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Tableau Desktop

Tableau Desktop

Overview

What is Tableau Desktop?

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…

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Recent Reviews

Analytics with Tableau

7 out of 10
February 27, 2024
We use Tableau to generate daily and weekly reports for our business module to generate our key performance indicators. These insights we …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 30 features
  • Report sharing and collaboration (157)
    9.3
    93%
  • Drill-down analysis (159)
    9.0
    90%
  • Formatting capabilities (162)
    9.0
    90%
  • Customizable dashboards (166)
    8.8
    88%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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Tableau Creator

$70.00

On Premise
Per User / Per Month

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttp://www.tableau.com/products/desktop

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Starting price (does not include set up fee)

  • $70 per month
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Product Demos

Tableau Desktop Tutorial | Tableau Desktop Training | Online Tableau Desktop Training - Youtube

YouTube

- Tableau Demo: Quick Tutorial to Getting Started with Tableau Desktop

YouTube

Tableau Desktop Naming Conventions Part 1

YouTube

Tableau Desktop Introduction Part 1

YouTube
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Features

BI Standard Reporting

Standard reporting means pre-built or canned reports available to users without having to create them.

8.5
Avg 8.2

Ad-hoc Reporting

Ad-Hoc Reports are reports built by the user to meet highly specific requirements.

8.8
Avg 8.1

Report Output and Scheduling

Ability to schedule and manager report output.

8.6
Avg 8.4

Data Discovery and Visualization

Data Discovery and Visualization is the analysis of multiple data sources in a search for patterns and outliers and the ability to represent the data visually.

8.6
Avg 8.1

Access Control and Security

Access control means being able to determine who has access to which data.

8.8
Avg 8.6

Mobile Capabilities

Support for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

8.4
Avg 8.0

Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding

APIs are a set of routines, protocols, and tools for used for embedding one application in another

8.7
Avg 7.9
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Product Details

What is Tableau Desktop?

Tableau Desktop supports data-driven decisions by helping users to answer questions more quickly, solve harder problems more easily, and uncover new insights.

Tableau Desktop connects directly to hundreds of data sources, both on-premises or in the cloud, with the goal of making it easier to start analyses. Interactive dashboards, drag and drop functionality, and natural language queries help users of all skill levels quickly discover actionable insights, all from its visual interface. Users can ask deeper questions by quickly building calculations, adding trend lines and seeing statistical summaries, or clustering data to see relationships.


Tableau Desktop Video

In this video, the TrustRadius team will be discussing the top business intelligence tools available: Qlik Sense, Tableau, ThoughtSpot, and IBM Cognos Analytics.

Tableau Desktop Competitors

Tableau Desktop Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise
Operating SystemsWindows, Mac
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

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.

Tableau Desktop starts at $70.

IBM Cognos Analytics, SAP Lumira Discovery, and Qlik Sense are common alternatives for Tableau Desktop.

Reviewers rate Report sharing and collaboration highest, with a score of 9.3.

The most common users of Tableau Desktop are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(2261)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(26-50 of 162)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
May 03, 2021

Tableau Desktop- Exactly what you would expect from a leading analytics tool

RS
Rupinder Sehmi
Head Of Businss Intelligence
Neyber (Financial Services, 51-200 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Alternatives Considered
Tableau Desktop allows for a lot more customisation then the other products which are more targeted at being easier to use. Tableau is also easy to use for standard analytics and dashboards, but allows advanced users to create more powerful data driven dashboards through its user of tool tips and parameters.
May 03, 2021

Tableau dashboarding experience

Verified User
Analyst in Marketing
Apparel & Fashion Company, 1-10 employees
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Alternatives Considered
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.
April 30, 2021

Quick and easy solution

Verified User
Analyst in Professional Services
Financial Services Company, 10,001+ employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Alternatives Considered
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.
April 30, 2021

Highly Flexible Tool with Endless Possibilities

Verified User
Analyst in Other
Retail Company, 1001-5000 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Alternatives Considered
I have used Qlik and Microsoft Power BI. Qlik is much less intuitive than Tableau, as it requires more back-end scriptwriting to fully utilize the tool's capabilities. There are few features with Qlik, and less "pop" to the dashboards is creates. Power BI is very lightweight but beats Tableau on price.
April 28, 2021

