Tableau Desktop vs. Tableau Server

Tableau Desktop

2,288 Reviews and Ratings

Tableau Server

878 Reviews and Ratings

Overview
Product	Rating	Most Used By	Product Summary	Starting Price
Tableau Desktop	Score8.1 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
Tableau Server	Score7.6 out of 10	N/A	Tableau Server allows Tableau Desktop users to publish dashboards to a central server to be shared across their organizations. The product is designed to facilitate collaboration across the organization. It can be deployed on a server in the data center, or it can be deployed on a public cloud.	$12 Per User Per Month

Pricing

Tableau Desktop

Tableau Server

Tableau: $75
per month per user
Tableau Enterprise: $115
per month per user

Viewer: $12.00
Per User Per Month
Explorer: $35.00
Per User Per Month
Creator: $70.00
Per User Per Month

Pricing Offerings
Tableau Desktop	Tableau Server
Free Trial
No	Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No	No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes	Yes

No setup fee

No setup fee

All pricing plans are billed annually.

—

Community Pulse
Key User Insights
	Tableau Desktop	Tableau Server
Considered Both Products	Tableau Clinton Shields Health Information Analytics Analyst in Research & Development at Kings View Community Services, Inc. (Hospital & Health Care, 201-500 employees) Chose Tableau Desktop When we first looked at getting a visualization software for analytics we looked into two options Microsoft Power BI and Tableau Desktop, and even though Power BI is more cost-effective we decided to go with Tableau Desktop as it had more options that we are looking for such as … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Tableau Desktop Microsoft PowerBI could potentially be a better fit for organizations on Office365, it's a close call though. Google Data Studio has potential but is still far behind Tableau on the "user-friendly" factor. Tableau still seems to dominate for the "recommended" analytics tool, … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Tableau Desktop Tableau is next generation tool where other two are old traditional BI tools Other tools are very slow and difficult to use, and required lot of technical expertise to use them. Tableau's look and feel is much nicer than those two. Incentivized Helpful? Diana Doan Business Analyst / Project Manager at Cisco (Computer Networking, 10,001+ employees) Chose Tableau Desktop Tableau was easy to find people that had the skill set and a company server was already available. Incentivized Helpful? MeghanMarie Fowler-Finn Performance Analyst in Quality Assurance at DC Department of Public Works (Government Administration, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Tableau Desktop Tableau Desktop is less complex and has a better array of visualizations. Incentivized Helpful? Agni G Research Assistant in Research & Development at UTD (Higher Education, 1-10 employees) Chose Tableau Desktop If any changes had to be made to existing visualizations when we used QlikView, a lot of security constraints existed and I had to run to the IT team for every change I had to implement. Tableau gives easy security change rights to the developer environment. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Tableau Desktop I feel like Tableau is easier to use and offers a greater selection of visualizations. I feel that the dashboards are easier to put together and offer a great amount of flexibility for the end-user. Tableau has an excellent user support group. I find the community to be … Incentivized Helpful? Abanish Mishra Business Intelligence Analyst in Information Technology at Match.com (Internet, 201-500 employees) Chose Tableau Desktop My current work environment uses both Tableau Online, MicroStrategy & SSRS in parallel. Tableau is much closer to the SSRS in terms of visualization tool where as MicroStrategy is an enterprise data modeling and reporting tool. Based on the use case we use different tools. Here … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Tableau Desktop Python is programming tools, while Tableau is an easy to use drag and drop data visualization tool. This may not be an apple to apple comparison. Compared to Excel, Tableua is way over the top when it comes to data visualization. Incentivized Helpful? Ivan Miller Business Intelligence Engineer in Engineering at Experticity (Marketing and Advertising, 