visual Interface: Visual interfaces have become the norm for data preparation tools. Buyers should try to work with each interface to get a better sense of how easy to use each one is, especially for the sophistication level of the expected user base (i.e. data scientists vs. non-specialized users). The quality and usability of interfaces are also often a point of note within data preparation reviews.

  • Tech Stack Integrations: How well does each tool integrate with the existing data sources the organization has? Data prep tools should make data accessibility easy for end-users, but if the tool does not cleanly interface with each data source, users will continue to struggle to centralize data for cleaning, and may even resort to manual processes.

  • Machine learning capabilities: Most data preparation tools advertise some element of machine learning or AI assistance. However, not all smart tech is created equal. Followup with each vendor on just what this technology can do for users, especially assisting less data-savvy users working within the data preparation tool.


Start a data preparation tool comparison here.


Pricing Information

Pricing will vary primarily depending on whether the product is a standalone data prep tool or a larger integration or analytics solution. Leaders in the space will charge between $100-450/user/month. There are some free open source options as well.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What do data preparation tools do?

Data preparation tools help streamline and automate the process of extracting, compiling, and “cleaning” data so it can be easily analyzed and reported on.

Who uses data preparation tools?

Data preparation tools are primarily used by data analysts and similar roles, but many tools are becoming more accessible for line-of-business users as well.

What other tools have data preparation features?

Data preparation can also be found in many analytics platforms, BI tools, and integration platforms.

What are the benefits of data preparation tools?

Data preparation tools can save analysts massive amounts of manual time and labor and also mitigate the risk of human error in the preparation process.

How much do data preparation tools cost?

Leading data preparation tools can range from $100-500/month per seat, depending on the number of users and range of features included.