Tableau Desktop: one of the best BI tools

Verified User
Analyst in Marketing
Real Estate Company, 51-200 employees
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Alternatives Considered
Tableau wins when it comes to the features and flexibility it brings to the table. microstrategy seems out-dated in comparison to Tableau and Dundas BI

But, it loses out to Dundas BI in terms of cost-effectiveness due to Dundas BI's low-cost offering in case of a larger number of users/subscribers.
April 28, 2021

Tableau Desktop is a Highly Efficient Tool to See and Understand Your Data

Jason Guinn | TrustRadius Reviewer
Jason Guinn
Chief Financial Officer
Clinical Management Concepts, Inc. (Pharmaceuticals, 51-200 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Alternatives Considered
Tableau hands-down wins based upon functionality, interoperability with a wide variety of enterprise-class data connections, end-user support, and quality of visualizations. Tableau Desktop offers a substantially more robust, refined, and mature product. It became quickly apparent that there was no real comparison. For applications that need fast, accurate analytics using a wide portfolio of underlying data sources, Tableau Desktop is the clear winner.
April 27, 2021

Easy to use, yet powerful data visualization tool

Verified User
Partner in Marketing
Internet Company, 51-200 employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Alternatives Considered
It is a much lighter, easier to understand tool that can be used by anyone, even non tech people. Also, it doesn't need a Microsoft suite or Oracle suite or any other tools to operate it, unlike other tools. But it is good till the basic reporting. For deep level analytics across multiple tiers, department, products, the simple UI of this tool might not be that useful.
April 27, 2021

Tableau Desktop - intuitive dashboards and ease of use

Verified User
Contributor in Information Technology
Education Management Company, 10,001+ employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Alternatives Considered
Our organization needed a tool [to] calculate and report performance metrics. In the past we used Excel to do our dashboards. Excel is not user friendly when it comes to data visualization. It took us a long time to create the dashboards, calculations were not easy to use in Excel, and the quality of the dashboards were mediocre compared to what we were able to create using Tableau.
April 27, 2021

Good product that keeps up with the times

Verified User
Employee in Finance and Accounting
Higher Education Company, 201-500 employees
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Alternatives Considered
For years I have had to use excel pivot tables for sharing charts and graphs and this has allowed for a easier set up. I've enjoyed creating graphs and charts on Tableau Desktop and it's much easier to share my work with other users and they don't need to understand how to use pivot tables.
April 27, 2021

Get your data to talk

Karan Gupta | TrustRadius Reviewer
Karan Gupta
Sr. Associate - Marketing Analytics
Macquarie Group (Financial Services, 10,001+ employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Alternatives Considered
I use both in my Organisation. Both of them have advantages and disadvantages. I prefer Tableau [Desktop] as it provides larger options to play around with the data. Power BI has an advantages that it connects well with the MS application where Tableau lacks.
April 26, 2021

Tableau - Still Good But No Longer the King

JS
John Stuchly
Data developer
HKS, Inc. (Architecture & Planning, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Alternatives Considered
Tableau was chosen prior to my joining the company, and today I would be hard pressed to choose Tableau over Power BI. This is largely due to the value proposition Power BI represents as it has made leaps and bounds improvements to the tool since its inception. If you are heavily invested in Tableau, making a switch may not be feasible. If you are looking for a visualization tool, it would be difficult to choose Tableau over Power BI based on the overall feature/functionality of both toolsets.
April 09, 2021

Tableau - a good tool for big companies with multiple data sources

Verified User
Team Lead in Engineering
Computer Games Company, 51-200 employees
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Alternatives Considered
Looker has the benefit of being owned by Google and seamless interface with BigQuery. We didn't use BigQuery at the time, so the benefit wasn't realized. However, we are starting to use it more and more, and will be evaluating Looker again.