51-200 employees) 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 … Incentivized Helpful? Matthew McLaughlin Systems Analyst in Information Technology at CPI Aerostructures (Aviation & Aerospace, 201-500 employees) Chose Tableau Desktop I had the trial version of Tableau Desktop downloaded, installed, configured and was creating meaningful dashboards in almost 15 minutes. While other software we used had great features, none of them were able to compare with this trial experience. Tableau's user forums were … Incentivized Helpful? Tom Bertolino Product Development at Cass Information Systems (Financial Services, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Tableau Desktop Cass evaluated Domo, QlikView and Birst prior to selecting Tableau. It came down to cost (and by a significant margin); the others have relatively high implementation, hosting and other costs. Additionally, based on a recent Gartner "Magic Quadrant", Tableau exceeds all others … Incentivized Helpful? Stéphane Hamel Renowned digital analytics consultant, innovator, speaker, thought leader in Marketing at (self employed) (Internet, 1-10 employees) Chose Tableau Desktop I haven't used other tools for a number of years - when I made the selection my criteria were ease of use (including, slicing & dicing data at will), connectivity to various data sources (especially REST API - which Tableau doesn't support natively but now has a way to use … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Tableau Desktop Tableau Desktop needs no to minimal coding experience. It easily integrates with various data sources. It is very easy to create usable smart reports. Incentivized Helpful? Bethany Klebanov Chief Data Scientist in Marketing at Go2Market Analytics, Inc. (Management Consulting, 1-10 employees) Chose Tableau Desktop Qlikview, SiSense - I find Tableau to be more intuitive. I found the others to have a steeper learner curve. Incentivized Helpful? Mashhood Syed BI Analyst in Customer Service at Kaiser Foundation Health Plan (Utilities, 10,001+ employees) Chose Tableau Desktop I have used SSRS, Crystal Reports, Microsoft Excel, and Business Objects. Tableau offers more functionality than the rest and is pretty intuitive. I think SSRS is the easiest to use. Query speed is excellent with SSRS (at least when you are connected to SQL Server). Microsoft … Helpful? Verified User Chose Tableau Desktop Against the usual incumbents within the pharmaceutical industry, Tableau has much better and faster access to database data especially stored in the Oracle database, without needing any interim transformations or data universe needing to be created. Also it has comparatively … Incentivized Helpful? James Northway Enterprise Program Analyst in Corporate at Assurant (Insurance, 10,001+ employees) Chose Tableau Desktop As far as I know, we do not currently use Domo, however I've seen some demos of their product. Domo is very good with cloud-based software and it also incorporates social media data. Domo is also good at using cloud-based excel file building vs. building spreadsheets on my … Incentivized Helpful? James Martin Measurement Solutions Designer in Marketing at MRM McCann (Marketing and Advertising, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Tableau Desktop Tableau is the most powerful and easy to use of the alternatives, as long as the data sources are properly connected. None of the other tools have allowed us to connect and integrate data into one report in the way that Tableau's data connectivity allows us to. Then the ability … Incentivized Helpful? James Wilson Data Analyst in Information Technology at Bridgepoint Education (Education Management, 5001-10,000 employees) Chose Tableau Desktop Tableau is by far the superior product when it comes to analysis, ease of use, and end user experience. People are usually more familiar with Excel so it can be difficult to break them out of their comfort zone. Lastly, when it comes to subscriptions, SSRS is the tool I prefer. … Incentivized Helpful? Larry Keller CEO in Corporate at VIA - Visual Intelligence & Analysis (1-10 employees) Chose Tableau Desktop We evaluated QlikView and Tableau for a Fortune 500 corporation 15 months ago in full disclosure. To be all too brief we found QlikView to be a very good tool but more IT dependent than Tableau. Newer features and functions may offset some this one significance. Spotfire is … Helpful? Brad Llewellyn Associate Data Analytics Consultant in Sales at Mariner (Information Technology and Services, 11-50 employees) Chose Tableau Desktop We have evaluated QlikView as well. QlikView is another tool in the "Self-Service BI" world. However, it's focus is mainly on creating ad-hoc data models and using these models to make visualizations. Tableau, on the other hand, will take an existing data model and make much … Helpful? Verified User Chose Tableau Desktop Oracle OBIEE. The primary factors for choosing Tableau were the licensing costs; ability to view data from multiple data sources; the ease of infrastructure to setup; and ability for users to create and maintain their own worksheets without the need for IT assistance. Helpful?	Tableau Verified User Chose Tableau Server The interface of Tableau Server is good. Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Tableau Server The choice to use Tableau Server is really made for you if you already have adopted Tableau Desktop. If you're focused on an on-premise solution, Tableau is probably the way that you'll have to go. Looker and Mode are cloud-based (so is Tableau Online) and offer a true … Incentivized Helpful? Siggy Tetteh, CSSGB, MBA, MCP Lead Systems Analyst/Project Manager in Information Technology at Navicent Health (Hospital & Health Care, 5001-10,000 employees) Chose Tableau Server There were a lot of reasons why we chose Tableau and the least is the cost but also the way Tableau stores data in the columnar fashion instead of in Cubes. We went through a painstaking selection process and at the end, came down to a couple of vendors and we ended up with the … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Tableau Server Excel took forever to load the data and crashed, and Tableau wins. Incentivized Helpful? Chris Metropulos Product Manager in Product Management at Atkore International (Building Materials, 501-1000 employees) Chose Tableau Server We still use Microsoft Excel for much of the lighter, day-to-day pivot tables or calculations. We see Tableau as the future however and are slowly tying more and more of our standard work with Tableau. Smartsheet isn't a 1:1 example, but it was considered for importing … Incentivized Helpful? Heidi Hiemstra Business Data Analyst in Institutional Research at University of Kentucky (Higher Education, 10,001+ employees) Chose Tableau Server I did not choose Tableau for my organization, but did choose my organization in part because they use Tableau! Fantastic flexibility combined with relative ease of visualization. Incentivized Helpful? Sergio Martinez Director, Data Engineering & Automation in Information Technology at Buxton (Market Research, 51-200 employees) Chose Tableau Server Tableau is extremely self intuitive to use and has a large supporting community Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Tableau Server A comprehensive proof of concept study done. We evaluated different vendors and also consider strategic reports (like Gartner) to make a decision. Tableau was the winner. The developers especially liked it, because integrating it to the existing system was very easy. Incentivized Helpful? Pooja Takavale Software Engineer in Research & Development at San Jose State university (Information Technology and Services, 5001-10,000 employees) Chose Tableau Server Sisense was another tool I came across, but I chose Tableau over Sisense as an end-to-end tool for data visualisation and BI. Tableau is the complete data visualisation tool, which is what I was looking for. So, I chose Tableau. Plus, it's easy to use and there are no complex … Incentivized Helpful? Sudhakar Kamanboina Software Engineer in Information Technology at VMware (Computer Software, 10,001+ employees) Chose Tableau Server Tableau is better than Splunk in analyzing the unstructured data and displaying all relevant information to the user. I have used Splunk but it does not provide the information of every component of a system, it just drills down to log analytics. Tableau is beyond Splunk, as … Incentivized Helpful? David Shi Financial Analyst in Finance and Accounting at AccorHotels (Hospitality, 10,001+ employees) Chose Tableau Server Tableau by far has the most intuitive interface and best out of the box looks for presentation. The speed of development and ease of development is unbeatable. Incentivized Helpful? Carl Ek Senior Software Engineer in