The main drawback of Looker compared to Tableau Desktop is that using Looker requires a special mark-up language Looker ML, which takes time to learn. Tableau Desktop on the other hand does use a mark up language.
April 08, 2021

Tableau Desktop: A Solid Data Exploration Tool

Christopher Penn | TrustRadius Reviewer
Christopher Penn
Chief Data Scientist
Trust Insights (Research, 1-10 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Alternatives Considered

Tableau [Desktop] is substantially easier to use the Microsoft Power BI because its interface is easier, it is a native desktop app, and does not have the burdensome, sometimes complicated Integrations that power bi requires in order to do its job.


April 08, 2021

Super Tableau

Krunal Thakkar | TrustRadius Reviewer
Krunal Thakkar
Sr. Finance Associate
Analytix Solutions (Outsourcing/Offshoring, 501-1000 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Alternatives Considered
Tableau Desktop helps us in many ways like to create different KPIs across organization. There are some capabilities that Tableau Desktop is providing that Power BI and Quickbase aren't able to provide us (since many of our clients use Tableau Desktop with Power BI and Quickbase).
December 28, 2020

Must use. Great ROI. Easy to learn and comprehend.

Verified User
Analyst in Engineering
Computer Software Company, 201-500 employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Alternatives Considered
  • It's easy to use and has a great selection of color palettes and templates.
  • Easy to learn.
  • Easy to share reports.
  • Great data blending capacity.
  • It is a very very widely used product across the industry.
  • Anyone can learn it, either tech or non-tech folks.
  • Must-have skill on anyone's resume for tech folks.
December 04, 2020

Tableau Desktop brings data visualizations to you

VT
Vince Tong
Branch Chief
USDA (Government Administration, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Alternatives Considered
The following BI and Data Analytics software were being used in our organization: PowerBI, Cognos, and TIBCO Spotfire. Pricing is one of the key factors for our department to choose Tableau Desktop above these products. The ROI of Tableau Desktop is better than the others based on the pricing and features.
March 05, 2020

Tableau Desktop Review

Pusshpendar Kumaarr | TrustRadius Reviewer
Pusshpendar Kumaarr
Project Manager Scrum Master
Optum Global Solution (Information Technology & Services, 10,001+ employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Alternatives Considered
Because of the product's capability, user interaction, and available free online training, Tableau Desktop has become leader in the data visualization segment. The reason we selected Tableau Desktop is our large data sets and need for a tool that is flexible enough to suit this need as well as provide data security. Tableau Desktop's features make it stand out from the rest of its competitors.
February 11, 2020

Good for a lone wolf

Verified User
Analyst in Quality Assurance
Entertainment Company, 1001-5000 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Alternatives Considered
  • Tableau Online, Tableau Public and Dapresy Pro
The online and public versions are only good for the hobbyist because they are not secure enough for most business applications. Dapresy is a marketing tool that is supposed to give executives a snapshot of marketing results. It's not very customizable and the results are often illegible. They don't follow Gestalt design principles like they should.
December 09, 2019

Tableau Desktop - The nuts and bolts of it.

Ron Rothstain | TrustRadius Reviewer
Ron Rothstain
Assistant Director, Master of Science in Entrepreneurship and Innovation
USC Marshall School of Business (Higher Education, 10,001+ employees)
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Alternatives Considered
Tableau Desktop is highly superior to the other comparable products I have used. Tableau is the best BI tool available in the market and it has a wide variety of use. It is easy to use and has many good visualizations. it has a large variety of data connections and can connect to almost every database.
October 23, 2019

Great for Data-Viz-Wizzes, Painful for Others

Verified User
Analyst in Marketing
Telecommunications Company, 201-500 employees
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Alternatives Considered
I've used Domo in the past and while their sales/account management is a mess, the actual product is powerful, intuitive and above all else, easy. I much prefer Domo to Tableau because it's easier for me, as a viz-novice, to pick up and start. I was able to create wonderful visualizations that answer questions without me having to input a storyboard or explain it: the drill-down features of Domo stand unchallenged.
September 19, 2019

The best tool for visualization and storytelling

Verified User
Partner in Product Management
Information Technology and Services Company, 51-200 employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Alternatives Considered
I have had the good fortune to use a lot of BI tools such as QlikView and Power BI but Tableau according to me provides the bang for the buck. Having said that, the other tools are continually improving and the market would be crowded with a lot of tools providing matching functionalities.
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