Engineering at Moasis (Marketing and Advertising, 11-50 employees) Chose Tableau Server Tableau server was easier to setup Incentivized Helpful? Sridhar Akkineni Sr.Cognos/QlikView/Tableau Administrator & Architect in Information Technology at AIG (Insurance, 10,001+ employees) Chose Tableau Server QlikView can't connect to live data (in general) Licensing Costs of QlikView and Cognos are expensive. Cognos doesn't have excellent Graphics embedded within the tool Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Tableau Server Three "self service" BI tools were looked at: Tableau, Spotfire & Qlikview. To put it very simply, Spotfire had a lot of overlap with a tool that was already present at the bank, SAS. QlikView's biggest negative was that everything was brought in via RAM, and there are gigantic … Incentivized Helpful? Kevin Owens Vice President of Product Management & Engineering in Product Management at Passenger (Market Research, 51-200 employees) Chose Tableau Server We evaluated Tableau Server against all the major players out there. We had a bad experience with one of the major players and switched them out for Tableau. It was one of the best business decisions we have made due to our experience with Tableau and their team. Tableau offers … Incentivized Helpful? George McCarrolle Senior Business Intelligence Developer- Tableau in Information Technology at ARCADIS U.S. (Environmental Services, 10,001+ employees) Chose Tableau Server I've personally have used a vast majority of the Business Intelligence products on the marketplace. I've used all of the Oracle products over the past few years. I've used all of the products in the Microsoft stack, along with Cognos, Qlikview, etc. Each are effective if your … Incentivized Helpful? Andrew Porter Associate Consultant in Information Technology at Pariveda Solutions (Information Technology and Services, 201-500 employees) Chose Tableau Server Tableau Server has many competitors, two primary ones would be SAP Business Objects and Microsoft PowerView through Tabular Analysis Services. I have worked with all three products. First and foremost, in terms of data visualization Tableau is the best by far. However there are … Incentivized Helpful? Verified User Chose Tableau Server For full blown BI Suites, Microstrategy, Oracle and others were evaluated. However Tableau is used to supplement those systems in our case. Helpful? Torry Johnson Sr. Manager, Business Analytics at Amazon (Internet, 501-1000 employees) Chose Tableau Server Spotfire. Liked Tableau's ease of use and also local proximity (based in Seattle). Helpful? Anish Koppula Senior Statistical Marketing Analyst in Marketing at Starcom MediaVest Group (5001-10,000 employees) Chose Tableau Server We evaluated SAS Web Report Studio, SAS Visual Analytics and Spotfire. Helpful? Nelson Davis, MSCE, EIT Sr. Data Analyst and Tableau SME for North America in Information Technology at Serco - North America (10,001+ employees) Chose Tableau Server We also looked at Spotfire and Qilkview Helpful? Charles Hooper Owner at BIAlytics (Information Services, 1-10 employees) Chose Tableau Server Looked at Cognos, Microstrategy and Business Objects. All were too IT / technical intensive. Moved to Tableau due to ease of use. Helpful? Jonathan Drummey Quality Management Data Analyst in Quality Assurance at Southern Maine Medical Center (Hospital & Health Care, 1001-5000 employees) Chose Tableau Server QlikView, Tibco Spotfire, SAS, and SAP. At the time, all cost more than Tableau for our (small) needs, SAS and SAP were in some ways overqualified in terms of breadth, and none of them had the ease of use of Tableau. Helpful? Mel Stephenson MD in Corporate at InterWorks (Computer Software, 11-50 employees) Chose Tableau Server This search turned up a number of candidates. I think the main alternative considered was SiSense. Tableau Server with Tableau Desktop was the most expensive solution but I was convinced it actually represented the best value. Helpful?
	Would buy again
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Delivers good value for the price
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Happy with the feature set
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Lived up to sales and marketing promises
	No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic
	Implementation went as expected
No answers on this topic	No answers on this topic

Features

Tableau Desktop

Tableau Server

Comparison of BI Standard Reporting features of Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server
Feature	Tableau Desktop 8.3 167 Ratings	Tableau Server 9.5 94 Ratings
Pixel Perfect reports	8.8139 Ratings	9.129 Ratings
Customizable dashboards	8.4166 Ratings	9.793 Ratings
Report Formatting Templates	7.8145 Ratings	9.780 Ratings

Comparison of Ad-hoc Reporting features of Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server
Feature	Tableau Desktop 8.7 164 Ratings	Tableau Server 9.1 94 Ratings
Drill-down analysis	8.6159 Ratings	8.994 Ratings
Formatting capabilities	9.2162 Ratings	8.892 Ratings
Integration with R or other statistical packages	7.7122 Ratings	9.058 Ratings
Report sharing and collaboration	9.2157 Ratings	9.888 Ratings

Comparison of Report Output and Scheduling features of Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server
Feature	Tableau Desktop 8.1 158 Ratings	Tableau Server 8.4 90 Ratings
Publish to Web	7.3149 Ratings	9.884 Ratings
Publish to PDF	7.9149 Ratings	9.783 Ratings
Report Versioning	8.2116 Ratings	9.169 Ratings
Report Delivery Scheduling	9.2123 Ratings	8.376 Ratings
Delivery to Remote Servers	8.073 Ratings	5.19 Ratings

Comparison of Data Discovery and Visualization features of Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server
Feature	Tableau Desktop 8.4 156 Ratings	Tableau Server 8.7 89 Ratings
Pre-built visualization formats (heatmaps, scatter plots etc.)	9.0154 Ratings	8.985 Ratings
Location Analytics / Geographic Visualization	8.2149 Ratings	8.984 Ratings
Predictive Analytics	8.6126 Ratings	8.563 Ratings
Pattern Recognition and Data Mining	8.02 Ratings	00 Ratings

Comparison of Access Control and Security features of Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server
Feature	Tableau Desktop 8.7 142 Ratings	Tableau Server 8.3 94 Ratings
Multi-User Support (named login)	9.0139 Ratings	8.392 Ratings
Role-Based Security Model	8.0119 Ratings	8.389 Ratings
Multiple Access Permission Levels (Create, Read, Delete)	8.8129 Ratings	8.391 Ratings
Report-Level Access Control	9.03 Ratings	00 Ratings
Single Sign-On (SSO)	8.877 Ratings	8.361 Ratings

Comparison of Mobile Capabilities features of Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server
Feature	Tableau Desktop 8.0 135 Ratings	Tableau Server 8.4 78 Ratings
Responsive Design for Web Access	8.2124 Ratings	8.276 Ratings
Mobile Application	7.097 Ratings	8.160 Ratings
Dashboard / Report / Visualization Interactivity on Mobile	8.8117 Ratings	9.067 Ratings

Comparison of Application Program Interfaces (APIs) / Embedding features of Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server
Feature	Tableau Desktop 9.0 64 Ratings	Tableau Server 7.2 45 Ratings
REST API	9.256 Ratings	9.039 Ratings
Javascript API	9.051 Ratings	9.036 Ratings
iFrames	9.249 Ratings	9.039 Ratings
Java API	10.046 Ratings	5.57 Ratings
Themeable User Interface (UI)	8.453 Ratings	6.19 Ratings
Customizable Platform (Open Source)	8.446 Ratings	4.67 Ratings

User Ratings
	Tableau Desktop	Tableau Server
Likelihood to Recommend	8.7 (194 ratings)	8.1 (110 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew	8.9 (39 ratings)	10.0 (20 ratings)
Usability	8.6 (63 ratings)	5.2 (16 ratings)
Availability	8.0 (10 ratings)	9.0 (9 ratings)
Performance	6.1 (9 ratings)	8.1 (8 ratings)
Support Rating	7.0 (56 ratings)	3.0 (18 ratings)
In-Person Training	9.4 (4 ratings)	8.0 (4 ratings)
Online Training	8.0 (4 ratings)	9.0 (9 ratings)
Implementation Rating	8.0 (34 ratings)	9.1 (13 ratings)
Configurability	8.1 (2 ratings)	8.0 (1 ratings)
Data Sharing and Collaboration	8.4 (115 ratings)	5.1 (79 ratings)
Data Sources	7.9 (115 ratings)	6.6 (82 ratings)
Ease of integration	10.0 (1 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Product Scalability	7.0 (3 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale	10.0 (1 ratings)	- (0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale	10.0 (1 ratings)	- (0 ratings)